What is DKA?

On the web seems really technical.

When your cells don’t get the glucose they need for energy (because Insulin is lacking to open up the cells, to allow the sugar inside), the body begins to burn fat for energy. This burning of fat produces ketones. Ketones are chemicals (bi-product) that the body creates when it breaks down fat to use for energy. When ketones build up in the blood, they make it more acidic.

High levels of ketones in the blood stream can poison the body. When levels get too high, you can develop Diabetic ketoacidosis (DKA).

So basically, it’s when the cells doesn’t have the glucose they needs, the body burns fat, as a result ketones are produced, which poison the body. Enough ketones can make you very ill, or kill you.

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Are you a teacher? If not, you missed your true calling in life! :wink::grinning:

And all too often, DKA is only detected when it leads to coma.

hehe. Nope, just finished up “Think Like a Pancreas” and he broke it down really well for me. :stuck_out_tongue:

I plan to only read about it and NOT experience it. My impression is that it is more common in Type 1 because our numbers are often more mercurial than our Type 2 brothers and sisters. Also, because all of us T1s (and some T2s) are in charge of the surplus or lack of synthetic insulin in our bodies–there are many ways to interrupt the flow of insulin and not notice it for a while.

I remember being at a medical appointment once and trying to read a bulletin board in the waiting room. (This is when I had a pump but was out of sensors for my CGM). “Man, I really need to get my eyes checked. These glasses suck.”

Then it hit me: there’s another way to get blurry vision without having the wrong prescription. I was 400 something and my infusion set was messed up. For those of us pumping, two or three hours without insulin is bad, because our pump is supplying both our mealtime and background insulin.

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I would also add to what has been said above that DKA is typically a “runaway” process. Your body (lacking insulin) needs energy, screams high levels of hormones (particularly glucagon) out to your liver that both glucose and ketones are needed. Unfortunately without insulin your body cannot take up glucose and ketones uptake is inherently limited. As a result our bodies overproduce ketones and glucose, resulting in high levels of acidic ketones and a dramatic and alarming increase in blood glucose. Also associated with high levels of ketones and glucose in our blood, water (and associated electrolytes) is drawn into our blood and we excrete urine at an accelerated rate. This leads to dehydration which further complicates the issue, low levels of electrolytes make you extremely insulin resistant (guaranteeing that what little insulin you have on board doesn’t work well) and further concentrating toxins in our blood.

The way to counteract DKA is to restore high enough insulin levels to suppress the liver from overproducing and to counteract the dehydration, not just with plain water, but with water with electrolytes. You should do this at home at the first sign of DKA, but you need to understand that when DKA get’s into a “runaway state” you need to be in the ER.

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