Pedicure for Diabetes: Follow These Precautions for Your Foot Care Routine

Diabetes is a silent killer, and it is important for diabetic patients to take extra care of themselves. From keeping blood sugar levels stable to taking proper foot care, diabetic patients need to adopt a well-planned healthcare routine. A healthy lifestyle with regular physical exercise also helps diabetics control their blood sugar levels.

Other than this, skin care also becomes crucial, as wounds or cuts can be dangerous for diabetes patients as they take too long to heal and give rise to infections. However, individuals who suffer from diabetes avoid going to parlours for a pedicure. But, is it necessary? Is getting pedicure treatments at parlours unsafe for diabetics? Let’s find out.

Shedding light on the pedicure for diabetic individuals, Dr KVNN Santosh Murthy, a podiatrist and diabetic foot surgeon in Malakpet, Hyderabad, suggested in a recent interview with the Indian Express that pedicures can help prevent diabetic ulcers and foot infections, providing much-needed rejuvenation.

However, Dr Murthy advised patients to avoid pedicures in case of an existing infection among diabetes patients:

Here are a few pedicure safety tips for people with diabetes:

1. When to skip a pedicure:If you see any cuts, infections, or open sores on your feet, legs, or toenails, avoid going to a parlour for pedicure. This also applies if you have a type of nerve damage called neuropathy that can occur with diabetes.
2. Avoid shaving your legs before your pedicure:Shaving can cause tiny nicks in your skin, which increases the risk of infection. Neuropathy can cause loss of feeling in the afflicted regions. Diabetic neuropathy patients, who are unable to feel pain, may face conditions like small cuts or blisters on their feet developing into bigger sores or ulcers even without realising it.
3. Find a salon that is clean and practices impeccable sanitation:Make sure that foot baths are cleaned and disinfected before use when at a parlour. Clippers and other tools should be sanitised and washed in a disinfecting solution to avoid any infection.
4. Skip any services that can injure the skin:Never allow the manicurist to cut your cuticles or use sharp devices on your skin or behind your toenails. Instead, when your feet have soaked for a few minutes and the skin surrounding your toes has softened, gently push back your cuticles using an orange stick, which is a tiny stick made of orange wood used for manicures.
5. Bring your own nail kit and follow protective practices:Bring your own pedicure tools if possible and ask the technician not to cut your nails too short. Make sure to nail the nail file to smooth any sharp edges to prevent the toenail from digging into your skin.

The diabetic foot surgeon further recommended a simple capillary filling test at home to determine if it’s safe to get a pedicure.