Diabetes and Excessive Sweating

Sweating is normal. It keeps your body cool. But if your body sweats four to five times more than normal even when it shouldn't, that's embarrassing. It's also a medically recognized ailment called hyperhidrosis. Out of the 7 billion people in the world today, there's an estimated 178 million people who suffer from this condition.

That's 178 million who suffer from embarrassment, and who become self-conscious and withdrawn. For them, social interaction is difficult because most people are turned off by excessive sweating. It also raises a lot of practical problems. How do you hold paper if your hands are always wet with sweat? How can you drive with sweat pouring down your eyes? How do you hide smelly feet? It's a difficult life for hyperhidrosis sufferers.

Generally, hyperhidrosis can be caused by either an underlying medical condition or fate. Sometimes, nobody can figure out the cause of a particular persons excessive sweating. It could be heredity. It could be sunspots. The doctors don't really know. It just happens. But some people sweat excessively because of an underlying condition. Usually, if the condition is treated, the hyperhidrosis goes bye-bye. One example of hyperhidrosis-causing condition is diabetes.

In diabetes (aka diabetes mellitus), the body is unable to produce insulin or is unable to use the insulin that is produced. This is really bad because insulin regulates glucose metabolism. In other words, insulin controls a person's energy.

Diabetes won't usually cause excessive sweating though there are exceptions. It's normally the medications that treat diabetes that can cause excessive sweating. Specifically, it's when hypoglycemia takes place, that excessive sweating may occur.

Hypoglycemia or low blood sugar occurs if there is too much insulin in the body and too little glucose or sugar. This usually happens when a diabetic takes insulin shot without having enough food in his body. Then the inevitable symptoms appear: trembling, hunger, fatigue, a rapid heart rate, convulsions, confusion and excessive sweating. The symptoms appear when glucose levels in the blood drop below 60mg/dL (technically, hypoglycemia occurs when the glucose level drops below 70 mg/dL but its symptoms usually arise after the drop is large enough). Hypoglycemia can attack at night. It may or may not wake you up, but if you did the symptoms are the almost the same: a fast heart rate and night sweats. Don't confuse it with conditions that have similar symptoms like perimenopause.

It's not hard to relieve the symptoms of hypoglycemia. As soon as you feel it, immediately find a quick snack or drink that contains a lot of sugar, like smoothies for example. If the hypoglycemia is really bad, then you'll need a quick vehicle to get your self into an emergency room as soon as possible.

The exception is gustatory sweating. It's sweat that happens after eating food (especially spicy food) and it occurs on the side of the face, and up to the forehead, or down to the neck. It's a sign of advanced diabetes. Hyperhidrosis occurs in 70% of diabetics with kidney damage and 40% of diabetics with nerve damage. Treatment is harder for this case because of its rarity. Consult a doctor for this particular diabetes complication

Diabetes was the sixth leading cause of death, at best. It is dangerous but not dangerous enough. That infamy is given to heart disease. It is the number one cause of death today. According to the Centers for Disease Control, an American will have a coronary event every 25 seconds. Fortunately, the body sends signals just before a heart attack occurs. Sometimes there's enough time before cardiac arrest. Sometimes there isn't. But the most reliable telltale sign of a heart attack isn't chest pains, it's excessive sweating. Read about it on the lens: Attacks of Sudden Sweating.