Dr Mushtaqur Rahman, Consultant Endocrinologist and Diabetologist, talks about how to prevent problems if you have peripheral neuropathy (damage to the nerves of the legs and feet) caused by diabetes. He discusses a number of ways to prevent problems from developing over time.
Transcript (auto-generated)
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So as I mentioned before, the most important thing is to accept the fact that you've got this condition and therefore you have to look out for it. So ordinarily you would have had before you got the nerve damage, you would have can rely on pain to tell you that you've trodden on something, but you might not notice that. So therefore you have to, on a daily basis, before you go to bed, you should make sure you look at your feet, wash them, make sure you look between the, between the toes to, you know, you're not getting something or, you know, like athlete's foot, and that you, you know, use antifungal creams early, because that can cause a breakage in the skin surface, and then bacteria get in, making sure that your feet are properly moisturised, moisturised, because you can get dry skin, again, that can break down, making sure that there is no buildup of hard skin, or you haven't got an ulceration, that's a breakage of skin. Make sure you haven't burnt yourself without noticing and taking preemptive measures such as the same ways you would do when you get into a car and put on a seat belt. You would make sure that you're not walking around barefoot, you're making sure that the surfaces you walk on are those that can be walked on safely because you may not be able to feel things that well. Your position sense sometimes goes. So you know, making sure you're looking down when you're coming down the stairs, holding on to things when you're coming down the stairs, that all the things that you had, you could do without thinking, because you had all those protective mechanisms there, but those protecting mechanisms have gone, you should always check inside your shoes, just like, you know, I don't know, Greg Bear Grylls would do to make sure he hasn't got scorpions in his, in his boots, you just, you know, put your hand in and feel for, you know, there are no ridges in the shoes that are either from the top or the bottom that can dig into the feet when you're walking, making sure that if you've got inserts that, you know, you renew them, not just thinking that you bought them once and they'll last forever because they don't. And as I say, sure that you haven't got any stones in there. Especially if you're on holiday and going for walks, stones get in, as any of you will probably have noticed.
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