Diabetic personality changes and disorder?

QUESTION: Does Diabetes cause patient's personality to change or cause person to be agitated?

ANSWER: Yes, it does. Why?

When you have diabetes, your blood sugar balance is impaired. And, you will run into oscillations, sometimes your blood sugar will raise up and you will feel dizzy, uncomfortable, with a feeling of being hot, etc.

Some other times, you will experience low blood sugar (especially when you administer insulin or have your diabetic pills). So, you will feel tired, or faint, or shaking, etc.

As a consequence, during this up and down blood sugar, your brain is not having the glucose it needs for normal activity.

Therefore, it will respond with altered activity (that you call diabetes personality changes or mental disorder) that you experience like agitation or personality changes.

That is why, diabetics are recommended to strictly control their blood glucose (especially after meals, in between meals or after having their diabetes medication).

Once the blood sugar gets stabilized, everything will be back to normal again. However, in cases when the blood sugar changes will be consistent, the personality changes will also consistently occur.

All the best!

Dr.Alba

Mood changes - Type 1 Diabetes Side Effect?

by Mira
(Australia)

QUESTION: What happens when someone diagnosed with type 1 diabetes, suffer from mood changes :sometimes happy, then other times very angry?

What happens that make the mood to change so often? Is there anything to do to help?


ANSWER: Hi Mira,

Type 1 diabetics have imbalanced blood glucose levels, which make our body cells thrive for energy, especially when it comes to brain cells that utilize only glucose for normal living.

At this point, we can address the mood swings to these imbalance blood sugar levels (sometimes low, other times high, or because of ketoacidosis, a really serious condition; or even diabetes drugs).

Another aspect is related to the psychological and emotional changes of one person just being diagnosed with diabetes.

As type i diabetes mostly occurs in youngsters (particularly children); they will start losing their self-estimation, or will think that they are being punished for not to listen or doing "bad" "childish" things.

Therefore, it is very important that parents or close relatives must "sweetly" work with them in order to make them understand they are not the culprit for their disease. Please try to make them feel that this is a big "exam" for them to learn and fight with all their strength.

The same comfort approaches should be applied to adult just diagnosed diabetics; so, they won't be discouraged to fight and do the right things. You are giving them hope (that really exist) although the huge challenges they would have to face.

All the best!

Dr.Alba

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