Checking Your Feet at Home: A Crucial Aspect of Diabetic Foot Care

A disease like diabetes casts a wide net over your health and, quite literally, affects you from head to toe. Since Dr. Thomas Rambacher and the team here at Foot Ankle Leg Wound Care Orange County specialize in diabetic foot care, we’re going to focus on this important area, which is in the direct line of fire when you have diabetes.

Diabetes and your feet, by the numbers

To give you a better idea of why we’re so concerned about your feet when you have diabetes, let’s look at some eye-opening numbers.

More than 38 million Americans have diabetes and about half of people with diabetes develop peripheral neuropathy, mostly in their lower limbs and feet. Neuropathy is the medical term for nerve damage, and this damage can prevent you from feeling when there’s a problem in your feet.

Peripheral neuropathy is also often accompanied by poor circulation in your lower limbs, so when you have a foot, ankle, or leg wound, it might not heal well thanks to a lack of resources.

Playing this out further, about one-third of people with diabetes will develop a foot ulcer, half of these ulcers will become infected, and 20% of these infections lead to amputation.

Protecting your feet when you have diabetes

To stop the frightening chain of events that can occur in your feet when you have diabetes, we recommend vigilant daily care at home, which should include:

A daily inspection of your feet

We want you to check for any issue as even a minor blister can become a big problem when you have diabetes. So, inspect your feet very carefully each night and, should you spot something, please let us know so that we can take swift action.

Clean your feet daily

A great practice for people with diabetes is to gently wash their feet in warm (not hot) water each night before bed. Use only soft materials and make sure to dry your feet thoroughly before bed. You can even double down and use this washing time to inspect your feet.

Moisturizing your feet

Once your feet are dry, you can apply a moisturizer, but avoid using these products between your toes as that can encourage fungal infections.

Trimming your toenails

If you have diabetes, be very careful about trimming your toenails. Don’t trim them too short and be sure to cut straight across so that you don’t end up with ingrown toenails.

Avoid at-home foot care

If you have calluses or corns that you want to trim or file away, in a word: don’t. Or, if you want to tackle an ingrown toenail on your own, please come see us instead. When you have diabete, even minor foot issues can lead to major problems so it’s best to leave this type of foot care to us.

With close monitoring on your end and expert oversight on ours, there’s every reason to believe that you can protect your feet from the serious foot and lower limb complications that often accompany diabetes.

For expert diabetic foot care, we invite you to contact our office in Mission Viejo, California, at 949-832-6018 or by requesting an appointment online today.