What is it?

Diabetes is a chronic metabolic disease that is characterized by the body’s inability to regulate glucose levels in the blood, due to low levels or low action of insulin. People with diabetes have hyperglycemia which is defined as blood glucose levels that are higher-than-normal.

The most common types of diabetes are Type I and Type II diabetes mellitus. Type 1 diabetes occurs when the pancreas produces no or very little insulin. Insulin helps blood sugar enter the cells in our body for use as energy. Without insulin, blood sugar can’t get into cells and builds up in the bloodstream. As a result, high blood sugar causes damage to the body and causes many of the symptoms and complications of diabetes. 

If you have type 2 diabetes, cells don’t respond normally to insulin; this is called insulin resistance. Your pancreas makes more insulin to try to get cells to respond. Eventually your pancreas can’t keep up, and your blood sugar rises, setting the stage for prediabetes and type 2 diabetes. High blood sugar is damaging to the body and can cause other serious health problems, such as heart disease, vision loss, and kidney disease

Even though people with diabetes are at a higher risk for sexual problems, a study in Diabetes Care found that only about half of all men with diabetes and around 19 percent of women with diabetes have broached the topic with a doctor

Some of the possible complications of Diabetes on sexual health in both men and women includes:

• Low libido, or sexual desire
• Sexual arousal disorder
• Erectile dysfunction
• Pain during sex
• Recurrent vaginal yeast infection and 
• Urinary tract infection