Sparing the details, a colleague of mine recently had his big toe amputated due to diabetes. I wondered why being diabetic could lead to this as it’s common.
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Imagine high blood sugar you get from diabetes as a saw being used to cut a tree. Anytime you have high blood sugar, that’s a cut into the tree. And if you have consistently high sugars, that’s a saw constantly cutting into the tree, trying to cut the tree down. That’s what happens to your blood vessels with diabetes, those high blood sugars will saw up your blood vessels, making it hard for blood to flow, and cut down your nerve endings, so you can’t feel that part of your body anymore.
So your feet are furthest away from your heart and have the hardest time getting adequate blood flow to begin with. If your blood vessels are all scarred up and you can’t feel that part of your body, then a simple wound to a toe can be devastating. There’s not enough blood flow to heal the wound, you may not even notice the wound thanks to those cut out nerve endings, and bacteria thrive in high blood sugar, and will swarm to the cut like ants to syrup. The best way to deal with this is to amputate so the bacteria can’t infect more places in the body. You’re cutting down a tree to save the forest.
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