Diabetic Foot Care Is So Important
Being diagnosed with diabetes can change everything. This can mean adjusting your diet, exercising, and keeping up with medication to control the disease. If you or someone you love has been recently diagnosed, you may have heard that one essential part of your health care is managing your feet. It’s true—diabetes impacts your lower limbs and can limit or even take away much of your mobility and independence. That’s why diabetic foot care is vital.
Diabetic foot care helps you catch and take care of the problems that diabetes can create in your lower limbs. After all, it does a lot to your body. High blood sugar levels damage blood vessels, which weakens your immune system. This also injures nerves, organs, and even bones and other tissues. Controlling the disease is the only way to prevent these side effects from taking over.
Your feet are also affected. In fact, the constant pressure and strain to hold you up and move you around when you stand or walk can increase your injury risk. Your feet are far away from your heart and have weaker blood circulation than other areas of your body anyway. Diabetes just makes this worse, in addition to causing both numbness and nerve pain that can keep you from feeling real injuries.
Nerves that don’t function quite right give you high odds of injuring your foot or stepping on something and hurting yourself without even noticing. Because your circulation and immune system are slow and ineffective, they are unable to heal that damage. As you continue walking around, the injury gets worse. This is how you develop foot ulcers and diabetic foot collapse—which are both complications that could lead to life-threatening infections or a foot amputation.
Diabetic foot care is the only way to catch and prevent these terrible conditions that could cost you your mobility. Regular foot checks allow specialists like our team at The Kansas Foot Center to manage foot comfort and health. Daily foot inspections at home, along with good hygiene, can help you catch issues before they worsen. Wearing the right shoes and other healthy habits can save you from injuries.
When you’re newly diagnosed with diabetes, don’t take your foot care for granted—it could help save your life, or at least a limb. Contact The Kansas Foot Center’s office in Wichita for a consultation today. You can use our website or call (316) 283-4330 to reach us.