Symptoms of Diabetes

The exact moment of onset of diabetes can never be clearly defined and indeed there is no clear dividing line between normality and diabetes. As has been mentioned, the ability to store away excess sugar is gradually lost with increasing age so that if a definition of diabetes acceptable in younger people is applied to the older generation, we reach the absurd conclusion that the majority of people over 70 have diabetes. Since the inability to store away excess glucose may be a gradual process, symptoms may be equally insidious. Indeed, in middle age diabetes is frequently diagnosed as a result of a routine examination of the urine which reveals the presence of sugar. In many such cases, even when the diagnosis of diabetes is confirmed by glucose tolerance tests, the patient will not admit to any abnormal symptoms even on direct questioning. In children the situation is quite different. Here diabetes seems to come on much more quickly and symptoms may occur with increasing intensity. Since children seldom complain about their health, it often happens that a child is on the way to coma before the parents observe anything amiss.