How Diabetes Can Take a Toll on Your Feet

Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes affect approximately 28.7 million women, men, and children in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). If you’re among that group, you not only have to start paying attention to your blood glucose levels, you must pay extra attention to your feet.

Diabetes is a metabolic disorder that affects the way your body either produces or uses the hormone insulin. You need insulin to transport dietary sugars in the bloodstream into your cells to give them energy. When you don’t have enough insulin, or if your body is resistant to insulin, the sugar remains in your blood.

At Modern Wellness Clinic, our team of expert providers specialize in diagnosing and treating all types of diabetes, including Type 1, Type 2, and gestational diabetes. We recommend regular diabetes checkups to monitor your blood sugar levels and to assess any possible complications.

Diabetes also affects the health of your feet. Here’s how:

Diabetes stiffens your blood vessels

Healthy blood vessels are elastic and unconstricted. When you have diabetes, however, the excess sugar in your blood vessels causes an inflammatory response. Over time, plaque builds up inside the vessels, which narrows their openings, so it’s harder for blood to pass easily through them. 

Also, the plaque buildup makes your veins and arteries stiff. When your blood vessels are stiff, they can’t push blood through as easily, which robs your body of the oxygen and nutrients that blood brings.

The veins in your feet are at increased risk

Your feet literally have to carry a heavy load: You. They must bear the stress of your entire body weight when you stand, walk, run, dance, or jump. 

The veins in your feet are not only stressed by body weight, they have to act against gravity. Their job is to remove toxins and push deoxygenated blood back up toward the heart and lungs so that it can be cleansed and infused with nutrient-rich oxygen. 

When the vessels are compromised by plaque and stiffness, they can’t do their job as well. When the arteries are also compromised, you have peripheral artery disease (PAD), which impairs circulation, detoxifying, and oxygenation.

Lack of oxygen-rich blood impairs your feet

When your feet don’t get enough oxygen and nutrients, the muscles, tendons, ligaments, nerves, and skin suffer. As your tissues degrade from lack of healthy circulation, you develop symptoms such as:

• Numbness or tingling
• Loss of sensation in feet
• Sores and ulcers
• Pain and cramps in legs and buttocks
• Change of shape of feet and toes
• Loss of hair on legs
• Dry, cracked skin on soles
• Thick, yellow toenails
• Fungal infections

The numbness and tingling you may feel in your feet is due to neuropathy, which is a sign that your nerves have been damaged.

In extreme cases, diabetes leads to foot amputation

When your blood vessels and nerves no longer work well in your feet, you may develop a condition known as gangrene, which is characterized by dead tissue. The only way to cure gangrene is to amputate the affected part, whether that’s a toe, a foot, or an entire limb.

In fact, the most common nontraumatic cause for foot amputation in the United States is diabetes. Amputation in diabetes often occurs because of PAD-related ulcers or wounds that don’t heal, or from an infection from a cut or wound that went unnoticed.

The combination of poor circulation and poor sensation increases the risk for amputation. When you have poor sensation, you may not even realize that you have a wound, cut, or ulcer. The laceration could progress to an infection without your noticing.

Your body also can’t heal wounds as rapidly or as well as it should because PAD restricts blood flow. That’s why paying attention to the health of your feet is extra important with diabetes. We recommend that you inspect your feet daily and contact us immediately if you notice a slow-healing or nonhealing wound or ulcer.

Keep your feet and body safe by getting the diabetic care you need today. Contact our helpful office staff by phone at 702-463-9159 or use our online booking form.