How Diabetes Affects Your Feet
Living with diabetes isn’t easy. There’s a lot on your plate, including keeping up with doctor’s appointments, remembering to take your medication, counting carbs during each meal, and measuring your blood sugar on a daily basis.
Elevated blood sugar levels, the hallmark of diabetes, damage blood vessels all over your body, disrupting blood flow, and making it harder for your tissues to heal. Diabetes stalls recovery, making minor injuries and infections a real health risk.
People suffering from diabetes develop nerve damage, which can cause numbness and loss of feeling in the feet. When you’re diabetic, your feet are at risk because you can get an injury or a fungal infection on your foot without knowing it.
Every 30 seconds, someone gets an amputation, and 85% of those amputations are caused by poorly controlled diabetes. At Caring Podiatry we provide complete comprehensive Diabetic foot care to our patients, and are experts in preventing amputations.
Preventing foot complications with diabetes
Blood sugar control should be your priority in preventing foot complications because elevated blood sugar damages organs, tissues, nerves, and blood vessels, especially those in your feet.
Diabetes occurs when the body can no longer keep up with the amount of sugar in your bloodstream, either because your pancreas doesn’t produce insulin anymore or because your cells no longer respond to insulin as they should.
Avoiding foods with a high glycemic index is key in managing diabetes, as these foods instantly spike your blood sugar levels and increase your need for medications. Meats, fats, and dairy have a very low glycemic index, as do many vegetables and fruits. Grains and sweets have the highest glycemic index.
While regulating your blood sugar levels, monitor your foot’s current state. Keep an eye out for cuts, fungal infections, swelling, and redness. If you notice any of these symptoms, our staff at Caring Podiatry can help you avoid complications.
Assessing the current health of your diabetic feet
Regular appointments with your podiatrist is an essential step you can take to ensure that your diabetes isn’t affecting your feet.
During a Diabetic Foot exam, our specialists at Caring Podiatry examine your skin, toenails, and reflexes, we are looking for issues with your blood vessels, nerves and foot structure.
Nerve damage, known as neuropathy, and poor circulation (blood flow) are the most common causes of diabetic foot problems. Neuropathy can make your feet feel numb or tingly. It can also cause a loss of feeling in your feet. So if you get a foot injury, like a callus or blister, or even a deep sore known as an ulcer, you may not even know it. Poor circulation in the foot can make it harder for you to fight foot infections and heal from injuries. If you have diabetes and get a foot ulcer or other injury, your body may not be able to heal it fast enough. This can lead to an infection, which can quickly become serious. If a foot infection is not treated right away, it can become so dangerous that your foot may need to be amputated to save your life.
Fortunately, regular diabetic foot exams, as well as home care, can help prevent serious foot health problems.
How diabetic foot problems are treated
Special footwear, customized to your needs and prescribed by our medical specialists, can help relieve pressure on your feet. Ulcers, infections, wounds, and fungus are treatable with topicals and oral medications to speed up healing. We routinely perform vascular and neurologic studies on our patients
When Diabetic problems are caught early, foot issues are easy to treat, especially when you have a firm grasp on your blood sugar numbers. If you’re looking to get expert advice about your feet, contact us to schedule an appointment.
