Foot pain seems like a very minor thing to most people, especially if it isn’t terribly severe. But if someone happens to also have diabetes, then this becomes considerably more worrisome. This is because this is one of the indications that nerve damage is occurring.
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Causes
This condition is referred to as diabetic neuropathy. It affects the nerves in persons who have diabetes. This occurs in diabetic persons because when blood sugar levels get too high, it can block or slow down arteries in the feet, making those areas oxygen starved and low on the nutrients they need to function properly. If you fail to keep your blood sugar under control and it continues to spike too high, then nerve damage can occur and continue to get more and more dire over time. This condition starts out as feeling like numbness, pain, tingling, or burning in your legs or feet.
Additional Dangers
One of the biggest dangers when it comes to foot pain from Diabetes is that you’ll lose circulation in your legs from the sugar imbalance, and as a result you might enjoy less control over your body. As a result, it becomes much more likely that you will fall and suffer damage to your legs or other parts of your body. This would mean fractures, broken bones, strains, or other more serious injuries. And even beyond that, circulation problems are no small thing either. Having bad circulation of blood in a particular part of your body is something that can have serious consequences all by itself.
Conditions like gangrene, the death of tissues, can result from poor circulation. If you get an infection in your feet because of falling and infection sets in, then something like gangrene becomes much more likely. If this isn’t treated right way you may need a surgeon just to fix what started out as simple foot pain.
How to Avoid
Fortunately, if you have Diabetes there’s a way to keep this from happening. The main thing is to make sure that your blood levels stay where they should be. If your sugar doesn’t spike too high, then there’s no chance for nerve damage to occur. And what’s critically important is that if any of these symptoms occur in a diabetic person, then they need to be dealt with as soon as possible.
Where to get help
Experts in neurology are the medical professionals who you need to consult right away. Most medical insurance companies will have a way for you to search for conditions like this specifically, just as they will for pain management for fibromyalgia, or pain management of any kind. There are also plenty of nation-wide directories that you can use to get the help that you need.
Overall, keeping an eye on your body is critically important when you have a condition like Diabetes. Being vigilant in monitoring your sugar levels is one of the most important steps you can take to make sure that nothing like this happens, or that you will be ready to get to a doctor as quickly as possible if it does happen.
