Diabetes Respiratory System

Is there a direct relationship between diabetes and the respiratory system? Do you think that an autoimmune disease could affect the way a person breaths? Could it cause a specific breathing pattern? These are questions that people may not give much thought to especially if they are not studying respiratory however, giving thought to these questions may help to inform patients and people who are diagnosed with diabetes how their disease could affect the way they breath in certain situations.

Subjects and Methods

“Diabetes Mellitus is considered as a metabolic disorder of multiple etiologies (genetic and environmental) (1)”. With diabetes there are different types such as, type 1, type 2, and gestational diabetes. Type 1 is caused by “insulin

When mixing the two together for example, a diabetic patient having respiratory issues, different situations could potentially become more serious than if a non-diabetic patient contracted a respiratory problem. In the beginning the question was asked whether or not diabetes could affect the respiratory system. The answer to that question is, yes. Diabetes can affect the respiratory system in a number of ways. Diabetes can affect your breathing pattern when in Ketoacidosis, it can alter the results of a Pulmonary function test (PFT), and statistics show that diabetes can make a patient a higher risk for certain respiratory infections such as tuberculosis, asthma, COPD, and hospitalized pneumonia. There are many different types of breathing patterns that respiratory therapist would classify as normal and abnormal. A specific abnormal breath sound that would be seen in a patient who was in diabetic ketoacidosis (DKA) would be called kussmaul breath sound (3). This particular breath sound would be characterized as a deep and fast respiration rate because of the metabolic acidosis (2). With pulmonary function of the lungs recent studies have shown, “significant reduction in pulmonary functions among the diabetic and non-diabetic smokers and non-smokers, which revealed significant impact of diabetes on pulmonary function independent of smoking(4)”. This shows that

With diabetes, the disease itself has enough to keep a patient busy with management of the condition. The constant blood glucose checks, appropriate diet management, and variation in medication and doses to keep blood glucose levels within an appropriate range is enough stress to keep someone busy. When adding in a respiratory issue on top of all of that, that is a whole other situation in itself that needs to be monitored and kept up with to keep a patient from declining too fast. That is why adhering to those specific measures could help someone managing their diabetes and their respiratory issues better so that other sever complications may not arise. Just because someone has diabetes does not necessarily mean they will develop a respiratory problem, but smoking and not taking proper care of their self could make it more likely to become a problem. The best thing to do is not smoke, diabetic or not, and to monitor diabetes as closely as can and a healthier life is what will be