A diabetic patient faces complexities manyfold; among them, “diabetic foot” is a widespread complication for those who are struggling with diabetes. What diabetes does is that it increases blood sugar levels, and high blood sugar may cause neuropathy. Neuropathy harms or damages the nerve cells; as a result, you’ll hardly feel anything on your feet. Even a little bit of imbalance while caring for diabetic feet can lead to further severe complications. Hence people often look for diabetic foot care tips and solutions to protect their feet from possible infections.
To make your life easy, we have consulted with medical practitioners and experts and presented you with essential diabetic foot care tips to keep your feet healthy and happy. However, it is strongly advised to counsel the podiatrist if there are any severe symptoms.
Before exploring the diabetic foot care tips, let us show how diabetes can harm or significantly damage the feet of a diabetic patient.
How Can Diabetes Damage Feet?
High blood sugar can develop diabetic neuropathy, where one could barely feel anything on the feet or hands. As neuropathy can damage nerve cells of the feet, it can cause dry skin and change the skin colour of your feet. The dry skin of the feet can crack if neglected, which can also lead to infection.
Due to the damage to nerve cells, the shape of the feet can also change. As a result, your previously comfortable footwear may not fit further.
Diabetic Foot Care Tips
1. Don’t Walk on Bare Foot not Even at Home
Wearing customized shoes outside is a best practice for diabetes patients. However, using slippers or shoes at home is recommended too. It is advised not to remain barefoot even at home because it may expose your foot skin to germs, leading to severe disabling infection to the feet. You never know!
2. Clean Your Feet Daily
Don’t forget to clean your feet regularly. Use lukewarm water regularly for foot cleaning. Avoid hot water, and soak your feet for a long time. Otherwise, the vulnerable skin of the diabetic feet would become more fragile.
3. Keep Your Feet Dry
After cleaning the feet, make sure they are appropriately dried. Moisturizer can be applied on the top and bottom of the diabetic feet, except the toes area. Don’t forget to wipe off extra moisturizer if left between the toes; otherwise, it may create fungal infections.
4. Take Care During Exercise
Experts encourage diabetes patients to do low-impact excises as these kinds of activities keep their blood flow healthy. Morning and evening walks, indoor cycling, and yoga are good for diabetes patients. While doing exercise, wear diabetes-friendly shoes.
It is strongly recommended not to engage in such activities so that the feet have open sores—however, it’s best to consult your doctor about which workout will fit your body.
5. Wear dry, Clean Socks
Ensure the wearable socks are clean and dry. Otherwise, it would increase the risk of foot infection. It’s better to use diabetes socks to protect the feet from infection and keep them healthy.
6. Cut Nails Carefully
Don’t cut your toenails too short. Just do it straight across and use a nail file to smooth sharp edges around the nails. Avoid trimming toe corners because it may cause ingrowth of toenails, which is risky and quite painful for diabetic patients. If it seems challenging to trim nails properly, the podiatrist will definitely help you to cut nails carefully.
7. Never Use Tight Shoes
Shoes and socks are protective items best for dealing with diabetic feet. Diabetes patients are strongly discouraged from using tight footwear. Tight footwear congests the foot and toes inside the shoes, which can cause irritation, and other infections. Specialized diabetic footwear is available for diabetes patients, which is comfortable for walking outside and inside the home.
8. Control Your Diabetes
A diabetic patient must maintain a diet chart to combat diabetes. Along with maintaining a routine life, monitoring blood sugar levels is equally important to ensure if the diabetes point range is in the safe zone or not.
9. Keep the Blood Flowing
Doing minor foot work-out every day will keep the blood flow normal and healthy. Move your body daily for at least 30 minutes and do low-impact exercise to let the blood flow properly.
10. See Your Podiatrist for Regular Foot Exams
As a diabetic patient, no one should delay getting an appointment with the doctor while facing minor wounds on the legs or feet, like cuts, ingrown toenails, increasing pain or numbness, and other relatable issues.
11. Check Your Feet Everyday
Diabetes can cause severe damage to the nervous system, resulting in the loss of feeling in the feet even if there are scrapes, blisters, sores, or cracks in the feet. So, apart from following the aforementioned diabetic foot care tips, check up on your feet regularly and contact a podiatrist if the feet or toes show anything like cuts, redness, corns, or calluses.
Conclusion
Since no absolute medication can fully cure diabetes, maintaining a proper healthcare routine will allow diabetes patients to keep this disease under control. We hope the diabetic foot care tips mentioned in this post can help you maintain healthy feet.
FAQ:
Can diabetic foot be cured?
Diabetic foot cannot be cured entirely. However, it can be controlled if you maintain instruction with proper medication. If the blood sugar level remains within a safe range, it will play a significant part in this regard. Patients who significantly suffer from diabetic foot are mostly careless about their health care routine. So, if diabetic patients maintain healthy habits as the health care advisor instructed, they can easily control the diabetic foot.
What are the signs of diabetic feet?
Neuropathy can harm or damage the nerve cells of your feet, which we call diabetic feet. Signs of diabetic feet include changes in skin colour and temperature, calluses or corns, dry and cracked skin, open sores, ingrown toenails, and fungal infection on the feet.
Is walking good for diabetic foot pain?
Yes, walking is good and even recommended for diabetic foot pain. Wearing diabetic-friendly shoes, you can walk daily for at least 30 minutes in the morning. However, getting advice from a health care doctor would be best to find out more personalized advice.
