First of all I will say I am not a professional. I am only blogging about personal experience with type 2 diabetes. If you read this and you have these symptoms I hope it will help you detect if you are diabetic.There are symptoms that can give you a clue you might have type 2 diabetes. However, one symptom alone does not mean that you are a diabetic. For females,especially if you have never had a problem with vaginal yeast infections and suddenly you have itching that you have never had before - and you try everything over the counter - and it does not work, then you should consider the possiblity that you have type 2 diabetes and there is sugar in you urine. Your body has been fighting for a while and you just didn't know it. At the doctor's, you might find that your blood sugar is over 300 and then they will check your A1C and that it could be somewhere around 11 which is really horrible. The doctor will have you take something like glucophage or its generic which is metformin. It has been around a while so it is safe with little side effects for most people.

Other symptoms that I am familiar with is the person experiencing excessive thirst but that in and of itself doesn't always mean diabetes but it does mean you should still go to your doctor because it is a symptom of something else that needs to be checked. There is also my personal favorite (not really) - fatigue. If you are feeling lethargic, it could mean many things as well but when you put all of these together, it points pretty strongly to you having type 2 diabetes so take it seriously and get in to see your doctor as soon as you can. Like I said before, you will probably have to take some medicine for a while but if you watch your diet, lose weight, and exercise (regular,mild exercise is great), you can really turn things around. Being diagnosed with type 2 diabetes is not a death sentence if you don't ignore it and you make important lifestyle changes. You can do it!

Diabetes detection is not easy for the average non medical person of which I am one. Many of us have loved ones who have diabetes. I lost my mother to diabetes as well. This was back in 1992 and we did not recognize any symptoms but back then, you didn't have the information that you have now. My mother was diagnosed with diabetes over a year before she died. She took medication but she did not have great health care and never had a monitor for blood sugar like we have so plentiful today. My mother was a thin woman who did not exercise per se but did her chores with plenty of walking up and down stairs. I was told that my maternal grandmother who was overweight, died of a heart attack and had lost her legs right before she died. As I look back at her symptoms, I realize that my grand mother must have been a diabetic. This was back in the early 60's when diabetes wasn't diagnosed so easily. They looked at the results ie, heart attack, gangrene etc. not the cause; diabetes. How could she have known that her blood sugar was sky high? She lived in a small town and wouldn't have gone to a specialist and probably only went to the doctor if she was very sick.By the time she would have realized something was horribly wrong, it would be too late. Consequently, we never knew until well after my own wonderful mother died from being septic. She also lost a leg and then died. It took me some time to think about it and put it all together and see the terrible line of diabetes right to myself and possibly my siblings as well. It is a pretty cruel stream that flows from one generation to another.

~VOTE IN MY DIABETES POLL BELOW~