Your Feet and Diabetes

About half of all people with diabetes have some kind of nerve damage. Nerves in your feet and legs are most often affected. Nerve damage can cause you to lose feeling in your feet. Some people with nerve damage have numbness, tingling, or pain. Others have no symptoms. Nerve damage can also lower your ability to feel pain, heat, or cold. Pain is the body’s way of telling you something’s wrong so you can take care of yourself. If you don’t feel pain in your feet, you may not notice a cut, blister, sore, or other problem. Small problems can become serious if they aren’t treated early.

Anyone with diabetes can develop nerve damage, but these factors increase your risk:

• Blood sugar levels that are hard to manage.
• Having diabetes for a long time, especially if your blood sugar is often higher than your target levels.
• Having overweight.
• Being older than 40 years.
• Having high blood pressure.
• Having high cholesterol.

Nerve damage and poor blood flow—another diabetes complication—put you at risk for developing a foot ulcer (a sore or wound). With diabetes, a foot ulcer could get infected and not heal well. If an infection doesn't get better with treatment, your toe, foot, or leg may need to be amputated (removed by surgery). This is done to prevent the infection from spreading and to save your life.

Check your feet daily

When you check your feet every day, you can catch problems early and get them treated right away. Early treatment greatly lowers your risk of amputation.

Prevent or delay nerve damage

Keep your blood sugar in your target range as much as possible. This is one of the most important things you can do to prevent nerve damage or stop it from getting worse. Other good diabetes management habits can help, too:

• Don't smoke. Smoking reduces blood flow to the feet.
• Follow a healthy eating plan.
• Get physically active—10 to 20 minutes a day is better than an hour once a week. And both are better than none!
• Take medicines as prescribed by your doctor.

If you have any of these symptoms, don't wait for your next appointment. See your regular doctor or foot doctor right away:

• Pain in your legs or cramping in your buttocks, thighs, or calves during physical activity.
• Tingling, burning, or pain in your feet.
• Loss of sense of touch or ability to feel heat or cold very well.
• A change in the shape of your feet over time.
• Loss of hair on your toes, feet, and lower legs.
• Dry, cracked skin on your feet.
• A change in the color and temperature of your feet.
• Thickened, yellow toenails.
• Fungus infections such as athlete's foot between your toes.
• A blister, sore, ulcer, infected corn, or ingrown toenail.

Most people with diabetes can prevent serious foot complications. Regular care at home and going to all doctor's appointments are your best bet. Doing both will help you prevent foot problems (and stop small problems from becoming serious ones). Source