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Sports blog: Warrior Nation

By Harry Jackson Jr.

St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Detecting diabetes can start from the bottom up. If you feel burning, tingling or numbness in your feet and toes, ask your doctor to look them over; then see a foot doctor. I wrote about this more than a year ago, but it bears repeating. Doctors looking at your feet often can detect diabetes before you see any other symptoms.

The American College of Foot and Ankle Surgeons are sounding a warning now. Diabetes is the number one reason for blindness and amputations in people over 50. With so many Americans overweight, it's picking up among younger people, even children.

Type 2 diabetes, generally the lifestyle disease, is a condition where your cells aren't eating the nutrients your blood has to offer because your pancreas is malfunctioning. Your pancreas makes insulin which gives your cells an appetite. So the nutrients accumulate as gunk and clog up the blood vessels of your body.

That's why diabetes is an underlying cause of heart disease, stroke, hypertension, kidney failure and other organ failure.

In your feet, the disease can cause your skin to dry so that it cracks and welcomes in infections. And you may not know if your feet are numb.

And while diabetes reveals itself in the feet, other conditions can be detected in your feet, too. Burning, tingling and numbness in the toes can also be symptoms of thyroid problems, nutritional deficiencies, back problems and pinched nerves in the ankles.

About a quarter of the 23 million Americans with diabetes is undiagnosed, says the physicians' group. According to FootPhysicians.com, even diabetic patients who have excellent blood sugar control can develop foot problems.

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