A nurse I work with told me that she can spot a type 1 diabetic because they have waxy looking skin and little color in their face. I can't decide whether that is true of me or not, but my type 1 son does have a pale looking face.
Anyone else notice this?
She obviously based her opinion purely on my profile picture :-)
LOL, good one Tim.
I once had an older phlebotomist at my doctor's office look at the bloodwork paperwork and note that the doc wanted an A1C run on me (well, duh, I've been T1 for a third of a century) and she re-assured me "Oh, I see the doc wants an A1C run, but don't you worry dearie. I can tell just by looking at you that you aren't diabetic."
Hmm, wonder where the truth lies? Or as the saying goes, beauty (diabetes) is in the eye of the beholder?
There are 5 type I's in my family, and all of us are white people...but I wouldn't say any of us looks pale in the face except for when we have too low or too high blood-sugars. And same goes for the waxy looking skin. When I am running very high (which was a LOT when I was younger) my skin tends to get "waxy" looking. I aways thought it was from dehydration.
WOW, I thought I had head all of them after 31 years. But this is a new one to me. I take pride in my complexion. It's not "waxy" at all nor is it pale. Unless it's February and I haven't seen the sun for weeks.
Honestly, in my opinion, there are absolutely no physical signs of diabetes.
There are actually 2 physical signs of diabetes: wearing a pump on your belt, having a CGM on your belt.
Actually I think there are other signs like drops of blood over clothing and funny little test strips stuck to everything.
Yep at one time I don't believe I had a single shirt that did not have little red dots all over the mid section.
I have never heard that. I have beautiful skin, people compliment my skin all the time. I'm very fair and I often get very pale when I'm going low, but it has to be in the 50's by then. When I was going into dka I noticed I was getting something like freckling on my skin which I haven't had for years, no waxyness.
I agree, my wife and some of my long time employees can spot my low BG by how pale my face gets at times. 99% of the time they are right.
I brought my wife with me once to an endo appointment and she actually asked the endo to tell me to stop injecting through my clothes because it left blood stains on my t-shirts. My endo looked at me and said, quite tongue in cheek, don't inject through your clothes.