Diabetes Effect on Vital Organs

Diabetes is a devastating disease that affects your entire body. From your heart to your kidneys, as the disease runs its course, it affects almost all of your vital organs if it is not kept under control.

Considerations

• Diabetes thickens the blood vessels that supply blood to your vital organs, which can cause a number of problems, including heart attacks. Diabetics are more likely to develop high blood pressure and high cholesterol, which also adversely affect the heart.

Effects

• The most common organs negatively affected by diabetes are the kidneys. In fact, 33 percent of people in kidney failure are diabetics. The result of kidney failure is dialysis, a time-consuming and often uncomfortable process.

Significance

• Diabetics often encounter vision problems, including cataracts and glaucoma; the latter, in particular, can cause blindness.

Time Frame

• Some people may go years with diabetes and have little to no symptoms involving the vital organs; others have problems immediately upon diagnosis. No one can predict when an individual will become besieged with problems.

Warning

• To avoid damage to the vital organs as a result of diabetes you must take care of yourself and keep your diabetes under control at all times. Exercise often, eat nutritiously and if you are insulin dependent, take insulin as instructed.