Diagnostics: diseases — симптомы, диагностика и лечение

Arterial hypertension is a persistent increase in blood pressure from 140/90 mmHg. Art. and higher. It is the most common chronic disease in the world and a leading cause of strokes, heart attacks and kidney failure. The insidiousness of hypertension is that for many years it does not give any sensations: a person feels normal with a pressure of 160/100 and learns about the disease after a vascular accident. That is why it is called the “silent killer”, and the only way to detect it is to regularly measure your blood pressure, and not wait for symptoms.

Type 2 diabetes is a disease in which cells stop responding normally to insulin and glucose accumulates in the blood. It accounts for the vast majority of all cases of diabetes. Its main feature is its long asymptomatic course: the disease develops over years, and by the time the diagnosis is made, some patients already have complications from the eyes, kidneys and nerves. The good news is that type 2 diabetes is well controlled, and in the early stages, lifestyle changes can bring your levels back to normal.

Iron deficiency anemia is the most common deficiency condition in the world and is most common in women of childbearing age, pregnant women and adolescents. The main thing to understand right away is that hemoglobin is the last to fall. First, the body uses up iron reserves in the depot, and the person lives for months with hair loss, brittle nails, shortness of breath on the stairs and constant fatigue, and the hemoglobin in the blood test is still “normal.” The indicator that detects this stage is ferritin, and it is this indicator that is most often forgotten to be prescribed. Therefore, the usual phrase “my hemoglobin is 125, which means everything is fine with iron” sounds convincing, but in fact does not prove anything.

Hypothyroidism is a condition in which the thyroid gland does not produce enough hormones. Since these hormones regulate the metabolic rate in almost all tissues, the symptoms are very varied and nonspecific: fatigue, chilliness, weight gain, dry skin, hair loss, constipation, depression. It is because of its nonspecificity that hypothyroidism has been attributed for years to age, overwork, or depression. At the same time, diagnosis is extremely simple - one blood test for TSH is enough, and treatment consists of taking one tablet daily.

The phrase “I have high cholesterol” sounds like a death sentence, although cholesterol itself is not poison or metabolic waste. It is a building material for cell membranes, bile acids, vitamin D and sex hormones, and the body is so interested in it that it produces it itself, regardless of food. The problem is not cholesterol per se, but the carriers in which it travels through the blood: low-density lipoproteins leave it in the artery wall, high-density lipoproteins take it back. Therefore, one general indicator says almost nothing, and the decision on treatment is made not according to the line of analysis, but according to the total risk of heart attack and stroke in the coming years - taking into account age, blood pressure, smoking, sugar and heredity.

Metabolic syndrome is not a single disease, but a combination of several disorders, each of which individually looks modest, but together they greatly increase the risk of heart attack, stroke and diabetes. The diagnosis is simple: three out of five signs are needed, and almost all of them are measured with a measuring tape, a blood pressure monitor and one blood test. But the most important thing in this topic sounds optimistic and, unfortunately, rarely reaches people: at the stage of prediabetes, the process is reversible. It does not “slow down”, it is not “compensated for by pills”, but it is reversed - and for this you do not need to lose weight to your ideal weight, it is enough to reduce your body weight by about a seventh and start walking regularly.