Can Diabetes Cause Extreme Fatigue

What Can A Diabetic Drink For Energy How Do I Feel Energized

Diabetics should exercise every day, eat a balanced and healthy diet, and drink plenty of water to keep a high level of energy.

To help keep your glucose level at a healthy range, doctors recommend that you exercise a minimum of 2.5 hours a week, or 30 minutes every day. Some diabetics enjoy yoga, others love aerobics. Even doing strength training can be beneficial. You need to find an activity you love so that you feel motivated to keep doing it.

Identifying Blood Sugar Spikes

At times, the signs of high blood sugar levels may not be very clear and prominent. In fact, at times, the same person can experience different symptoms during high blood sugar levels as well. Diabetes and sweating fatigue is one of the major symptoms one can look out for during high blood sugars. Essentially, because the sugar levels are high, a person might feel breathless and tired which may result in heavy breathing and fatigue.

Other symptoms of high blood sugars could be:

• Feeling hungrier than usual
• Parched throat and need to drink more water
• Frequent urination
• Sleepiness and fatigue

Common Diabetes Fatigue Questions Answered

Before we jump into ways to boost energy for diabetes, letâs answer some common questions to set the stage for the most important factor in boosting energy levels when you have diabetes: blood sugar control.

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What Causes Fatigue In Diabetes

Why does too much sugar make you tired? With diabetes, tiredness can result as a result of several factors such as:

• Can insulin resistance cause fatigue? High levels of glucose in the blood, either due to a lack of insulin or due to insulin resistance, can have an effect on the bodys capacity to get sugar from the blood into body cells to meet a persons energy requirements.
• Individuals who are on stronger anti-diabetics including insulin might also experience tiredness as a sign of low blood sugar levels.
• Blood sugar testing is a great way to determine whether high or low glucose levels can be the reason behind fatigue.

When Should I Contact My Doctor

Your doctor should be contacted any time there is a change in the level of fatigue that you are experiencing. When you meet with your doctor, you should be honest about the blood sugar levels that you have been experiencing, as well as any other problems that you are having. Also, if you become very depressed or think about killing yourself, you should seek help from your doctor right away.

If you have experienced fatigue with diabetes, please share your story below. Others can benefit from hearing how you were able to reclaim your life.

References

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Why Does Diabetes Make You Tired

Whether it’s tiredness, sleepiness or lack of energy, many people with type 1 and type 2 diabetes often feel exhausted.

Diabetes can be accompanied by altered sleep patterns, weight loss, and can sometimes affect mental health, all of which negatively impact quality of life. It could be that waking up during the night because of nocturnal hypoglycaemia and the frequent need to urinate, drink, or eat may be responsible.

In addition, over the course of a day, a person with diabetes will experience fluctuation in their blood glucose levels. With these daily variations, phases of hypo or hyperglycaemia may appear, causing a wide range of symptoms. We refer to these as episodes of acute fatigue.

If the feeling of exhaustion persists for more than six months, it suggests chronic fatigue. This persistent lack of energy is linked to the degradation of certain functions connected to diabetes.

Contribution Of Blood Glucose To Chronic And Acute Fatigue

For the substudy, the majority of patients was willing to participate. Twenty-one patients were excluded because of the presence of a comorbidity . A subset of 68 patients participated. From two patients, no data were obtained. Sixteen patients had incomplete 5-day data sets but were included in the analyses. Reasons for incomplete or absent data were premature sensor removal , technical problems with the CGM system or EFD . In this substudy, participants did not differ from patients not willing to participate regarding age, sex, fatigue severity, and HbA1c . The prevalence of chronic fatigue in the substudy was 37% compared with 40% in the total sample.

Chronically fatigued T1DM patients spent in proportion less time in hypoglycemia compared with nonchronically fatigued patients . There was no significant difference between the two groups in GLmean , Gvar and hyper .

None of the four blood glucose parameters were significantly associated with acute fatigue. Correlations between EFD scores and glucose parameters were GLmean , Gvar , hyper or hypo . GEEs showed no significant between- or within-subject effects of GLmean_hour and Gvar_hour on acute fatigue .

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Can Undiagnosed/uncontrolled Diabetes Cause Fatigue

Undiagnosed and uncontrolled diabetes can cause fatigue. Earlier in this article, reactive hypoglycemia was mentioned, which is when your body tries to make too much insulin to keep up with the sugar intake and causes a sugar crash. There are approximately 7 million people with undiagnosed diabetes in the world. Fatigue is the most common symptom of diabetes and hopefully leads to people seeing their doctors and being diagnosed to get control of their blood sugar.

Uncontrolled diabetes causes fatigue for many reasons that were also mentioned previously in this article. First of all, blood sugars that are either too high or too low do not deliver fuel to the cells for the body to operate. Secondly, complications that are caused by uncontrolled diabetes such as kidney disease and nerve damage also cause fatigue. The most important thing to do is to control blood sugar.

Why Does Type 2 Diabetes Cause Fatigue

Fatigue is very common in Type 2 diabetes. A study published by the American Diabetes Association found that it affected 61 per cent of newly diagnosed people.

There are lots of different reasons for this:

Hypoglycaemia

When we eat carbohydrates, the digestive system breaks them down into sugar. Experts call this sugar glucose, and it is the bodys main source of energy. It travels to every part of the body in the blood.

Insulin is a hormone. It makes sure there is never too much, or too little glucose in the blood, so that the body has the energy it needs. But when people develop Type 2 diabetes, they stop making insulin properly and the regulation system breaks down.

Hypoglycaemia means that there is not enough sugar in the blood. Sometimes, people call this having a hypo. Fatigue is a common symptom of low blood sugar.

It is different for everyone, but other symptoms might include:

• feeling shaky
• blurry vision
• tingly lips

If you think you might be having a hypo, you should treat it right away. Low blood sugar levels can be very dangerous.

Diabetes symptoms

Lots of the common symptoms of Type 2 diabetes can contribute to feelings of tiredness and fatigue.

Things like needing to urinate a lot, feeling really thirsty, and feeling really hungry can all make you feel tired.

Poor mental health and wellbeing can also add to fatigue. It can impact on how well someone is able to manage their blood sugar levels. It can also change sleep patterns and leave people feeling low.

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How Can Diabetes Cause Fatigue

Stress, anxiety, and depression: Between constant management, fear, and pain, stress often plays a large role in the life of an individual with diabetes. That stress is often accompanied by high blood pressure and heart rate, both of which deplete energy. Further, its not uncommon for all this stress to take its toll and manifest itself in the form of anxiety and/or depression. Studies suggest that people with diabetes are actually 3-4 times more likely than the general population to suffer from depression, which often goes hand in hand with decreased energy and lethargy.

Diabetes-related inflammation: Inflammation is often accompanied by the release of cytokines, which encourage your body to rest. If youve ever had the flu and felt excessively tired, youve most likely experienced a similar feeling. Put simply, its your bodys immune system telling you its time for sleep.

Hypoglycemia: Feeling fatigued is a classic sign of low blood sugar, though everyones reaction to hypoglycemia is different. Its important to establish how you feel when your blood sugar is low, so you know if your fatigue is symptomatic, or caused by something else.

Insulin resistance: This is a common culprit for chronic fatigue. If your cells are resisting the glucose youre fueling it with, it wont have the energy it needs to get through the day.

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High Blood Sugar And Tiredness

Fatigue and tiredness go hand in hand with a diabetes diagnosis. Ask anyone who has been diagnosed with this condition whether they feel energetic and well-rested, and a majority of them would say no! The chronic nature of the condition is not limited to its direct symptoms and signs, they extend way beyond the erratic nature of the highs and lows and move towards sleeplessness, stress, anxiety, and fatigue. It becomes difficult to function normally in daily life when constant sleepiness and lethargy are looming over the head. Even then, the life of a person with diabetes does not stop. They still need to go ahead with their daily routine and chores no matter how pertinent the fatigue is.

Not only can diabetes cause fatigue but also it is worse on some days than others. These could be because of the lows and highs in sugar levels. The only time one would feel remotely less tired – yes, less tired, not energetic would be in the duration that the sugars are more or less in the normal range. This would also have to be for a considerable time duration for the symptoms to not set in. Eventually, fatigue slowly becomes a part of regular life as people learn to push through it.

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What Causes Tiredness In Diabetes

When you are a patient of diabetes, there are several changes that are experienced by your blood. Your blood flow tends to become very slow as the blood gets thicker, like a maple syrup. Due to this, the blood does not reach to the inner cells in an appropriate manner to give enough oxygen and energy to different body parts and organs in the body. This results in tiredness and you tend to feel sleepy at all times.

Another reason for tiredness caused in the diabetic patients is that the condition leads to inflammation. This acts as a sign to the brain that it needs to take some rest and this process causes the fatigue amongst all the people who suffer from diabetes.

Finally, diabetes is known to give rise to a host of complications in its patients. People often experience the lack of red blood cells in their body. This again leads to tiredness. Other complications such as kidney failure, heart-related conditions, as well as damage to various body nerves cause tiredness in the people who have diabetes.

Fatigue is also caused due to very high or very low blood glucose levels. the same is explained in the following paragraph:

Causes Related To Blood Sugar

High blood glucose makes your blood sludgy, slowing circulation so cells cant get the oxygen and nutrients they need. Margaret commented, I can tell if my sugars are high in the morning, because groggy doesnt begin to describe it. Drugged is how it feels.

Low sugars levels also cause diabetes fatigue, because when blood sugar is low, there is not enough fuel for the cells to work well.

In addition, high blood glucose can cause diabetes fatigue through inflammation. Blood vessels get inflamed by the sugar. When this happens, according to research, immune cells called monocytes come into the brain, causing fatigue.

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How To Feel Less Tired After Eating

Carbohydrates are an important part of a balanced diet. They are your bodys preferred source of energy, and many foods high in carbohydrates are great sources of important vitamins and minerals.

But as weve seen, not all carbohydrates affect you in the same way. Choosing the right sources of carbohydrate may help you to feel less tired after eating.

If youre looking to avoid drastic blood sugar spikes and crashes, focus on eating high-quality complex carbohydrates.

What Causes Fatigue In Prediabetes

Chronic tiredness or fatigue is more than just feeling a bit weary. If you are struggling to get up in the morning feeling a total lack of energy or fogginess or not able to perform the tasks you normally do as simply too exhausted it may be that you actually are suffering from fatigue and it could be a side effect of your diabetes.

Although diabetes medications generally do not result in symptoms, fluctuations in blood sugars can definitely have an effect.

It is always a good idea to check with your doctor if you are feeling fatigued as it could be a number of other health problems such as anaemia cancer coeliac disease vitamin B12 deficiency low testosterone levels, kidney disease, thyroid issues or even as a consequence of depression.

Fatigue can occur for many reasons but here are 3 important ones to consider:

• Poor blood circulation which results in less oxygen and energy supply to the brain
• Longterm inflammation in the body so effectively the body is at war and the brain is sent messages that the body needs to rest and repair itself.
• Complications such as kidney disease where there is red cell damage and less oxygen in the body.

Fatigue in prediabetes is common and occurs for a number of reasons. High and low blood sugars can cause tiredness so it is important to check your sugars when feeling like this to try and get a clearer picture of the cause.

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How Can I Beat/reduce Fatigue With Diabetes And Regain My Energy

There are many ways to reduce fatigue with diabetes and regain energy. The most important thing that you can do is to control your blood sugar. This limits complications and also provides your body with the fuel that it needs to operate. You can also eat smart and exercise. Exercise actually decreases fatigue up to 65%. By taking care of yourself, you can decrease fatigue and increase quality of life.

You shouldnt make any changes to your diet, insulin, or exercise regimen without talking to your doctor. First off, your doctor needs to be consulted and you need to talk with him about the following things:

• Can my fatigue be caused by another disease? This rules out all other reasons for your fatigue so you can focus on the main cause.
• Are any of the side effects from my medications causing the fatigue?
• Is it a good idea for me to start taking supplements such as Vitamin D, Vitamin B, Calcium, Chromium, Ginseng, Coenzymes, or Magnesium?
• Is my thyroid okay?
• What kind of exercises would be best for me?
• How can I better control my blood sugar to decrease fatigue?
• What is a healthy weight for me to be?

Eating too many carbohydrates can cause you to feel drowsy. You should also schedule an appointment to talk with your dietitian or nutritionist to discuss the following things:

• Would juicing be okay for me?
• Am I eating too many carbs?
• How can I improve my diet to decrease my fatigue?

Other things that you can do to decrease fatigue include:

When Should You Worry About Fatigue

Fatigue, while common, can get worrisome if it is persistent and chronic. When you constantly feel depleted of energy, when you feel sleepy all day, when you are unable to get up from the bed, when you are not able to carry out even simple tasks, that is when you should visit the doctor about this fatigue.

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Training Supervision And Treatment Integrity

All therapists are experienced cognitive behaviour therapists working at the ECCF. Therapists will be trained in delivering Dia-Fit. They will receive bi-weekly supervision from an experienced clinical psychologist .

Treatment integrity will be determined by digitally recording all face-to-face sessions and saving all e-mail contacts of Dia-Fit. At the end of the study, 5 % of the sessions and the e-mail contacts will be randomly selected and evaluated to assess to what extent the Dia-Fit treatment was delivered according to protocol.

Diabetes And Fatigue: How To Fight It

One of the most significant symptoms experienced by people with diabetes is excessive fatigue, a feeling that about half of people with diabetes report experiencing.

However, care should be taken to differentiate acute fatigue from chronic fatigue in order to explain the causes specific to each and decide how best to treat them.

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Fatigue And Other Signs You May Have Type 2 Diabetes

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Type 2 diabetes is the most common form of diabetes. It affects how your body processes insulin. Unlike type 1, which has a genetic component, type 2 diabetes can be brought by lifestyle choices. Type 2 diabetes symptoms vary from person to person.

There are many symptoms of type 2 diabetes. Constantly feeling tired is a common symptom, but here are additional signs of type 2 diabetes that you should monitor.

Fatigue/Tiredness

As mentioned previously, your energy levels may decrease once you develop type 2 diabetes. According to the American Diabetes Foundation, individuals newly diagnosed with type 2 report feeling fatigued. This fatigue is a result of inadequate amounts of sugar moving from the blood into the cells.

Blood sugar levels are always high when you have type 2 diabetes, but the sugar has a difficult time entering the cells. This causes the cells to work with less efficiency because they do not have the proper amount of energy. Because of this, a person with type 2 diabetes may feel tired all the time.

Excessive Thirstiness

People with type 2 diabetes often feel parched. This abnormal thirst is known as polydipsia and comes from too much sugar in your bloodstream. Your kidneys, a key part of the urinary system, are forced to work harder to rid your body of the extra sugar. This causes frequent urination, which is another early warning sign that you have type 2 diabetes.