Health Conditions / Metabolic Health / Diabetes

However, that’s not the messaging or target audience of the aforementioned CGM ads that popped up in my feed, which suggest that pretty much anybody who wants to lose weight or feel better or improve their health would benefit from a CGM. Plus, it’s important to note that people with lower incomes are at a greater risk for prediabetes and type 2 diabetes—not those who can afford to buy CGMs out of pocket.But when it comes to the general public, experts aren’t convinced that CGMs are necessary.Currently, there is “no compelling evidence” to say that people without diabetes or prediabetes would benefit from a CGM, Christine Byrne, MPH, RD, a Raleigh-based dietitian who specializes in eating disorders, tells SELF. In fact, one 2019 study published in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism, in which researchers analyzed CGM data from 153 people without diabetes, found that 96% of the readings were in the normal range.The non-diabetic CGM market thrives on an assumption underlying a lot of wellness and biohacker culture today: More data about our bodies is inherently better. But that’s not necessarily true, Byrne points out. For starters, CGMs aren’t always accurate, because there’s often a time lag of 10 to 15 minutes and a 10- or 20-point difference between what your CGM says and your actual blood glucose level. And they tend to over-read lows, in particular, Dr. McGill says, which some people may find “disconcerting.”Blood sugar is also a complex, multifactorial phenomenon. To make sense of your CGM data, you’d ideally be tracking “food, exercise, sleep, stress levels and how your energy fluctuates throughout the day, in order to better understand how these different components affect blood sugar,” Yasi Ansari, RDN, a spokesperson for the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, tells SELF. In other words, just because your blood sugar rises 20 points after you eat a mango doesn’t mean mangoes are bad for your health (or even that a mango would have that same exact effect on your blood sugar on a different day).There are also potential mental-health downsides.Even if there was enough research supporting the idea that CGMs have a positive effect on your blood sugar, in reality they may also have unintended negative consequences beyond your physical health. For one, fixating on your blood sugar “could cause you to pathologize completely normal glucose responses and fluctuations,” Byrne says. “If you eat carbs, your blood glucose will go up, and that’s totally normal and fine.”And hyper-focusing on your blood sugar in order to inform your eating choices could also result in greater rigidity around food—especially in people with a history of restrictive dieting or disordered eating behaviors. “Similar to the effect that activity trackers or calorie counting apps can have, using this device may take away from the joy and pleasure of eating, as well as listening to your body when it comes to making food and exercise choices,” Ansari explains. You want to be able to eat and “not always be worried about the impact it might have on blood sugars,” as she puts it.And there are often easier (more affordable) ways to address many of the issues you hope to resolve with a CGM.If you’re concerned about or at risk for prediabetes or diabetes, talk to your doctor about getting screened, Byrne says. You can also start with basic, evidence-based measures for stabilizing blood sugar levels, like more physical activity.

Diabetes asks a lot of a person physically, mentally, and emotionally. If you’re googling for “gifts for diabetics” or “gifts for people with diabetes” right now, then you know somebody living with the demanding condition that could use a little extra love. Maybe your friend or family member was recently diagnosed, and you want to show your support with a well-curated gift basket. Or maybe it’s their birthday or a holiday, and you want to give them a present that shows how much you’re here to support them.What makes the perfect gift for someone with diabetes? Well, there are some pretty awesome products made specifically for people with diabetes on the market today. But something I’ve learned from living with type 1 diabetes for over 20 years is that diabetes affects the whole person, and vice versa. Diabetes care and self-care; blood sugars and emotional health; healthy habits and joie de vivre—it’s all connected. Which means that even gift ideas that aren’t diabetes-specific can be diabetes-friendly, so to speak.So you’ll find a lot of options in the following gift guide, from functional yet delightful gifts for diabetes in particular to more general presents that can infuse just a little bit more joy or ease into daily life. To make this gift guide as well-rounded and representative as possible, I sourced gift ideas from people in the diabetes community, including people living with diabetes and professionals who work with people with type 1 diabetes or type 2 diabetes. Use this list as inspiration—after all, you’re the expert on what will put a smile on your loved one’s face.All products featured on SELF are independently selected by our editors. However, when you buy something through our retail links, we may earn an affiliate commission.

As a person with diabetes, a massive sweet tooth, and a set of anti-diet values, sugar and sugar substitutes are something I’ve wrestled with quite a bit. Sugar restriction crashed into my orbit when I was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes at age seven. During my hospital stay, I learned that sugary foods were now a challenge for my body, and found comfort in the candy-red cups of sugar-free Jello that I was allowed to safely enjoy—my first taste of a substance that tasted sweet, but wouldn’t affect my blood glucose like actual sugar.I came home to a pantry cleared of sweets, soon replaced by sugar-free versions of everything. Sugar-free pudding after school and sugar-free Swiss Miss at bedtime. Sugar-free chocolate Santas on Christmas and bunnies on Easter. At restaurants, little pink and blue packets of white powder mixed in with lemon water for sugar-free lemonade.In theory, these sugar-free treats satisfied my sweet tooth without spiking my blood sugar. In reality, they delivered an artificial approximation of the real thing that tasted just close enough to what I really wanted—without ever actually hitting the spot—that I kept coming back for more. But as I got older, I was increasingly turned off by the saccharine overload, icky aftertaste (hello, aspartame), serious stomach upset (thanks, sugar alcohols), and sense of perpetual dissatisfaction. By my mid-teens, I admitted to myself that the miraculous promise of sugar substitutes was too good to be true after all, and all but cut them out.Today, sugar substitutes and I are on happier terms. First, I now eat plenty of the real thing. I think the demonization of sugar in recent years—similarly to the austere medical guidance I received as a kid—has done real harm to people’s relationships with food. I firmly believe that eating real sugar every damn day can be part of a balanced and varied diet, people with diabetes very much included. At the same time, it’s a biological reality that processing a large amount of sugar is different for me. A healthy pancreas can handle an influx of simple sugars no problem, but the insulin pump I use to try and mimic my pancreas is imperfect. (Even if I precisely calculate and time my insulin dose, my blood sugar can soar.)Sometimes this tradeoff is 100% worth it, and sometimes I want to enjoy a tray of homemade brownies without worrying about my blood sugar or feeling like crap shortly after—which is where sugar substitutes come in handy. “Sugar alternatives can be a helpful tool to add sweetness without the blood sugar spikes of actual sugar,” Hailey Crean, RD, a Boston-based certified diabetes care and education specialist and certified intuitive eating counselor, tells SELF.While I still generally avoid most sugar-free packaged foods, sugar substitutes have become a helpful (and fun!) ingredient in one of my favorite hobbies: baking. I love creatively tinkering with recipes—muffins, quick breads, cookies, bars—to lower the final product’s glycemic load (impact on my blood sugar) without sacrificing taste. I often swap out anywhere from ¼ to ¾ of the sugar in a recipe for a sugar substitute (in addition to adding yummy sources of blood sugar-friendly fiber, like nuts, fruit, and whole-wheat flour). While it depends on the sweetener and the recipe, I generally notice very modest effects on my blood sugar (and digestive system), and the baking results are excellent.Originally, I felt conflicted about using sugar substitutes because I worried it clashed with my anti-diet stance and intuitive eating aspirations. But I realized that shunning sugar alternatives because I feel like I should mirrors the black-and-white thinking around food that makes diet culture so harmful. Today I embrace the nuance of being an anti-diet, diabetic sweets lover, and see sugar substitutes not as a silver bullet but a tool for helping me find balance with priorities that can sometimes feel in competition—enjoying food, and my life, while also taking care of my body. “For someone living with diabetes, we ideally want to keep the diet as liberal and enjoyable as possible while still keeping blood sugar in mind,” as Crean puts it. “Using sugar alternatives can sometimes support this goal.”Of course, everyone’s body and relationship to food is different, and the physical effects and emotional implications of sugar substitutes are very individualized, Courtney Darsa, RD, a Manhattan-based certified diabetes care and education specialist and owner of Nourishing NY, tells SELF. It really depends on the person’s health history, food history, tolerance for various sweeteners, and preferences.Darsa’s advice is to pay close attention to how sugar substitutes affect your system in a holistic way—from your blood sugar’s response to gastrointestinal issues to your sense of satisfaction—to learn what’s best for you. After eating sugar substitutes, “ask yourself, ‘How do I feel, mentally, physically, and emotionally?’” Darsa advises. If you have diabetes and/or other challenges surrounding sugar, it’s best to discuss all this with a health-care provider who understands how sugar substitutes can impact your body and well-being, like an endocrinologist, registered dietitian, or certified diabetes care and education specialist.All that said, if you are looking to experiment with sweet alternatives in the kitchen (or just in your morning coffee), then let’s talk about the best sugar substitutes. There are a ton of options on the market today, and I’ve sampled a lot of them. Thankfully, the overall quality has improved significantly over the last couple of decades—thank you, science!—and many come much closer to the real thing than the Splendas, liquid stevias, and maltitols of years past. Again, these recommendations are based on my personal experience, but you should trust your gut, monitor your blood sugar, and consult your health-care team (and taste buds!) about what works for you. Here are my favorite sugar substitutes.

That being said, it’s still worth getting checked out if you’re cold all the time but don’t feel like anything else is amiss, Dr. Besson says. Your doctor will likely look at your medical records and ask about how often you’re cold, along with teasing out any other symptoms you may not have noticed, Dr. Vyas says. That can help determine what kind of testing might be necessary to land on a diagnosis, if any.2. You have hypothyroidism.Hypothyroidism is a condition in which your thyroid does not produce sufficient levels of the hormones that regulate your metabolism, which in turn slows it down, according to the Mayo Clinic. This can happen for various reasons, the most common being Hashimoto’s disease, an autoimmune disorder that prompts your immune system to attack your thyroid, according to the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK).Since a slow thyroid affects a bunch of metabolic functions, hypothyroidism can cause a wide range of symptoms including fatigue, unintended weight gain, constipation, dry skin, thinning hair, a depressed mood, heavy or irregular periods, and—that’s right—an increased sensitivity to cold, per the NIDDK. Dr. Besson points to fatigue as the usual tip-off, so if your energy levels are dragging and no amount of fuzzy sweaters can keep you warm, you should definitely mention that to your doctor.Treatment for hypothyroidism involves taking a daily dose of a synthetic replacement for thyroid hormone (thyroxine or T4) called levothyroxine. You’ll also need ongoing blood tests to ensure your hormone levels are up to par once you start treatment, so it may take some time to find the right dose for you.13. You have anemia.Anemia is a blood disorder that happens when you don’t have enough healthy red blood cells to carry oxygen throughout your body, according to the American Society of Hematology (ASH). There are many types of anemia, but the most common one stems from iron deficiency, according to the Mayo Clinic. When you don’t have enough iron in your blood, you can’t make sufficient hemoglobin, a protein that allows your red blood cells to transport oxygen and carbon dioxide. This leads to less circulation to your limbs, causing you to feel colder, Dr. Vyas says, particularly in your hands and feet. Other common anemia symptoms include weakness, fatigue, an irregular heartbeat, paler skin, chest pain, and headaches.2Anemia can also be the result of your body making too few red blood cells, destroying too many red blood cells, or losing too much blood for some reason, the U.S. National Library of Medicine explains. Blood loss due to heavy periods can cause anemia, as can pregnancy, which increases your blood volume. (This is why iron is a key component of prenatal vitamins.) Other forms of anemia are connected with deficiencies in folate and vitamin B-12, which are necessary for producing red blood cells. Genetics can also be to blame, such as with the chronic illness sickle cell anemia.The cause of anemia determines the treatment, the goal of which is to increase your levels of healthy red blood cells by addressing the underlying condition or deficiency. This can involve taking iron supplements, making dietary changes to get more folate or vitamin B-12, or more intensive methods such as blood transfusions if you have a chronic condition.24. You have Raynaud’s disease.Raynaud’s disease is a condition that causes your extremities to become cold, discolored (red or blue), numb, and even painful when you’re in cold temperatures or stressed out. “It happens because your blood vessels are constricting,” Dr. Besson explains.

That’s the first traumatic memory that I ever recovered and worked through with my current therapist, four years ago now. Processing Penny’s death and the way it affected me—how it seeded deep in me fears of my own body and fate—was the breakthrough I needed to recognize the tremendous trauma that had been slowly unfolding within me over many years.Chronic illness is an under-recognized and misunderstood source of trauma. “Oftentimes in our society and our culture, we think about trauma as something that’s associated with combat or a very violent, terrifying event,” Ashwini Nadkarni, MD, a Harvard Medical School instructor and psychiatrist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital who specializes in working with people living with a chronic illness, told me. “What’s not well understood is that the burden of having a chronic medical condition very much meets those criteria for a trauma experience.”The trauma of my diabetes diagnosis began to manifest in the perfect storm of adolescence. I was experiencing new stressors: my mom’s mental health struggles, and, having managed my own care for a couple years now, diabetes burnout—a term used to describe feeling emotionally fried by the around-the-clock management. Never-processed traumas billowed up into waves of anger, terror, self-loathing, and, though I couldn’t name it then, grief—for the body, the health, the easy relationship with food, the self-trust, and the potential future I had lost. At 13, for the first time, I grappled with the magnitude and permanence of my disease.I blamed myself for getting diabetes. I believed my existence was a burden on everyone, a feeling I can trace back to a specific memory from a few years earlier. On a family vacation in Utah one summer, we were trying to figure out who was going on a hike with my parents and who was staying back, and I volunteered to join. Once my parents were out of earshot, my sister hissed at me, “Don’t you think Mom and Dad want to get away from worrying about you and your diabetes for once?” The guilt crushed me, and I didn’t feel like going after all.Paralyzing fear and morbid assumptions clouded my visions of the future. These core beliefs have been the hardest for me to recognize as traumatic residue, because for many years they were simply the lens through which I saw myself and the world. Beliefs like: I will probably experience complications like going blind and kidney failure by the time I’m 30. I shouldn’t have children because they will be sick and hate me. I will die young.I was besieged not by traumatic flashbacks, but traumatic flash-forwards into a coffin of sickness and suffering. Depression and anxiety consumed me. Intrusive thoughts and a sense of impending doom kept me up at night as I googled phrases like “average life expectancy female type 1 diabetic.”I eventually started attending therapy and taking antidepressants. With a body I saw as fundamentally, irreversibly broken, I readily accepted that my brain was broken too. I started to numb out with sugar, an exceptionally self-destructive impulse for a person with type 1 diabetes. I developed a binge eating disorder—which wreaked havoc on my blood sugar—that I hid from everyone.

Type 2 diabetes is one of the most common chronic health conditions in the U.S. (a whopping 10.5% of the population has it1)—yet it is woefully misunderstood by most people. There are all kinds of misconceptions about what causes type 2 diabetes. Because of this, you might think you did something wrong if you get a type 2 diabetes diagnosis. But the truth is, the condition is the result of a combination of factors, some of which can be outside of your control. Ultimately, type 2 diabetes occurs when your body doesn’t use insulin properly. The good news is, that there are lots of ways to change that. Keep reading to learn what really causes type 2 diabetes—and what you can do to prevent it.What is type 2 diabetes?In a nutshell, type 2 diabetes is a chronic disease that occurs when your pancreas doesn’t produce enough insulin (or doesn’t use it efficiently), which results in too much glucose (or sugar) circulating in your blood, according to the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK). Over time, high blood sugar levels can cause problems with your immune, nervous, and circulatory systems. Worth noting: If your body has started having problems producing insulin and using glucose, but your blood sugar hasn’t yet risen to a concerning level, then you may be diagnosed with prediabetes.So, what’s the difference between type 1 and type 2 diabetes? Type 1 diabetes also occurs when there is too much glucose in the blood, but it’s an autoimmune condition, meaning the body attacks the insulin-producing cells in the pancreas.What causes type 2 diabetes?Experts don’t know exactly what causes type 2 diabetes, but there are several factors at play—some are within your control (think: getting enough exercise) while others are outside of your control (like genetics). Here are some possible causes:Insulin resistanceThe main culprit of type 2 diabetes, insulin resistance is when your body doesn’t use insulin efficiently, which leads to high blood sugar. Glucose is what your body uses for energy. But it has a lock on it, meaning it can’t get into your cells on its own; it needs insulin to do that (think of insulin as a key that opens the lock so glucose can enter).Insulin resistance is when your key (insulin) doesn’t work as well as it should. Sometimes it unlocks, and sometimes you have to go through a series of acrobatic hand movements to get the lock to open. Since glucose isn’t getting into your cells consistently, it means there is extra circulating in your blood, increasing your blood glucose, or blood sugar, which may lead to type 2 diabetes.There’s another thing that happens with insulin resistance. Your body can’t make enough insulin to compensate for the extra glucose. As a result, more glucose ends up circulating in your blood, which can damage your cells and lead to complications that affect your eyes, kidneys, and nerves, according to a 2019 study published in the journal Nature.2Excess body fatSo, what causes insulin resistance in the first place? The answer is complicated, and it doesn’t just happen overnight. But one of the main factors is excess body fat, which can cause inflammation throughout your body. That inflammation may then trigger a chain reaction that ultimately leads to insulin resistance and eventually type 2 diabetes, according to a 2015 study published in the journal Lipids in Health and Disease.3It’s important to note that not all people with type 2 diabetes are considered clinically overweight, and not all people who carry excess weight have type 2 diabetes.Your genes and how you grew upInheriting certain genes can increase your risk of developing type 2 diabetes. If you have one parent with type 2 diabetes, your risk increases by 40%, according to a 2015 study published in the journal Genes. If both parents have it, that risk jumps to 70%. And compared to the general population, you have a three-fold increased risk if you have a parent or sibling with type 2 diabetes.4

Lea Ann Chen, MD, assistant professor of medicine and director of the Inflammatory Bowel Disease Translational Research at the Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, tells SELF there are “many reasons” why EPI is underdiagnosed. “EPI symptoms are nonspecific and overlap with other more common GI diagnoses,” she explains. “Also, the tests to evaluate for EPI are very specific, so it is unlikely to be diagnosed incidentally.”That means your doctor would specifically need to suspect that you have EPI and order the appropriate tests to verify it versus accidentally stumbling upon a diagnosis while testing you for other conditions—and they likely would not do that specific testing unless you had one of the above conditions associated with a higher risk of EPI or red flag symptoms, like unexplained weight loss or nutrient deficiencies (which we’ll explain more in-depth below). “For patients whose EPI is mild or is not caused by chronic pancreatitis, the condition can be missed,” Dr. Chen says.Back to topWhat are the most common exocrine pancreatic insufficiency symptoms?Because the signs and symptoms of EPI can overlap with those of other GI conditions, you can imagine they’re not exactly fun to deal with. “If EPI is untreated, the symptoms can be extremely uncomfortable,” Mohamed Othman, MD, professor of medicine – gastroenterology at Baylor College of Medicine, tells SELF. However, there are a few tip-offs that you may be dealing with EPI symptoms compared to those of another health condition2.You have unexplained diarrhea after you eat.Diarrhea is a common issue that is usually caused by something you ate, a stomach bug, or a more serious condition like inflammatory bowel disease, according to the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases. However, diarrhea is also an issue in people with untreated or under-treated EPI, Dr. Othman says, and there are a few reasons for this. One is that the food you’re eating doesn’t get properly absorbed in your gastrointestinal tract. This allows the bacteria that naturally hang out in your gut to ferment that undigested food, he says. At the same time, water collects around it which can make your stool more liquidy.There’s also this to consider: That undigested food can include fat, Amy Tyberg, MD, a professor of gastroenterology at Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, tells SELF. “The fat subsequently stays in the GI tract and acts as a laxative as it travels through the intestines,” she says. Cue the constant diarrhea.Your poop looks “fatty.”EPI can also lead to fatty poops, which are literally bowel movements that have a higher fat content than usual. Medically known as steatorrhea4, these poops are often paler than usual, oily, and smellier than you might be used to, per the Cleveland Clinic. “It’s a result of the lack of absorption of fat in the intestines,” Philip Hart, MD, a gastroenterologist at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, tells SELF.So, if your body has difficulty absorbing fat in your diet due to EPI, it simply comes out in your stool. Heads up: You might also see fat or oil droplets in your poop or an oily residue floating on top of the toilet water after you go, Dr. Othman says.You’re losing weight without trying.When your body can’t break down nutrients in the food you eat, you can’t properly absorb them—and that can cause you to lose weight without trying, Dr. Othman says. Diarrhea caused by EPI can also lead to weight loss if it’s constant.Your stomach hurts.This tends to be a more indirect symptom. EPI can cause excessive gas and bloating due to digestion issues, so your stomach may not feel great as a result. Your body’s difficulty absorbing fat can be a major reason for this symptom, Dr. Hart says.

If you have type 1 diabetes, you’ve probably fielded a lot of questions about what the condition is and isn’t—and what actually causes it. Are you simply just born with it? Is type 1 diabetes genetic?The thing is, when most people think about diabetes, they’re largely referring to type 2 diabetes. And it makes sense, since of the 34.2 million Americans with diabetes, 90% have type 2, and only about 1.6 million have type 1, according to the American Diabetes Association (ADA).While type 1 only accounts for about 5 to 10% of people living with diabetes—folks like singer Nick Jonas and Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court Sonia Sotomayor have it—there has been a recent uptick in cases. According to a 2020 report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there has been about a 30% increase in type 1 diagnoses in the United States, with numbers jumping from 1.25 million to 1.6 million. And rates among Black and Hispanic communities seem to have the sharpest increase.1We’ll get into what causes type 1 in a minute (yes, genes are a factor), but first, let’s talk about how type 1 and type 2 diabetes are different.What’s the difference between type 1 and type 2 diabetes?While both type 1 and type 2 diabetes occur when the pancreas can’t make enough insulin for what the body needs, this lack of insulin happens for very different reasons.“Insulin is a hormone that acts on many different organs in the body, helping them to use nutrients like glucose, fats, and proteins,” Laura C. Alonso, M.D., distinguished professor of medicine, chief of the Division of Endocrinology, Diabetes, and Metabolism, and director of the Weill Center for Metabolic Health, tells SELF.Type 1, which usually starts in childhood and is seen more often in those of European ancestry, is an autoimmune disease. “The body’s immune system kills the insulin-producing beta cells in the pancreas,” Siripoom McKay, M.D., an assistant professor of pediatrics-diabetes and endocrinology at Baylor College of Medicine and medical director of inpatient diabetes at Texas Children’s Hospital, tells SELF. “Losing the majority of beta cells requires insulin therapy to lower glucose levels.”Simply put, people with type 1 diabetes have to take insulin every day to stay alive. (Which is why having access to affordable insulin is so important).Type 2 diabetes, on the other hand, results from changes in the body that make it difficult for your pancreas to produce enough insulin, along with your body not using insulin efficiently (that’s called insulin resistance). As the disease progresses, people with type 2 diabetes may also have to take insulin, but there are a number of other medications and lifestyle changes that can help, too, according to the ADA.In both cases, the lack of insulin getting into the cells in the body is the hallmark of the disease. “When your body doesn’t make enough insulin, sugar builds up in the bloodstream, and over time that can damage your body,” says Dr. Alonso. If high blood sugar is untreated for months or years, it increases the risk of serious health problems like heart attack, stroke, kidney disease, blindness, and even amputations in severe cases.Is type 1 diabetes genetic?The short answer is yes, a family history of diabetes matters. In fact, more than 40 genetic regions (where genes are located on a chromosome) have been identified that are related to immune function and beta cells (i.e. the insulin gene), Aaron Cox, Ph.D., an instructor of medicine – diabetes, endocrinology, and metabolism at Baylor College of Medicine, tells SELF. This genetic predisposition is coupled with impaired function of the immune system and what’s called a “precipitating event”—anything that could cause beta cell stress like environmental factors (things like a typically “Western diet” and antibiotic use could contribute)2 or even an infection. “Ultimately, the immune system recognizes the body’s own proteins as foreign and proceeds to destroy the beta cells from which these ‘foreign’ proteins originate.”

People of certain races, including African Americans, Latinx, Native Americans, Pacific Islanders, and Asian Americans are also more likely to develop type 2 diabetes, although experts don’t fully understand all the reasons for this elevated risk.What are the signs of type 2 diabetes?Some signs of type 2 diabetes can be subtle, because the condition tends to develop slowly over time compared to type 1 diabetes, per the NIDDK. In fact, it may take several years for symptoms to pop up, so you may not realize you have the disease until it causes certain complications, like heart issues or blurry vision.While having just one on this list isn’t a surefire indicator of the condition, pay attention to whether you’re experiencing several of these, Hien Tran, M.D., an endocrinologist with Texas Diabetes and Endocrinology, tells SELF. Simply having a dry mouth on its own may not be enough to prompt a doctor’s appointment, for example, but if that sign is paired with other symptoms on this list and you also have any of the risk factors mentioned above, it may be worth getting checked out.Now, here are the type 2 diabetes symptoms to keep on your radar:1. You’re drinking a lot of water… and need to pee all the time.Having too much sugar in the blood is tough on the kidneys since those organs are responsible for processing that excess glucose, according to the Mayo Clinic. As a result, they work overtime to eliminate it from the body. As your body loses fluids, you may feel the signs of dehydration creeping in. So, you drink more fluids to make up for it, and the cycle of constantly peeing continues. That’s why frequent urination and increased thirst tend to be the two most common type 2 diabetes symptoms, particularly in the early stages.2. And you need to pee, like, right now.Despite peeing more often, you may also experience the strong need to go but very little—if any—comes out when you do, which is known as “urgency incontinence,” per the NIDDK. Although this is also a big head’s up that you might have a urinary tract infection, especially for people with vaginas, it’s also common with type 2 diabetes.3. Your mouth feels super dry.As we mentioned, when you pee more often, your chances of getting dehydrated go up, which will often kickstart your thirst response. With type 2 diabetes, the excess glucose in your system also takes fluid out of your tissues, making that thirst more ferocious. That can be exacerbated by having a dry mouth, and the feeling that you simply can’t drink enough water or other fluids to switch off that thirsty feeling.Dry mouth is characterized by feeling a lack of saliva often or most of the time, a dry, rough tongue, pain in the mouth, cracked lips, mouth sores or infections, and problems with chewing, swallowing, or even talking, per the NIDDK. Because of this, dry mouth can raise your risk for certain dental problems, like tooth decay and gum disease.4. You have weird changes in your vision.People with diabetes can also develop diabetic retinopathy, which is a condition that can cause damage to the retina (the thin, light-sensitive tissue that lines the inside surface of the back of your eyes) over time, according to the American Optometric Association. That’s because excess blood glucose damages all of the tiny blood vessels in your body, including those in your eyes. This is a problem because the eyes’ blood vessels will then break and leak fluids, resulting in complications like cloudy or blurry vision or difficulty focusing.If type 2 diabetes goes untreated, new blood vessels may form in your retina as a response—but because they’re so fresh, they’re more prone to leaking as well, causing the eye tissue to swell. Over time, if type 2 diabetes continues to go untreated, your risk of vision loss goes up.5. You can’t satisfy your hunger.Even if you have a big meal, you might walk away feeling hungry, the Mayo Clinic says. That’s because insulin resistance is preventing glucose from reaching your cells to give you the much-needed energy boost that food provides—so your brain and muscles keep sending hunger signals as a result.6. You feel tired (and cranky!) all the time.The blood sugar spike you experience after eating can cause major fatigue because the glucose isn’t being processed effectively in your body. Dehydration can also make you feel tired, the Mayo Clinic says, and so can trouble sleeping if your symptoms (like dry mouth or constantly needing to pee) are causing discomfort.