Per example, a toe or even a leg
In: Biology
It’s kinda a sequence of different effects. The abnormally high blood sugar that typifies untreated diabetes has a tendency to damage blood vessels and disrupt blood flow across the body. This itself can cause a wide range of problems, including nerve damage, slowed healing, and outright death of cells. The high blood sugar also disrupts the immune system.
When a body part is lost to diabetes, it’s usually because of a diabetes associated infection spreading to the point where it either directly kills off that body part or otherwise becomes so widespread that that body part needs to be amputated in order to prevent further damage to the body.
This infection usually starts from a diabetic ulcer, which can itself be caused by a physical injury or by that area of skin dying due to a lack of blood flow. Either way, the wound is often not noticed due to diabetic nerve damage making that region numb. Therefore, the wound is often left completely untreated making severe infection much more likely. Compounding this is the reduced healing and disrupted immune system effects of high blood sugar, which results a wound that would take a long time to heal and would be more prone to infection even if it was noticed and treated.
These problems usually happen on the feet, in part since the anatomy of the legs and feet tends to cause blood flow problems there just in general.
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