Your feet and legs are often affected first, followed by your hands and arms. Possible signs and symptoms of peripheral neuropathy include: Numbness or reduced ability to feel pain or temperature changes, especially in your feet and toes. A tingling or burning feeling.
What are the symptoms of diabetic neuropathy? The most common symptoms of diabetic neuropathy are numbness, tingling, a burning feeling, aching, cramps and weakness. Symptoms often begin in their feet or hands. These symptoms may later spread to their legs and arms.
But when it comes to leg pain caused by diabetic peripheral neuropathy, the damage is usually permanent and irreversible. This is why blood sugar control, weight management, and other preventative treatment is so important.
Chronically elevated blood sugars can also damage nerves that tell muscles how to move. This can lead to muscle weakness. You may have difficulty walking or getting up from a chair. You may have difficulty grabbing things or carrying things with your hands.
“Therefore, people with diabetes not only have smaller muscles capable of producing lower forces, but their lower leg muscles are also infiltrated by fat, which causes a further reduction in the force that can be produced, compounding their weakness.”
Focal neuropathy can attack any nerve in the body and often causes sudden weakness. Peripheral neuropathy, the most common diabetic complication, can cause numbness or pain in the legs, feet, toes, arms, and hands. Proximal neuropathy may cause weakness in your legs and pain in your hips, buttocks, and thighs.
Diabetic neuropathy has no known cure. The goals of treatment are to: Slow progression. Relieve pain.
Sometimes, leg pain can signal something more serious like a fracture, deep vein thrombosis or compartment syndrome. Seek medical attention urgently if: the leg is swollen. it looks deformed or you can't use it properly.
Proximal neuropathy (diabetic polyradiculopathy)
Symptoms are usually on one side of the body, though in some cases symptoms may spread to the other side, too. Most people improve at least partially over 6 to 12 months. This condition is often marked by symptoms including: Severe pain in the buttock, hip or thigh.
People With Diabetes Can Live Longer by Meeting Their Treatment Goals. Life expectancy can be increased by 3 years or in some cases as much as 10 years. At age 50, life expectancy- the number of years a person is expected to live- is 6 years shorter for people with type 2 diabetes than for people without it.
Walking: Take a brisk daily walk of 1/2 - 1 hour. Try to increase the distance every day. Staircase exercise: Walk briskly up a flight of stairs using only the balls of the feet. Stretching the calf muscles: Lean with the palms of your hands against a wall.
Diabetes can cause leg soreness and pain. Over time, high blood sugar damages the nerves around your muscles. This nerve damage is called “diabetic neuropathy.” Diabetic neuropathy causes diabetic leg pain and soreness, which can make it hard for you to walk and stay active.
But that doesn't mean abdominal weight gain should be ignored. It can be an early sign of so-called "diabetic belly," a build-up of visceral fat in your abdomen which may be a symptom of type 2 diabetes and can increase your chances of developing other serious medical conditions.
Dry, cracked skin on your feet. A change in the color and temperature of your feet. Thickened, yellow toenails. Fungus infections such as athlete's foot between your toes.
Walking is one of the easiest activities to start with, and most people with diabetes can do it. The risk of injury is low, and even people with diabetes complications can usually walk for exercise. (Check with your health care provider if you have a foot injury, open sore, or ulcer.)
Because of reduced blood flow, wounds may be slow to heal or not heal at all. As a result, tissue can become damaged, and an infection can develop and spread to the bones. Once this happens, amputation is often the only option to prevent more damage.
On the hands, you'll notice tight, waxy skin on the backs of your hands. The fingers can become stiff and difficult to move. If diabetes has been poorly controlled for years, it can feel like you have pebbles in your fingertips. Hard, thick, and swollen-looking skin can spread, appearing on the forearms and upper arms.
A headache that comes on quickly, weakness or tremor in your arms or legs, and a slight trembling of your body are also signs that your blood sugar is too low. To get back to a more normal sugar level, eat something with sugar, such as pure glucose in the form of tablets or gel, for example.