IF you catch yourself feeling dizzy or faint when you stand up, you could be a risk of diabetes in the future, a new study suggests.
Dizziness can be triggered by neuropathy, a type of nerve damage that can occur if you have diabetes.
Hungarian researchers estimated that people at risk of type 2 diabetes are up to six times more likely to have neuropathy.
They also found that patients can show subtle signs of this damage years before their diabetes becomes fully developed.
Professor Anna Körei, from Semmelweis University, said: “Our aim is not just to identify individuals with carbohydrate metabolism disorders, but to detect those at risk as early as possible."
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The scientists claim their findings could be used to track signs of neuropathy in patients at risk of diabetes and then either slow or prevent the nerve damage from occurring.
Neuropathy is one of the long-term complications of diabetes.
High blood sugar levels associated with the disease can injure nerves throughout your body.
Over the long term, this can lead to nerve damage and different symptoms depending on the nerves affected.
It commonly results in peripheral neuropathy, which causes numbness, tingling, burning sensations, aching, cramps, and weakness in the feet and hands.
This condition can eventually spread to the entire limb.
More than five million Brits are thought to be living with diabetes, of which an estimated 850,000 are unaware they have the condition.
And two million Brits are believed to be at high risk of developing the disease in the next five years, according to Diabetes UK.
New research from the charity found that diagnoses of type 2 diabetes have risen at an alarming rate in people under 40, scientists say.
The study, published in the journal Frontiers in Endocrinology, looked at signs of neuropathy in people with normal blood sugar levels who had a higher risk of developing diabetes.
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Those most likely to develop the condition have known diabetes risk factors, such as being overweight or older.
They compared the health test results of 44 people at high risk of developing diabetes and 28 healthy controls.
The participants had their heartbeat measured and tested on how their bodies reacted to sensations such as aching, burning pain, and numbness.
They found people at increased risk of diabetes had 5.9 higher odds of having a type called parasympathetic neuropathy when compared to healthy people.
There is no cure for neuropathy linked to diabetes, however drugs are available to combat the symptoms it causes.
