Skin care guide for people with diabetes

This is an automatically translated article.

The article was consulted professionally with Doctor of Department of Examination & Internal Medicine, Vinmec Nha Trang International General Hospital.
For diabetics, in addition to good blood sugar control, care should be taken in skin care and early detection of lesions. Here are some skin care guidelines for people with diabetes. Disconnect the road.

1. Why should skin care for people with diabetes?

Diabetic patients have extremely sensitive skin. Their skin is often dry, susceptible to damage, difficult to heal wounds and leaves scars. Skin that is too dry can cause itching, cracking, and infection. The cause of the problem is that the patient's skin loses its ability to retain moisture and has a reduced ability to heal itself. Therefore, patients should have moisturizing methods to limit skin damage caused by cuts, scratches, animal bites, etc. to avoid infection and deep infection. Taking good care of the skin also helps the patient to prevent future skin problems.
In these cases, the diabetic patient's skin is damaged, requiring first aid and proper wound healing. Because, when there is an open wound, bacteria are easy to enter the body and grow to cause infection, especially for diabetics, high blood sugar is an ideal environment for bacteria to multiply. On the other hand, the patient herself has a weak immune system, so it is twice as difficult for the body to heal itself.
If the wound is detected late, from small wounds will become big problems, causing difficulties in the treatment process and leaving unpredictable consequences. Due to high blood sugar will cause nerve damage, making patients less able to perceive pain, heat or cold. By the time the wound was discovered, it was already very infected. Therefore, doctors often ask patients to examine their feet every day, even small wounds or calluses must know how to handle.

2. Skin care ways for people with diabetes

For diabetics, even a scratch, cut, or crack needs care. Therefore, it is necessary to understand the measures to take care of your skin. Here are some ways to take care of the skin of people with diabetes properly, helping to minimize the risks of patients with diabetes.
Care for dry skin The first and most important thing for diabetics is to moisturize the skin. Skin care is best at the time after bathing, swimming at that time, the skin is still damp. Note, the patient should take a quick bath with warm water, but do not let the water be too warm, it will make the skin dry. Experts recommend not using fragranced deodorants or cleansers because they can cause irritation on sensitive skin.
Always keep skin areas such as: armpits, toes, and groin areas clean and dry, but not too dry. Can be used to gently wipe the upper skin areas.
Regularly use moisturizer: after showering, after washing hands, before going to bed and after waking up.
When the skin is too dry leading to blistering, you should follow some safe ways below to avoid pain.
Disinfect the blistered skin, absolutely do not peel and break the blister, which can lead to infection.
Apply antibacterial cream and ointment to dry skin and cover with a gauze bandage to avoid infection.
Change the bandage twice a day.

Treating wounds and ulcers For wounds and sores, we take care of the wound like how to take care of the blistered skin with 3 steps such as: clean the wound, apply antiseptic ointment and bandage. wound, note that you should change the bandage and monitor the wound.
If the infected wound is swollen, hot, red, painful, and oozing pus, you need to see an endocrinologist. Here, depending on the level of infection, the doctor can perform a debridement of the necrotic area, use antibiotics, wash the wound every day
Control diabetes Uncontrolled blood sugar, infection status Wounds take longer to heal.
Should control weight by exercising 30 to 45 minutes a day, adjusting diet, reducing starch, fat. Limiting salty foods helps maintain stable blood pressure.
Adjust oral medication or insulin injection, depending on the condition of each patient at each time, with or without a combination of comorbidities.

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