The Importance of Diabetic Foot Care

As the nearly 38.5 million Americans who have diabetes can attest, this chronic disease is anything but straightforward and simple. Diabetes casts an extremely wide net over your health — one that literally stretches from head to toe.

From vision loss to problematic diabetic foot ulcers, the wide range of complications that are associated with diabetes underscores the importance of staying one step ahead of this far-reaching disease.

For our part, Dr. Thomas Rambacher and the team here at Foot Ankle Leg Wound Care Orange County have you covered when it comes to foot, ankle, and leg wounds associated with diabetes. While we focus on advanced wound care, we also emphasize preventive diabetic foot care, which we want to spend a little time discussing here.

Diabetic foot disease — a clear and present danger

Let’s first quickly review why we’re so concerned about your lower limbs when you have diabetes.

Under normal circumstances, your pancreas produces a hormone called insulin, which ferries glucose to your cells, which they use as energy. When you have diabetes, there’s a malfunction in this delivery system, which leaves dangerously high levels of glucose in your bloodstream.

These high levels of blood sugar can impair your blood vessels and lead to neuropathy (damage) in your peripheral nerves, especially those located far from your heart — namely your lower limbs.

To give you an idea about how common this complication is, up to half of people with diabetes develop peripheral neuropathy. This complication can then snowball — when you have nerve damage in your feet and lower limbs, you’re more vulnerable to chronic and slow-healing diabetic foot ulcers, which affect more than 6 million Americans at any given time.

Going a step further, if these wounds become infectious and lead to gangrene, amputation is a possibility. In fact, every 3.5 minutes in the United States, a limb is amputated due to diabetes.

Preventive diabetic foot care

Now that we’ve set a frightening stage for the lower limb complications associated with diabetes, let’s walk this back a few steps.

When we refer to diabetic foot care, we’re referring to a comprehensive foot and lower limb care program that focuses on prevention. We want to help you avoid the chain of events that can lead to amputation and this starts with vigilant oversight.

Through our diabetic foot care, we focus on several areas, including:

• Managing your diabetes 
• Daily foot care
• Footwear
• Education
• Early intervention

We spend a good deal of time going over some critical dos and don’ts when it comes to diabetic peripheral neuropathy and how you can best avoid wounding your feet. When there’s nerve damage in your feet, it can be hard to notice a problem, so we focus on daily inspections, as well as ways in which you can protect your feet from injury, such as through comfortable and supportive shoes.

These are just a few of the many best practices we cover through our comprehensive diabetic foot care. The bottom line is that personalized and vigilant care of your feet is an absolute necessity when you’re managing diabetes and we’ve got you covered.

For expert diabetic foot care that can help prevent serious and life-changing complications, please contact our office in Mission Viejo, California, at 949-832-6018 or request an appointment online today.