image=freepick
[뉴스투데이=송대욱 전문기자] There are people who suffer from digestive problems after diabetes. It is easy to think that there must be some other reason rather than diabetes making the digestive problems worse. Gastrointestinal disorders are the most common complication of neuropathy caused by diabetes, especially autonomic neuropathy.
When you have diabetes, the blood sugar in your body rises. When the blood sugar in the body increases, sugar toxins, called final glycation products, are created, and when sugar toxins accumulate in our body, tissues and organs are degenerated. Glycated hemoglobin, which is used as an indicator of diabetes, tells us that red blood cells are degenerated by the accumulation of glycotoxins. Diabetes complications occur when these toxins build up in blood vessels, eyes, kidneys, and nerves.
One of the most common diabetes complications is diabetic neuropathy. It mainly occurs in the peripheral nerves. At first, the senses become hypersensitive, complaining of numbness, tingling, or tingling. Pain caused by abnormal sensations is more severe at night, and the characteristic of pain caused by blood clots is also night pain. Diabetic peripheral neuropathy progresses to insensitivity, and even when the foot is injured, it does not feel pain, so it becomes diabetic foot and the bone and muscle rot and amputate.
It is the most used content in scaring people with diabetes and preventing diabetes. You don’t have to worry so much if you keep your feet soft and dry while detoxifying sugar toxins and purifying your blood. If your feet become numb, it can be prevented by paying more attention than usual, cleaning your feet for 5 to 10 minutes, drying them gently, applying them moistly, and carefully examining them.
Diabetes complications are understood to be caused by contamination of blood, body fluids, tissues and organs by glucose toxins. In diabetic neuropathy, glucose toxin invades nerve endings and nerve cells lose their function. The nerves that sugar toxin damages are not limited to the peripheral nerves, but extend to the autonomic nerves.
The autonomic nerve is a nerve that regulates signals so that organs in our body can function automatically. It is a nerve that allows the body to move and control itself without being aware of it, such as breathing or heartbeat. After we chew food through our mouths and pass it down our throats, our autonomic nerves, hormones, and stomach take care of the rest.
The first disease that can be thought of as an autonomic neurological disorder is autonomic dysreflexia. Symptoms such as hot flashes, heart palpitations, chest tightness, dyspnea, indigestion, overactive bladder, and irritable bowel syndrome occur as the sympathetic nervous system is overactive due to stress and negative emotions. This is a phenomenon that occurs when the balance between the sympathetic and parasympathetic nerves of the autonomic nervous system is broken. Diabetic autonomic neuropathy is different.
The function of the nerve cells at the end of the autonomic nerve is damaged, causing the stomach to become immobile and paralyzed. A typical symptom is gastroparesis. Sometimes food is not expelled from the stomach and remains there. Gastroparesis presents with symptoms such as anorexia, nausea, vomiting, early satiety, and bloating. If esophageal dysfunction is accompanied by this, the symptoms of difficulty swallowing food will be added. It is seen as a symptom of indigestion or reflux esophagitis and tries to treat it, but it is difficult to see the desired effect. Therefore, it is classified as a complication of diabetes.
Another diabetic neuropathy is dysuria and sexual dysfunction appearing in the genitourinary system. Sensation of the bladder is reduced, so even when the bladder is full, the urge to urinate is not felt, and even after urinating, the symptoms are not completely excreted. Since the bladder cannot contract, the residual amount after excretion increases, so urine does not come out well, urinates less, and symptoms of urinary incontinence or urinary tract infection often occur. Erectile dysfunction in men or decreased libido and dyspareunia in women can also appear as diabetes and autonomic neurosis.
The problem is that it takes a long time to recognize that diabetes is the cause of gastrointestinal and genitourinary symptoms. If you have indigestion and indigestion, rather than trying to treat diabetes, try to solve it by taking digestive agents, gastrointestinal motility promoters, and gastrointestinal motility regulators, and try to treat symptoms in the genitourinary system by adding surgery or drugs, but if they do not get better, diabetic autonomic nerve thought to be due to illness.
It would be nice if chemical drugs were only beneficial and harmless, but looking at the background of drug development, we don’t think much about causing problems in other organs to alleviate symptoms. So it has more side effects than efficacy. It is a problem for both doctors and patients who think that they need to increase the amount of medicine they take whenever a new symptom arises.
The drugs used for diabetes are not a cure for diabetes. It is only a blood sugar regulator used for hyperglycemia. It functions to remove sugar from the blood. So, the most dangerous case is to increase the dose of the blood sugar regulator while eating a high-sugar diet. Presumably, this may be why diabetic complications occur more quickly and severely. If blood sugar raised by food is controlled with medication, glucose toxins accumulate in tissues and organs more quickly.
If you have diabetes and are accompanied by indigestion, irritable bowel syndrome, or urinary disorders, you should think about diabetes management first. It is time to live a life that reduces sugar toxins and purifies the blood. Not everyone’s blood sugar should be kept below 100 mg/dL on an empty stomach. It is believed that each person has a different sensitivity to blood sugar and the degree of damage is different, just as a person with diabetes develops symptoms of hypoglycemia when blood sugar is higher than normal. Depending on the constitution, the blood sugar control target should be different, and there may be a difference in the healthy life that must be followed. It’s largely the same, but the details are different, so constitutional life medicine will be needed.
◀Song Dae-wook Profile▶ Doctor of Oriental Medicine, Kyung Hee Korean Medicine Graduate School / Director, Deoksu Oriental Medicine Clinic / Director, Clinic Research Institute / MBTI Instructor / Developer of SnCi Sasang Constitutional Test Strip / Regular member of the Sasang Medical Association / Regular member of the Korean Fermentation Detoxification Society / Executive Director of the Seongjeong Sasang Medical Association