Because diabetes can cause you to definitely lose sensation in your feet, you might have a foot injury and never know it. One of the very common complications of diabetes is peripheral neuropathy, which in turn causes pain or loss of sensation in your hands and feet. When you have peripheral neuropathy - which usually begins in the longest nerves, like the ones that reach to your toes - sensory information relayed from your nerves to your brain doesn't get transmitted.
This means that thoughts for example "My feet are cold" and "Ouch - I burned my finger" don't actually register in your brain. This type of loss of feeling in your feet makes them less responsive to pain, heat, and cold, and you may experience numbness, tingling, burning, or stabbing sensations. Thus, you can have a foot injury and not realize it.
Birgitta Rice, a foot care specialist, explained quite a amazing story: "I once saw someone who had walked around all day long with a model toy in his shoe coupled with no clue. He told me that when he put his shoe on that morning it felt a little odd, so he adjusted his sock. That night when he took his shoe off, the toy fell out. He hadn't felt it whatsoever!" Lots of people walk barefoot on hot sand and burn their feet. Still others have walked around having a staple, tack, or nail that has gone right through their shoe and their foot, without knowing it's there.
Kathleen shared with me her story of unknowingly stepping on a staple eight in years past, an injury that led her to some wound clinic and, months later, necessitated the amputation of her big toe. "It was nine o'clock at night and the doorbell rang. I got up in the sofa and walked across the living room floor to reply to the door. It was a pizza delivery - also it was for my upstairs neighbor!" Kathleen had no clue she'd stepped on the staple during her walk to reply to the doorway until that night when she took off her sock and saw the blood.
If you lose sensation in your feet, you can easily develop a foot ulcer, and also the more you find out about foot ulcers, the more you want to make sure you never get one. A foot ulcer is really a breakdown from the top layer of your skin and it is the foot injury that most commonly leads to amputation.
A foot ulcer first appears as an open sore on your foot, and, if it's not treated, an infection can make its way into the tissue of your foot and then the bone. If you've lost feeling in your foot, you can walk around with a deep ulcer and never know it. The most common risk factors for ulcers are diabetic neuropathy and structural foot deformities.
The good thing is that, as in anything else involved in diabetes, an ounce of prevention may be worth a pound of cure: If you are at risk for foot ulcers, practice good foot hygiene, including proper nail care and wearing protective footwear to reduce the risk of injury, be responsible for a foot ulcer. If you detect a foot ulcer early, you can usually heal it with antibiotic cream, but foot specialist Rice advises that you check with your doctor before doing anything on your own.
Even a blister from wearing a shoe that you cannot feel is too tight, if not treated, can result in an infection. Blisters can easily turn into foot ulcers. Podiatrist Dr. Joseph Stuto points out that being diabetic puts you in danger of foot problems due to poor circulation, and your autoimmune system can also be compromised to address infection. "It doesn't mean you are going to are having issues," says Stuto, "but the better you keep your blood sugar, cholesterol, and blood pressure level, the better you're going to do."
If your feet lose feeling, they are also at risk for deformity. This can come from an infected foot ulcer or open sore, a change in the arch of your foot in the normal pressure every day walking, neuropathy, or muscle loss that plays a role in the breakdown of bones in your foot, causing a bone condition called Charcot foot.
This really is one of the most serious foot problems associated with diabetes, wherein the foot becomes misaligned and deformed as a consequence of deficiencies in nerve stimulation, and muscles that can no longer offer the foot properly. It makes sense that bones fracture and disintegrate. Charcot foot is so severe that it may change the entire form of your foot, but because your foot doesn't hurt, you may still walk onto it, worsening the problem.
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