Diabetic foot care
- How can people with diabetes keep their feet healthy?
- Can diabetes change the shape of the foot?
- What should I look for during a daily foot check?
- How often should someone with diabetes get a foot exam?
- Do people with diabetes need special shoes?
- Why does diabetes put the feet at risk?
- Should I go barefoot at home if I have diabetes?
- Is it safe for people with diabetes to trim their own toenails?
- What is the monofilament test?
"Regular" is the word in diabetic foot care that sounds like a schedule and is not one. The CDC says: "Podiatrists play a key role in detecting and treating foot problems in people with diabetes." The sentence assigns a role. It does not set an interval, and any plan that says "regular" owes you a number beside it.
Nine questions and the wording each one turns on
- How can people with diabetes keep their feet healthy? Turns on "healthy", and on who defines it.
- Can diabetes change the shape of the foot? Turns on "change", and over what span of time.
- What should I look for during a daily foot check? Turns on "daily", and on who does the checking.
- How often should someone with diabetes get a foot exam? Turns on whether "often" is a number or a judgment.
- Do people with diabetes need special shoes? Turns on "special", and on whether it is a defined term.
- Why does diabetes put the feet at risk? Turns on "at risk", and on which risk is meant.
- Should I go barefoot at home if I have diabetes? Turns on "at home", and on what counts as barefoot.
- Is it safe for people with diabetes to trim their own toenails? Turns on "safe" and on "own".
- What is the monofilament test? Turns on the name of the test and on what the result is called.
What the nine have in common
The nine questions share a dependence on who is doing the act and how often. A sentence that does not say who performs the check, you or someone else, has left out part of its own terms.
Readers in and around Itasca can check any answer against primary pages. Diabetic Foot on MedlinePlus gathers the topic in one place. The American Academy of Family Physicians has a piece on assessing the diabetic foot for signs of neuropathy, and the CDC's Promoting Foot Health page is where the sentence quoted above comes from.
A neighboring group where the wording overlaps
The toenail trimming question here uses the same word as the ingrown toenail questions: "safe". Those are collected under ingrown toenails and nail fungus, and the same second read applies to both.