Diabetes Complications: From Your Head to Your Toes

Diabetes is a chronic health condition that affects how your body uses glucose, a form of energy that comes from the starches and sugars you eat. Your body needs insulin, a hormone created in the pancreas, to move glucose from your bloodstream to your body’s cells to make energy. If you have diabetes, your body doesn’t produce insulin or use it properly.

Diabetes is manageable. When diabetes isn’t managed well, though, it can lead to health complications, such as cognitive decline, foot sores and infections, gum disease and tooth decay, hearing and vision loss, heart disease, kidney disease and nerve damage.

Learn about a few of these common diabetes-related complications and how you can delay or prevent them.

Foot Health

About half of everyone living with diabetes has some kind of nerve damage. While this can happen in any part of the body, nerves in your feet and legs are most often affected. This damage can lead to loss of feeling, pain and sensitivity in your feet as well as reduced blood flow. If you can’t feel pain in your feet, problems like blisters, cuts and sores may go unnoticed and become infected.

Follow these five tips to keep your feet healthy and reduce your risk of infection:

1. Wear shoes and socks or slippers, even when you’re inside.
2. Check your feet every day for blisters, cuts and any other changes to your toenails or skin.
3. Get your feet checked at every health visit or at least once a year.
4. Keep your feet up when you’re sitting to keep your blood circulating
5. Wash your feet every day and dry them completely, especially between your toes.

Gums and Teeth

Oral hygiene is important whether you have diabetes or not. If you have diabetes, though, you are at a higher risk of developing gum disease and infections in your mouth can be more severe and take longer to heal. Consistently high blood sugar can weaken your white blood cells, which help your body fight infections.

Follow these five tips to keep your gums and teeth healthy:

1. Brush your teeth at least twice a day with fluoride toothpaste.
2. Floss your teeth at least once a day.
3. Quit smoking, as it increases your risk of gum disease and can worsen diabetes.
4. Tell your dentist if you have diabetes.
5. Visit your dentist at least twice a year for checkups and professional cleanings.

Hearing

Hearing loss is twice as common in people who have diabetes than in people of the same age who do not. High or low blood sugar can lead to nerve damage in the inner ear, which can cause hearing loss. This type of hearing loss happens slowly, so it can be hard to notice until there’s been significant damage.

Follow these three tips to protect your hearing:

1. Avoid other causes of hearing loss, including loud noise and music.
2. Get your hearing tested when you’re first diagnosed with diabetes and at least once a year.
3. Keep your blood sugar close to your target levels.

Vision

Poorly managed diabetes can also damage your eyes and cause vision loss over time. It can lead to diseases such as cataracts, diabetic retinopathy and glaucoma. Diabetic retinopathy is the most common diabetes-related eye disease. It occurs when high blood sugar damages the blood vessels in the retina, which is the light-sensitive layer at the back of your eye. If it isn’t detected in the early stages, it can lead to dark spots in your vision or cause permanent blindness.

Follow these three tips to lower your chance of vision loss:

1. Get a dilated eye exam at least once a year.
2. Keep your blood pressure, blood sugar and cholesterol levels in recommended target ranges.
3. Quit smoking to lower your risk for diabetes-related eye diseases.

Diabetes can be overwhelming. When you practice preventative measures and follow a diabetes care schedule with the help of your health care team, though, you can prevent or delay complications. Speak with a Meritas Health doctor or a diabetes educator for more tips on managing your diabetes.

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Ciara Rojas-Pate

Ciara Rojas-Pate is the content development coordinator at North Kansas City Hospital. In her position at NKCH, she works on a variety of written content that is used all over the hospital and online for internal and external purposes. Aside from writing, Ciara is passionate about houseplants, traveling and dogs. She lives in Lee's Summit with her significant other, over 100 houseplants, and two pit bulls, Flower and Bug.