Watch for Depression When You’re Diagnosed with Diabetes

Whether you were diagnosed with diabetes just recently as an adult or many years ago as a child, the side effects of diabetes are most likely still hitting you. These effects can strike every diabetic differently.

Some may have it worse for certain symptoms, some may have it better, and some may not experience them at all. One of the undeniable symptoms of diabetes is depression. While it doesn’t happen to every diabetic, many are in shock when diagnosed with diabetes, often developing some form of depression or depression like symptoms afterwards.

While these are harmful for all people, they can affect diabetics even worse due to a few common side effects. For example, those affected by depression often experience dramatic changes in their eating habits.

While some may begin to eat way more than they used to, others may experience the opposite, eating way less. These can both be very dangerous for diabetics who have to keep a consistent and well balanced diet.

Eating too little will result in you not getting enough nutrients like glucose, and when your body doesn’t get the nutrients it needs, you’ll end up having a worse immune system and the effects of diabetes can become further exaggerated.

This means you’ll be more prone to infections, disease, and more. On the flip side, eating too much, especially when you begin eating things like comfort foods, can raise your blood sugar numbers to dangerous levels.

Since your body cannot properly handle the sugar in your blood, it will continue to harm your system. This also exaggerates the symptoms of diabetes in that you’ll have increased levels of nerve damage and higher risk of heart attack or stroke.

Diabetes and depression form a harmful and vicious cycle that feeds upon itself. When you’re diagnosed with diabetes, you become depressed. When you’re depressed, the effects of diabetes get worse.

When the effects get worse, you get depressed, and when you get depressed, the effects get even worse, and so on. If you allow this cycle to continue without doing anything to change it, it can be fatal.

In order to break this dangerous cycle, you’ll need to learn to curb the effects of your diabetes and learn how to cope with it strategically. Everyone copes with diabetes differently, but you need to make sure you cope with it in a safe way that doesn’t hurt you or those around you.