Tag Archives: diabetes

The Foot In Diabetes

Type two diabetes is now so common, it is almost as though we have become complacent about this. The incidence is rising in most places despite public health interventions are trying to take care of the obesity crisis that is supporting the diabetes issue. Diabetes has a number of complications which join collectively to put the feet at considerable risk from complications. These complications vary from a slight infection up to the more severe complications like a need to amputate a limb due to a spreading infection or dead tissue. The complications associated with all forms of diabetes have an impact on a wide variety of tissues within the body.
In terms of the foot, diabetes impacts the blood supply and therefore any problems for the foot is more prone to be serious because there is inadequate good circulation to permit healing to occur. Diabetes also damages the nerves, so that if there is some injury, either major or minor like a blister, then no pain is felt, so the foot continues to be traumatised resulting in the much more serious. The body has numerous functions to battle infection, but in diabetes the reaction to an infection is much more sluggish compared with those not having diabetes. Diabetes may also affect the eye and while the eyes are quite a distance from the feet, appropriate vision is required to see any problems that may have happened to the foot so it may be dealt with. Even the kidney disease that frequently occurs in diabetes impacts wound healing once the injury has been done and the presence of disease in the renal system may affect which drugs, for example antibiotics, may be used and sometimes that range can be very restricted.
It is for all these reasons, and many more not brought up, that those with diabetes have to take special care of their feet. They have to examine them routinely to make sure that there is no injury and if there is an injury they have to get medical attention promptly. Most importantly, they need to be regularly managed by a foot doctor.