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Diabetes Awareness Month: How Diabetes Can Affect Your Feet

Diabetes can reduce blood flow and damage nerves, making wounds more likely to get infected and harder to heal, which can increase the risk of amputation.

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

Good diabetes management habits may include:

• Check your feet every day. Use a mirror if you can’t see the bottom of your feet or ask a family member to help.
• Keeping your blood sugar in your target range as much as possible
• 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 physician 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.

Source: www.cdc.gov/diabetes