Identify Acromegaly In Early Stages To Prevent Serious Complications!

Acromegaly is a very rare hormonal disorder that usually develops when the pituitary gland produces excess growth hormone during adulthood.

Excess growth hormone mainly enlarges your bone size in your parts including hands, feet and face.

Usually, growth hormone mainly promotes the growth of bone, muscle and other tissues and organs of your body.

When this growth hormone is present in excess within your body, your body tissues grow larger than normal.

So, this excess growth potentially causes serious death and at times you can encounter premature death. In general, middle-aged adults get acromegaly.

In your children, who are still in their growing stages, excess secretion of growth hormone possibly leads to gigantism.

When is it possible to identify the changes in body tissues?

Development of acromegaly symptoms is often slow and also occurs progressively. It can be so gradual that the manifestations go unnoticed for several months, years or even decades.

Mostly, many of you fail to notice the changes in physical appearance. Even, it is not possible for your doctor to identify the changes initially.

People who are diagnosed with acromegaly have almost more chances to experience premature death, when compared with healthy persons.

Luckily, various treatment options are available to prevent serious complications associated with acromegaly. So, these are certain clues for you to identify the disease in early stages.

One of the most common signs of acromegaly is enlarged hands and feet. If you have excess growth hormone present in your body, you can notice that you can no longer put on your usual rings that used to fit earlier much easily. Even, you can notice that your shoe size is progressively increased.

Apart from enlarged hands and feet, you can notice these particular changes:

  1. Enlarged tongue
  2. Enlarged liver, chest, kidneys, heart, spleen and other organs of your body
  3. Irregularities of menstrual cycle in women
  4. Impaired vision, fatigue and severe muscle weakness
  5. Small out growths of your skin tissue and excessive sweating and bad body odor
  6. Headache, pain and restricted joint mobility

Is there any treatment available for acromegaly?

Usually, different combinations of treatment are needed to put the disease in control. More often one therapy at a time fails to give you effective results. Some of the effective therapies used in the treatment of acromegaly mainly include:

Radiation therapy: This is generally used to treat adenomas that are not cured by surgery or drug therapy.

When you don’t want to go for surgery because of other medical conditions, then you’ll be treated with radiation therapy.

Drug therapy: Drugs are generally used to normalize the excess levels of growth hormone in your body. Some drugs are used to block the production of growth hormone and other drugs are given to prevent the excess stimulation of growth hormone.

So, whenever you notice particular changes, consult your regular health care provider and get right treatment at right time. Regular health checkup also contributes greatly to prevent various health problems, including acromegaly.