Diabetes and Your Feet
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Clinical Diabetes 24:94, 2006
© American Diabetes Association ®, Inc., 2006
Patient Information |
Take Good Care of Your Feet
If you have diabetes, it’s important to take care of your feet. Diabetes can cause nerve damage that makes it hard to tell if you have a foot injury. When foot injuries go unnoticed, they can worsen and become infected, sometimes leading to hospitalization or even amputation.
To prevent foot problems:
- Get regular exams. Your health care provider should examine your feet at least once a year. Taking off your shoes and socks while you wait for the doctor can be a helpful reminder.
- Keep your feet clean and dry. Wash your feet every day and dry them carefully, especially between the toes.
- Check for injuries. Check your feet daily for blisters, red marks, cuts, scratches, and infections. Look between your toes. Use a mirror to help you see the bottom of your feet. Ask a family member or friend if you need help. If you notice any injuries or changes in foot color, shape, or feeling, call or see your doctor.
- Protect your feet from heat and cold. Wear shoes at the beach and on hot pavement. Test bath water with your hand to be sure it isn’t too hot. Never use hot water bottles, heating pads, or electric blankets. If your feet feel cold at night, wear socks.
- Never walk barefoot, not even indoors. Wear comfortable shoes that fit well and protect your feet. Check inside your shoes before wearing them. Make sure the lining is smooth and there are no objects inside. Don’t wear sandals with toe straps, and don’t wear shoes without socks.
- Buy shoes that are comfortable at the time of purchase. Wear new shoes for only 1 hour indoors the first day. Check your feet for blisters, and slowly increase the wearing time each day.
- Wear clean, properly fitting socks. Don’t wear socks that have been mended or have holes. Padded athletic socks can give extra protection.
- See a doctor or podiatrist for corn and callus removal. Don’t use chemical products or try to cut them yourself. Tell your provider that you have diabetes.
- Trim your toenails straight across. If you need help, see your doctor or podiatrist.
- Protect your circulation. Put your feet up when you sit. Wiggle your toes and flex your feet up and down from time to time during the day. Don’t cross your legs for long periods of time. Don’t smoke.
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- Evaluation and Treatment of Diabetic Foot Ulcers
- Ingrid Kruse and Steven Edelman
Clin. Diabetes 2006 24: 91-93. [Extract] [Full Text] [PDF]
Source: American Diabetes Association (ADA)
I’ll Measure Mine if You Measure Yours
Source: ChairOnCMR c/o YouTube
‘Food Politics’
Food companies will make and market any product that sells, regardless of its nutritional value or its effect on health. In this regard, food companies hardly differ from cigarette companies. They lobby Congress to eliminate regulations perceived as unfavorable; they press federal regulatory agencies not to enforce such regulations; and when they don’t like regulatory decisions, they file lawsuits.
Like cigarette companies, food companies co-opt food and nutrition experts by supporting professional organizations and research, and they expand sales by marketing directly to children, members of minority groups, and people in developing countries–whether or not the products are likely to improve people’s diets”. Quote from Marion Nestle, author of “Food Politics”, University of California Press, 2002.
If you want to understand how politicians, lobbyists and food companies have totally corrupted our food chain in America, you should read Marion Nestle’s books. At the time “Food Politics” was printed, the author was the chair of the Department of Nutrition and Food Studies at New York University. When I finished reading this book six years ago, I was truly blown away.
Everything I suspected about fast food restaurants in my neighborhood, raising rates of obesity, type 2 Diabetes appearing in children under the age of five and our government not protecting it’s citizens was revealed to be TRUE. Our government actually helps food companies to deceive to us. Even reading a food label in the grocery is no guarantee that that you are being told the truth. I always laugh when I pick up a box of cereal and find “Dehydrated Cane Juice” listed as the second ingredient on the label. Folks this means that the 2nd highest percentage of ingredients in this box of cereal is plain old SUGAR!
Your government allows this corporate game playing with our foods. In the mean time, people are becoming diseased and are dying and don’t know why. Tell me why are two and three year old children developing type 2 Diabetes during the past 30 years at a rate that this country has never seen before? Why have heart attacks for women between the the ages of 34 and45 increased by 30% over the last 30 years. Look at our food industry in America. It is not your friend.
FoodSpook
‘Lil FoodSpook in the 1950′s
Many of you reading this blog were not on this planet in the 1950′s. In other words, the stork hadn’t brought you yet.
Well the stork brought me to San Francisco in April 1948. What a joyous occasion that must have been. My parents had arrived here from Texas and Louisiana to build Liberty Ships in the local shipyards. They bought their first house for $8500 in 1950. Eighteen months later we had a TV with three channels that went off at midnight. My father was also a preacher besides working at least two or three jobs during the week. Mother was a house mom except during the summer months when she worked at Del Monte Canneries canning fruit from the luscious San Joaquin Valley.
By 1956 I was in the third grade. Elvis had recorded “HoundDog” and was becoming a major star. All of the little boys in the neighborhood were trying to twerle their hair to be kool like the Everley Bros. Their first big hit was “Peggy Sue” followed by “Bye Bye Love”. Of course I did’nt realize at the time that my hair was of the Negroid persuasion and could never curl down over my forehead like the Everley Brothers. But, I tried. By the way, ‘Lil FoodSpook is yours truly, the author, T. Jeffery. That name is retroactive to my youth as a precursor to what I would become in my later years, FoodSpook.
I want to warn people about FOOD. There is a connection between what we eat and contracting Type 2 Diabetes. Their are concrete reasons why our young children are in jeopardy of becoming Diabetic. Foodspook grew up a lttle colored boy in San Francisco, Oakland and Richmond, CA. Life moved at a slower pace than now. My family became Black in the mid 1960′s. We became African Americans in the 1970′s. This is what we considered as “progress”. We was ‘moving on up’! However, some things didn’t change. In the 1960′s there were massive nationwide protests against the Viet Nam War. My college military deferment card disappeared in my 2nd year at San Jose State so, I got drafted. But that’s another story. The 1950′s was a time when Americans trusted our government. Actually we trusted almost everybody of authority in this country. It was inconceivable that our government (FDA) would allow restaurants to exist to sell you garbage! Well, that’s what has happened. You have NO ONE looking out for your welfare when comes to your choices of food being sold in your neighborhood.
I have become FoodSpook in my middle age because I am outraged that this epedimic of Diabetes is consumming millions of Americans and the silence from from our national media is deafening. Type 2 Diabetes is preventable and we have people that are becoming Diabetic without knowing what they did in life to bring on this condition. Diabetes is a killer if you do not understand its nature. It can destroy your body by increments over a period of time. I have become FoodSpook to try to do something in my own way to scream to people, just because you may be Black or another minority without access to great medical information, you must become aware that if you are overweight you are at risk of becoming Diabetic. You must know that the consumption of sugar by itself is not the cause of Diabetes. Ingestion of too much sugar for your body to process to energy can cause obesity. When don’t exercise that much and you like to eat fast (processed foods) that contain a high percentage of disguised carbohydrates (sugars), eventually your pancreas will not be able to produce enough insulin to break down the SUGARS in your blood stream for energy and necessary nutrients. Thus, you become a Diabetic.
When “lil FoodSpook was a young boy, it was NORMAL for most of the senior ladies in my father’s church would eventually have a lower leg or foot amputated. Growing up as a child this was NORMAL and expected. It was expected that our older men would go blind or wind up on a dialysis machine to stay alive because Diabetes was ravishing their bodies. Today, children as young as 2 years old are becoming type 2 Diabetics. Basically that means their Pancreas is not producing enough Insulin to break doiw the sugars they are ingesting in so many forms of our manufactured foods, (processed foods). They results in 25 to 30 years from now for our children will be CATASTROPHIC.
What ‘Lil FoodSpook saw in the 1950′s was the natural assumption the life is good and protecting. In reality life as we knew it, ( that is us coloured folks) was destroying us. BBQ, Ham Hocks and Pigs Feet and not to mention the Heavenly homemade Flakey Biscuits was clogging up our arteries as my parents would sit around after dinner and talk about how Pres. Roosevelt has helped us all. We were dying then and still are today. FoodSpook is hollering WAKE UP! Type 2 diabetes is so unnessesary.
FoodSpook
Diabetic? Watch Your Stress Level by Richard Bean
Deep Breathing: Two to three deep breaths are taken for immediate release of tension. For deeper relaxation, seven to eight breaths are recommended. This is deep, abdominal breathing, and light-headedafeedbackness can occur if you get up too quickly afterward.
Progressive Relaxation: This is a process of contracting and relaxing the muscles, beginning with the toes and moving up to the face. You learn to sense how the muscles feel by contracting the muscles for 10 to 20 seconds and sensing how they feel in that contracted state, then relaxing these same muscles and sensing how they feel in the relaxed state.
Autogenic Therapy: The same muscle sequence can be followed as in progressive relaxation. In this approach, you imagine that your muscles are very heavy (relaxed). When the muscles surrounding the blood vessels are relaxed, these muscles become warmer due to unobstructed blood flow. This is a physical, or mechanical, response rather than an imagined response.
Meditation: Traditionally, the focus here is a sight or sound. For example, a mantra or other specific sound might be repeated over and over again. Dr. Herbert Benson, associate professor of medicine at Harvard, is a leader in the stress-management field. Dr. Benson has people focus on the repetition of the word one as part of his program involving the “relaxation response.” Other people use prayer or a scripture. Still others concentrate on a picture or on a spot on the wall. As relaxation ability improves, the relaxation response can occur within a shorter period of time.
Imagery: This technique takes your focus away from your problems. The imaging can take the shape of people, places, or things, or it can involve focusing on bright to calm colors (and back) or bright to calm music (and back). Visualizing an accomplishment, such as climbing a mountain with supportive aid as needed (from family, friends, or spiritual strength), gives an impression of accomplishing a goal and the peace and good feelings that accompany it.
Biofeedback: is a technique in which you learn to use information about changes in your body. Relaxation training may be enhanced through biofeedback, such as might be obtained by measuring skin resistance, muscle energy output, or temperature of the hands or feet. The initial use of biofeedback is just to let you know how you are responding to changes in thought or position. Later on, it aids in training you to become more relaxed by letting you know which types of activities represent your “getting out of the way of yourself” so that your body automatically relaxes. The key is not to try. (Remember what happens when you try to go to sleep? You are more wide awake. Similarly, if you try to relax, you will become more tense.) Instead, allow yourself to become relaxed by focusing your thoughts away from the hectic problems of the day.
Article Source: http://www.Free-Articles-Zone.com
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