People with diabetes may experience frequent diarrhea due to: Autonomic neuropathy: Over time, people with diabetes may develop neuropathy from high blood sugar levels. Neuropathy can lead to problems with how food and fluids travel through the colon. It also affects how your digestive system functions overall.
This is known as “diabetic diarrhea.” Diabetic diarrhea could occur due to your medication for type 2 diabetes, the foods you eat, or complications. Diabetes-related diarrhea may last several weeks to months, and you may also experience fecal incontinence.
High blood sugar levels can damage blood vessels in many tissues in your body, including the intestinal wall tissues that support digestion. When the intestinal wall is damaged, the body has trouble digesting food, which directly affects proper stool formation.
The management can be difficult but many therapies, including antibiotics to eradicate bacterial overgrowth, as well as antidiarrheal agents, oral and topical clonidine, and somatostatin analogues may be effective in controlling diabetic diarrhea.
People with diabetes may experience frequent diarrhea due to: Autonomic neuropathy: Over time, people with diabetes may develop neuropathy from high blood sugar levels. Neuropathy can lead to problems with how food and fluids travel through the colon. It also affects how your digestive system functions overall.
But that doesn't mean abdominal weight gain should be ignored. It can be an early sign of so-called "diabetic belly," a build-up of visceral fat in your abdomen which may be a symptom of type 2 diabetes and can increase your chances of developing other serious medical conditions.
They found that lower gastrointestinal symptoms – including constipation, diarrhea, abdominal pain, bloating, intestinal gas, and floating stools – were much more common in the individuals with diabetes, especially diarrhea and constipation, which were twice as likely in those with diabetes.
Summary. Diabetic gastroparesis prevents the stomach from emptying its contents at a normal speed, causing a variety of symptoms, including abdominal pain, nausea, vomiting, and feelings of fullness early during a meal.
But over time, high blood sugar can damage the tiny blood vessels and nerves in your body, including your digestive system. A speed-up or slow-down of the process in your intestines could result in diarrhea or constipation. Diabetes medications, certain foods, and related illnesses can cause diarrhea, too.
Some sugars and artificial sweeteners can have a laxative effect. Fructose is a component of table sugar and occurs naturally in fruits. The body can only digest a certain amount of fructose at one time. Consuming more fructose than the body may cause diarrhea.
Using bismuth subsalicylate together with insulin or certain other diabetes medications may increase the risk of hypoglycemia, or low blood sugar.
Diagnosis. Blood sugar levels that occur during a diabetic coma include: Blood sugar that is higher than 300 mg/dL two times in a row for no reason. Blood sugar that is low, less than 70 mg/dL, and the numbers don't increase after three treatments.
Warning signs and action
If a person experiences a fever, pain, and swelling in any part of their body, they should seek medical advice. An infection can become rapidly become serious when a person has diabetes.
The following can cause loose stools or make them worse. Sugar. Sugars stimulate the gut to put out water and electrolytes, which loosen bowel movements. If you ingest a lot of sugar, you may develop diarrhea.
Likewise, the bowel is impacted (no pun intended) by a diabetic condition known as diabetic enteropathy. Constipation alternating with diarrhea is a common symptom, along with large bowel dysfunction. Diarrhea may be associated with bowel incontinence and often occurs at night.
Gastrointestinal symptoms occur commonly in people with diabetes, and include gastro-esophageal reflux, bloating, nausea, constipation, diarrhea and fecal incontinence.
And -- as odd as it may seem -- it also plays a critical role in protecting blood vessels from the complications of diabetes. Hydrogen sulfide is a foul-smelling gas with an odor resembling that of rotten eggs.
A: Health care professionals can't diagnose gastroparesis based on symptoms alone. A gastric emptying study—using gastric emptying scintigraphy, a gastric emptying breath test, or a wireless motility capsule—is necessary to determine whether the stomach empties normally, slowly, or rapidly.
Dumping syndrome is a group of symptoms, such as diarrhea, nausea, and feeling light-headed or tired after a meal, that are caused by rapid gastric emptying. Rapid gastric emptying is a condition in which food moves too quickly from your stomach to your duodenum.
Some sugar can be stored in the muscles and liver; however, most sugars are stored as fat when they have nowhere else to go. Thus, people with diabetes are more likely to be overweight or obese than those without the disease. While weight gain is one of the most common side effects of diabetes, it is not inevitable.
Prediabetes doesn't usually have any signs or symptoms. One possible sign of prediabetes is darkened skin on certain parts of the body. Affected areas can include the neck, armpits and groin.