Trusted Diabetic Medical Care for Your Feet
Follow a Daily Diabetic Foot Care Regimen
Observations:
1. The American diet is diabetogenic, meaning, it causes diabetes. A diabetic must learn to embrace low-fat, lower sugar diets with adequate fiber. Basically one has to eat less calorie dense foods. You can cheat on a diet, but you can never forget the longterm goal--which is to give yourself a chance to live a fairly healthy life.
2. Most people with diabetes do fairly well with the disease. They understand that you can't keep symptoms to yourself, but must ask your doctor what he/she thinks. They change their diet for the better. And , in terms of feet, they inspect their feet. every week or so. If you can't see the bottom of your feet, stick a mirror in front of them and see the bottom of your feet. I have seen too many people who find out that they have sores (ulcers) on their feet (which can take months to heal) when they see blood in their shoes or on their stockings. That's far too late. Something as simple as mirror inspection can save everyone a lot of heartache.
3. The dangerous side of diabetes comes with the neuropathy (usually Type I) that can create wounds. If you don't really feel your feet, you can't shift your weight to avoid undo pressure on certain parts of the foot. And all it takes is a bad shoe for one day, or a week of slightly tight shoes to cause a wound. And don't play games with your feet. I recently had a lady who took her insoles from her diabetic shoes and place them into her sandals--thinking she was going to make her sandals more healthy for her feet. What happened was that she did not have great sensation and didn't realize that she was creating a hellacious blood blister, that when I evacuated it, stank to high heaven and actually caused loss of tissue at the end of her toe. But she ended up o.k. because she had great circulation (that can exist, even with diabetes) and she healed quickly and learned a great lesson. I implore anyone with diabetes to be examined by me and to discuss the individual nature of your diabetic experience.
Dr.Teitelbaum