How To Keep My Feet Healthy

Doctors and dieticians always stress to eat right and exercise, not only because you can keep a healthy weight, manage your blood sugar, or your blood pressure, but because all of those aspects can have an affect on your feet. Just think about it for a minute. A person who is overweight can put a lot of stress on the feet. Walking or running can place a strain on your joints and feet, especially if you’re not wearing the correct footwear. Not only that, people with diabetes can have lingering effects of the disease.

Let’s talk about it more direct. Foods high in sugar, trans fat, and salt make up a large part of our grocery stores. Even foods that are supposed to be healthy, can have a negative impact of our body. It’s up to us to choose the best sources of nutrients and get in that physical activity to help ourselves feel better. One of the more popular ways people are losing weight is by doing the Keto diet. It is a low carb, high fat diet and was originally used to help people who have seizures³, but it has taken on a new fame and people say helped with their health troubles. It has not been proven yet how well it works for people over an extended period of time.

Diabetes

People with diabetes can have a myriad of problems if they don’t keep their levels in check. Diabetes can damage blood vessels which help transport blood cells and nutrients through every system in your body. Not only can this lead to retinopathy or atherosclerosis, but because you are having poor circulation¹, you could get swelling in the lower extremities. When swelling occurs, you have a higher chance of developing blisters or sores, which in turn could lead to infection. No one wants that!

One of the many other problems that can occur from high blood sugar is diabetic neuropathy. It essentially means that there is extensive damage to the nerves and blood vessels because of increased blood sugar levels over a long period of time. You may feel numbness, prickly feeling, burning sensation, tingling, or stabbing pain. More often than not, it occurs in the legs and feet, you can also feel it in your hands too.

Inflammation

One of the common causes of foot pain is inflammation. When this occurs, you have events that occur in the body such as arthritis and gout. The foods you are consuming can lead to a reaction in your body which causes this inflammation. For some people, certain foods may trigger this reaction. If removing certain foods from your diet can help with the symptoms you are having, then it may be a good idea to find alternatives to some of the foods you like to eat.

As you can see, proper diet and lifestyle can have a huge effect on your health in general and can cause a ripple effect that may effect your foot health also. Type 1 diabetes is not curable, but having a healthy lifestyle is still very important to avoid the risks associated with it.