It is very common for people with diabetes to suffer from foot pain. You may know someone who has lost a foot, toe or even leg to diabetes and you may be worried that the same might happen to you. However, there are ways that you can minimise the chances of this happening. You will find out how to keep your feet healthy below, but first, let’s have a look at how diabetes can affect your feet.
How can diabetes cause foot pain?
Over time, diabetes can cause something called diabetic neuropathy. This condition causes nerve damage which may result in pain and tingling in the feet. You can also lose all feeling in your feet. When you have lost feeling in your feet, you may not notice a blister on your foot, this can then lead to sores and cuts and these can become infected.
Over time, these infected cuts and sores can lead to gangrene and ulcers. If these are not dealt with, it can lead to amputation. Amputation is done to avoid the infection spreading to the rest of your body and to save your life. Practising good foot care is very important to prevent these serious infections and ultimately gangrene.
Diabetes is also capable of lowering the blood flow to your foot. Not having enough blood flow to your feet can make it hard for a cut or a sore to heal. This will once again lead to infection and may once again lead to amputation. So, let’s have a look at a few simple ways to prevent infection and how you can keep your feet healthy.
How to keep your feet healthy
A good way to keep your feet healthy if you have diabetes is by creating a diabetes self-care plan. This is an action plan that you make with your health care team to help you manage the condition. This plan should include foot care, if it does, you are likely to have a foot doctor on the health care team. The foot doctor will be able to give you regular check-ups, but they will also be able to give you tips and tricks to help keep your feet healthy every day. These tips can include checking your feet every day to make sure that you have not cut them and if you have they will give you tips on how to dress the wound to stop infection.
The foot doctor on your health care team should also tell you to wash your feet every day; this is important to keep your feet clean and keep infection at bay. They may also recommend that you trim your toenails regularly and in the right way, learning the right way of trimming them will mean that you avoid breaking the skin and infection later on.
If you haven’t spoken to a foot doctor about your diabetes and how to stop infections on your feet, we urge you to do so. It isn’t difficult to keep your feet healthy once you know what to do and it may just save your life. Speak with a foot doctor today to keep your diabetes at bay!