Don't Chop My Legs Off! - Debunking Diabetes
Have you ever heard the saying, stop taking too much sugar unless you want your legs cut off? It may be an old trick to stop people from consuming too much sugar and also to avoid the high rise of diabetic patients in our country, but how true is this to an extent? Let’s debunk a few of these diabetes myths.
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Written by:Ashley Kon
“Diabetic people need to amputate their legs”
Diabetes that is not properly managed over time can cause blood vessel damage, which can eventually result in consequences like foot ulcers (which may require amputation), nerve damage, blindness, renal failure, heart disease, and even stroke. Peripheral artery disease (PAD) and diabetic neuropathy are two additional disorders that increase the risk of foot amputation and are associated with diabetes. The arteries that supply blood to your legs and feet might become narrowed by PAD, which increases your risk of developing ulcers and infections. Inadequate circulation can also cause those injuries to heal slower.
High blood sugar levels caused by diabetes can cause neuropathy, which is damage to the nerves and blood vessels in your body, including the ones in your feet and legs. You might not feel pain, heat, cold, sharp objects, or other ulcer or infection symptoms if your nerves are injured. If you have neuropathy in your feet, you could walk around all day with a rock in your shoe unknowingly. That means you could get a bad cut and not notice until it gets infected. That raises your risk of serious infection or gangrene (tissue death). In some severe cases, the infected area needs to be amputated.
Diabetes patients are more likely to require lower limb amputation. The most common reason for an amputation is non-healing wounds or ulcers. Smoking and high blood sugar levels can increase the risk of foot-related complications, which could lead to an amputation. Only 10 to 15 percent of diabetic foot sores recover. 25 percent of diabetic foot ulcers that do not heal will need to be amputated. However, if diabetes is effectively managed, these complications can be avoided. To check for the aforementioned issues, it is crucial for diabetes patients to have routine tests of their feet, eyes, and kidneys.
Unfortunately, this is not the case. It's true that having a parent or sibling with diabetes increases your risk for getting diabetes. In fact, family history is a risk factor for both type 1 diabetes and type 2 diabetes. However, many people with diabetes have no close family members with diabetes.Diabetes mellitus is a multifactorial disease. Lifestyle choices and certain conditions can increase your risk for type 2 diabetes. For instance, being obese, having prediabetes and having an age of 45 or older.
“Since no one in my family has diabetes, I will not get the disease”
Conclusions
To conclude, these misconceptions have one way or another altered the thinking of people who lack the knowledge of diabetes. These misconceptions not only cause inconveniences to one's life, but also instills fear among them. Therefore, we should always educate ourselves and the people around us about diabetes, which is the ‘silent killer’ of our country.
