Healthcare Guide To Diabetes and Your Feet

Poor Feeling If your sense of feeling – or touch – on the bottom of your feet is compromised, you are at greater risk for stepping on a foreign object that can penetrate your skin. Also, you might not know you are scuffing the bottoms of your feet, which can produce a wound or callus without you knowing it.

We can test the feeling on your feet using a 10-gram monofilament, a thin, plastic wire with which we gently poke different areas on the bottom of each foot. If you are unable to feel the pokes in uncalloused areas of skin, you probably have some level of neuropathy (poor feeling), which qualifies you to obtain diabetic shoes.

Previous Wound or Amputation If you have had a wound or even needed a partial amputation of a toe, you are at greater risk for developing other problems in the future. This probably indicates that you have some or all of the conditions mentioned above as well. Usually a foot wound is not caused by one isolated problem, rather by a combination of problems that led to a wound or amputation.

These are the top health risks that qualify you for diabetic shoes. Other factors can be involved, but most people who have the above conditions would qualify for diabetic shoes.

3. Get Professional Care for Your Calluses If you develop a callus on the bottom of your foot or the sides of your toes, it can develop into a wound quite easily.

The proper treatment for calluses is trimming them with a specialized instrument. This should never be done at home on your own. Only a podiatrist should trim your calluses.

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