Ask the Doctor: Am I diabetic?

Diabetes Mellitus or simply diabetes, is a condition that occurs when a person’s blood sugar (glucose) is very high. This usually results from the pancreas not producing any or not enough insulin or when the body is not responding to the produced insulin, even when it is enough. Insulin, a hormone, helps sugar enter body cells to produce energy, failure of which in diabetes, sugar remains high in the blood and one will feel weak. 

There are two main types of diabetes; type 1 and type 2 with type 1 resulting from the pancreas not making any or enough insulin due to the body's systems that protect against diseases (immune system) attacking and destroying insulin-producing cells of the pancreas.

Type 2 results from the pancreas making less insulin than what the body is used to apart from the body resisting the insulin activity.

Though a family history of diabetes may put one at a high risk of getting type 1 diabetes, and anybody can get the disease, it is usually children or young adults who get it. Here, treatment requires daily insulin injections.

Although being overweight may put one at high risk of getting type 2 diabetes other factors and the fact that the doctor decided to put you on treatment means that you are most likely suffering from type 2 diabetes.

Other factors that may put one at risk of getting type 2 diabetes include a sedentary lifestyle, a family history of diabetes, being African and being age 35 or older.

Though the symptoms of diabetes vary in people or even the same person, blurred vision, feeling tired, increased thirst, unexplained weight loss, over-urinating, and numbness or tingling in hands or feet apart from over-sweating are very common. 

The array of tests the doctor did may have diagnosed that you have diabetes apart from differentiating what type of diabetes you have.

Diabetes management involves blood sugar monitoring, oral diabetes or insulin medications, choosing a healthy diet, physical exercise to reduce insulin resistance, weight, cholesterol, and blood pressure management among others.

How long does digestion take?

How long does it take for food to move through the digestive system? Usually, it takes me two days to poop. Is that normal? Tobias

Dear Tobias,

What we eat as food is digested (into what we can absorb) in our alimentary canal and the undigested waste is stored in the rectum before it exits the anus during defecation. So, what we eat as food is not what we pass out as stool. It is what we cannot digest and, therefore, cannot absorb that comes out through the anus.

It generally takes about seven seconds for food to go from the mouth, down the stomach and it may take from 20-30 hours for this food to exit as a stool. This time depends on the type of food eaten, age (faster in children), sex (faster in women) and state of hydration, among others.

Constipation is said to happen if one goes to the toilet three times or fewer per week, has difficulty passing stool, the stool is hard, and a person feels not all the stool has come out. Therefore, taking two days to pass stool if it is soft and without other symptoms should be taken as normal.

You must continue eating a balanced diet consisting of fruits, vegetables and enough water (until your urine is straw-coloured). You should also do at least 150 minutes of moderate-intensity physical activity a week.

The said diet and exercising will not only help you have regular bowel habits but will also help you maintain good bowel and overall general health.