Ways to Diagnose Diabetes

Diabetes can be diagnosed with the fasting blood glucose test or oral glucose tolerance test. To complete fasting blood glucose test person should fast for at least 8 hours. A blood sample is taken and sent for the further analysis. The normal glucose amount in blood may vary from 100 to 126 mg/dl. If the amount of more than 126 mg/dl is found, person is sent to complete same test one more time. If both tests show that there is an increased level of glucose in blood, person is considered to be deceased with diabetes. Oral glucose tolerance test was used to show type 2 diabetes, but now is practiced for determining gestational diabetes only. To complete the test person must fast for at least 16 hour. After plasma is taken, patient is given 75 g of glucose. There are several restrictions applied to this kind of test in order to get correct results. Person should be in good health, be normally active, should follow certain diet and should not take any kind of medicine. Any person is considered deceased with diabetes if more than one test show increased level of glucose as in the previous test (Diabetes 2008).

Reducing Diabetes Complications

As diabetes can affect normal functioning of human body parts, different measures can be applied in order to reduce its complications. Cooperation of people with the decease, their support system, and health care service representatives can minimize the occurrence most of diabetes complications by means of managing the levels of blood glucose, blood pressure, and blood lipids and by performing various preventive health care practices on the timely basis. Glucose control can prevent eyes, nerves and kidneys destruction by about 7 – 8 %. Constant blood pressure control can lower the risk of heart attacks and micro vascular complications by approximately 33 %. Vision loss can be reduced by about 50 % with the help of laser therapy if detected at the proper time and treated correctly. Treatment with inhibitors and angiotensin receptor blockers may be helpful in healing kidneys. Appropriate foot care techniques can lower amputation level up to 80 % (National Diabetic Statistics 2008).