Diabetis, dry cough and swollen legs

My mother is 63 years old and she is diabetic. She has blood pressure. Whenever she takes diabetis medicine she suffers from dry cough. She coughs continuously for long and gets swelling in her glands. But if she stops the diabetis medicines her coughing stops but sugar level goes high.She takes medicine for coughing along with diabetis medicines but it does not cure

Please can some one let me know are the two interrelated?What could be the remedy for this? Does my Mother needs to do alergy (allergy) test? Also sometime my mothers gets pain in her legs and her feet swells and she gets burning sensation in her feet nails? What could be the cure for this?

Help Please with suggestions!

[JDRF-Team-dm]

Dear Sun71,

Thank you for contacting the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation. None of us are physicians and cannot give medical advice. I can share my own experience as a volunteer and being the mother of a child who has had type 1 diabetes for many years.

Because you stated that your mother is taking diabetes medicine I am assumming that she has type 2 diabetes. I am not as familiar with type 2 meds as I am with insulin (which people with type 1 must take). This is something that I would recommend discussing immediately with her doctor. Maybe they could try her on a different med (a dry cough and swelling of her glands cannot be good) but I do know that stopping her medicine and developing high blood sugars is dangerous both short term and down the road because of complications.

You say that she is feeling pain in her legs. There is a common complication called neuropathy and can happen with both type 1 and type 2 diabetes. This is usually caused by running high blood sugars for a prolonged time and is nerve damage that can cause pain, numbness or tingling in the legs and feet. You may want to look at a website from the University of Maryland Medicine that has very helpful information on it. I have found it very useful myself. It is at www.umm.edu/diabetes.info/nerve.htm.

Please talk to her doctor about both of these problems and they should be able to help.

I wish your mother the very best and good luck.

dm

[JDRF-Team-LRS]

Another volunteer here.

A dry cough is a common side effect of some blood pressure medicines (ACE inhibitor category).  Best to discuss this with the doctor, since there are MANY different types of BP meds.