WOUNDS AND AMPUTATIONS

​You’ve been diagnosed with diabetes: NOW you need to be aware of your feet and watch out for foot ulcers. Remember loss of feeling (sensory loss) is one of the signs of DPN. Foot ulcers are sores that develop on your feet, and they can develop even from seemingly trivial injuries to the feet. Diabetic foot ulcers are a common cause of amputation due to diabetes. Each year over 70,000 foot or lower leg amputations occur in diabetic patients. These folks didn’t pay attention their feet. If you lose feeling in your feet you may develop a wound that eventually becomes too difficult to heal and, to save your life, an amputation is necessary. Would light therapy, administrated early on, help lower these statistics? Probably. Why? Because it increases blood flow to the foot and its nerves and thus your sensory nerves will be able to signal something is not right in the skin of the foot. You’ll seek out health care from diabetologists and podiatrists. Remember red and near infrared light therapy increases the release of nitric oxide (NO) from hemoglobin thereby increasing blood flow to sensory nerves. The increased blood flow also brings wound-healing proteins to the wound and white blood cells that fight infections.
 
Dr. Thomas Burke, PhD
Published researcher of 92+ papers on blood flow and peripheral neuropathy