We’ve all felt hunger so intense you feel like you are going to get sick or some other dramatic feeling of impending death.
You take a bite of a sandwich or sip of latte and magic, you feel better.
How do signs of diabetes differ from dramatic hunger?
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As a type 2 diabetic you tend to get dry mouth as you have too much sugar in your bloodstream. We don’t hypo like type 1 so we just feel normal or hungry.
A type 1 diabetic here. (Note: These are my T1D symptoms, which I think are pretty typical, but everybody is different.)
There are two situations I can think of that can make a T1D very hungry.
The most common is low blood sugar. However, besides just being hungry there are several other symptoms. Shaking, sweating, dizziness, inability to speak correctly, etc. The lower it goes, the more extreme the symptoms—seizures and death can happen.
Sometimes, if blood sugar has been very high for enough time, diabetics can develop Diabetic KetoAcidosis (DKA). This is when the body doesn’t have the “key” (insulin) to unlock the energy in the glucose, so it stays in the blood, building up ketoacids. So for energy your body takes it from fat and muscle (eventually organs). But in the meantime, the body is starving for energy, so your brain is like, “EATTTTTTTT”.
In the case of high blood sugar or DKA there are even more symptoms: extreme thirst, frequent urination, headache, tiredness (like a full body heaviness).
Hope I covered it 🙂
Type 2 diabetic here. Diabetes doesn’t feel like hunger until it’s advanced. I was trained that if I get hungry, to eat something. If I get thirsty, have some water, and if I’m still thirsty check my sugars immediately!
You’ll be thirsty with uncontrolled diabetes. Like, you just chugged 32oz of water, you can feel that your stomach is uncomfortably full of liquid, and you STILL feel thirsty.
Another sign is the need to pee All. The. Time. If left unaddressed/your sugars stay too high you’ll start to lose bladder control. By the time you get to ‘I’m hungry all the time’ you’ll have reached ketoacidosis (related but not the same as ‘keto’ dieting) and you will have gone through all sorts of other symptoms such as shaking, sweating, dizziness, and generally feeling sick for multiple days or weeks in a row. Your body gives you lots of warning, if you listen.
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