– Why does untreated diabetes cause parts of limbs to die?
In: Biology
It’s caused by the destruction of the small blood vessels in the legs which vastly hinder the ability of your immune system to function in limbs that are infected.
In addition, the nerves are also damaged by the diabetes which makes it so a lot of people don’t know that they are cut/hurt in the limbs (especially feet) and sometimes it takes a long time for them to figure it out (because no pain receptors) which means they don’t treat it well/ when they do it’s often to late and the infection is too deep.
The main problem actually is that usually people with untreated diabetes have in general neglected their health and poor hygiene, so it’s like a double hitter. They are both more prone for infections and also when they do get them, their body can’t fight it off as well.
Diabetics can have such large amounts of sugar in the blood that it starts to eat away at nerves/blood vessels towards the ends of limbs. Thereon, reasonably benign scratches/cuts, which for normal people would quickly inspected and treated, are sometimes not even noticed. These relatively minor wounds are then left untreated, and due to the high sugar/poor nutrient intake/circulation, they simply get worse to the point of infection. Even then, these wounds are then sometimes completely ignored (patient may not be able to reach/see the infection in the first place). Eventually the wound reaches a point of no return, it is then literally safer for the patient to simply have the infected limb removed for the greater good.
Explain like you’re actually 5: Little bits of sugar are very sharp. When you are a diabetic, the sugar stays in your blood where it’s not supposed to be. When that sharp sugar goes through really tiny blood tubes, it cuts the walls of the blood tubes and causes leaking and hurts them. When they’re hurt pretty bad over a long time, they don’t heal anymore. There are a lot of tiny blood tubes in your fingers and toes, also in your kidneys and eyes. That’s why high sugar in your blood for a long time starts to hurt those body parts.
EDIT: okay, I see that I went too over-simplified to the point of giving an incorrect answer, I’m sorry. “Sharp” is the wrong word here; blood glucose is damaging to blood vessels and causes endothelial dysfunction and inflammatory molecule release, which leads to leaky blood vessels. In the eye blood vessels, it causes the death of pericytes, which are supporting cells that line the little blood vessels. It also causes atherosclerosis (fatty plaque build-up in blood vessels), which leads to blood vessel disease as well.
TL;DR Sugar in the blood damages blood vessels and makes them leaky through multiple mechanisms.
Your cells need blood/oxygen to survive.
Uncontrolled diabetes/ high blood sugar causes blood vessels to thicken.
Big blood vessels can still have blood going through them. But the problem arises when smaller blood vessels thicken because there won’t be blood flowing through. When no blood reaches a said organ, it dies
If the blood vessels in your feet thickens, your feet dies. When blood vessels in your heart thickens, you get a heart attack. When the blood vessels in your brain thickens, you get a stroke. So on and so forth.
That’s why diabetes increases mortality because it affects literally every organ.
Sugar starts binding elsewhere instead of just it’s receptor (binding place). That cause lots of problem. Since blood vessels are very small in limbs that why it cause extra degeneration unlike heart or other major organ (that still happens but then sugar is way off the charts)
Is there any suggested way to prevent this?
Untreated diabetes results in high blood sugars. High blood sugars result in your circulation ‘dying’ (slows down, a lot). If your circulation dies, your extremities die since they require blood circulating to renew (everything in your body renews itself over time, which happens because of your blood circulating)
That’s the basic answer. There are others who have covered this in more depth.
Source: T1 Diabetic
It’s a cascade of events caused by high blood sugar.
Syrup is made by boiling some sugar in water until thick and sweet and tasty. Similarly, your blood becomes thicker when there’s too much sugar present.
Thick blood does not move as fast or easily through the tinier and tinier passage ways of your arms or your legs. As these smaller passages go unused they shrink and close up.
Without tiny passages for blood, the skin and muscles don’t receive the good parts of the blood: the nutrients and infection fighting cells. Also not getting blood is the cells that give you the sensation of touch and temperature. This is called numbness or neuropathy to be fancy.
So, say you step on a lego and it breaks the skin. The lego is covered in yuck and you get some of it into the sore on your foot. Because your foot is numb you don’t notice the sore immediately. Because the tiny passage ways are closed, the foot doesn’t have the good stuff to clean out the yuck. This sore has the chance to grow bigger and nastier, leading to a risk of losing a limb.
Diabetic microangiopathy and neuropathy
Basically microscopically your vessels have three layers ,intima ,media and adventitia…High blood sugar causes oxidative damage to the layers and result in their thickening leading to reduced blood supply (ischameia)… ischaemia lead to tissue death as the tissues don’t get O2 and nutrients
Neuropathy is when similar process thicken the myelin sheath covering nerves and the nerve conduction is affected and the patient loses sensation over the limb
Hi! Nursing student here.
Diabetes can cause macro (big) and micro (small) vascular damage. This means it harms your blood vessels. You have blood vessels all over your body. Since your blood vessels are everywhere, diabetes can affected many body parts, such as the eyes, feet, heart, and kidneys.
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