Foot health isn’t something most people think about on a daily basis. Unless there’s severe foot pain, there’s really no reason to think about your feet. However, things are totally different for people who suffer from diabetes. There are believed to be around 30 million people living with diabetes, and all of them are susceptible to diabetic foot problems. To avoid further complications, those suffering from diabetes need to employ several safeguards for diabetic foot care to make sure the disease doesn’t adversely affect their feet. This article looks at 5 important tips for diabetic foot care.
- Have Your Feet Examined: To make sure diabetes doesn’t have a negative impact on your feet, it’s important to have your feet regularly examined by a foot and ankle specialist. Specialists can examine the whole foot and determine if there are any problems developing and hopefully catch problems that do develop early enough to keep them from becoming serious.
- Don’t Smoke: It might not seem like there’s a connection between smoking and diabetes but there really is. The thing with diabetes is, it can affect the flow of blood to the feet, making it easier for infections to develop if the skin is broken by a scrape or injury. Smoking can also affect the flow of blood to the feet, which would only compound the issue. So it’s important to not smoke if you have diabetes.
- Always Wear Socks or Shoes: Since diabetes makes your feet more susceptible to infection from cuts and scrapes, it’s vitally important to always wear socks or shoes whenever possible. Walking around barefoot, even at home, can be dangerous because you’re at risk of injuring your feet from something sharp and causing an infection.
- Check Your Feet on a Daily Basis: Aside from having your feet periodically examined by a podiatrist, it is also important to check your feet yourself on a daily basis. This mostly consists of inspecting your feet to make sure there aren’t any cuts or scrapes and that an infection isn’t developing. You also want to make sure your feet aren’t swelling, which could be a sign of a problem.
- Keep Your Diabetes Under Control: This last tip is probably the most important. The best way to help with diabetic foot care is to keep your diabetes under control. The better you can manage your blood sugar levels, the less likely it will be that your feet will be affected by the disease.
In conclusion, there are a number of important tips that you should follow to help with diabetic foot care. These include, but are not limited to, having a foot doctor regularly examine your feet, avoiding smoking, keeping your feet covered, performing daily foot checks, and keeping your diabetes under control. By following all of these steps, you should be able to keep your feet in good shape.