How To Walk When Edema In The Feet Makes It A Chore

Time rapidly becomes the enemy of most of your body parts. Anybody who's spent their life on their feet might feel it quicker. Our feet take a pounding. For some, then comes disease.

Everyone has likely heard of diabetic neuropathy, either from knowing someone who's had it or from pharmaceutical advertisements. There's a popular commercial with Cedrick the Entertainer, and he has neuropathy in his feet. It's touched people from all walks of life.

The burning, itching, and numbness feel horrible. But diabetes isn't the only cause of neuropathy troubles in the feet. And the source of your problems might have started somewhere as far away from your feet as you can imagine.

Specifically, consider the effects of cancer therapies on the body. You might not have cancer in your feet, but the cancer treatments can cause side effects like edema. Chemotherapy-related edema can lead to nerve damage in the feet from the medicines and the constant swelling.

Symptoms include:

• Swelling or a puffy feeling in the legs and arms.
• Shiny or stretched skin.
• Pitting in the skin for more than a couple of seconds.
• Lack of sensation in the area.

When you get this in your feet, and the sensation in your feet is no longer the same, you should have already spoken with a doctor. However, if you're going through something like chemotherapy or are on long-term oral therapies that can cause edema, it can take what feels like forever for the effects to wear off.

What can you do if you're suffering from edema in your feet? Other than consulting a doctor and keeping an eye on the issue, don't you want to be able to stay active during the problem? Most people do. And when problems like this arise, the quality of life people enjoy is threatened. Day-to-day activities become harder.

Things you can do to help improve the feeling in your feet, or at least minimize the damage, include a few easy ideas. It's time to learn better foot care. All the years of beating your feet are over. Your most self-abusive relationship with your body has to change. You have to start showing your feet a lot more love.

And why wouldn't you? They've served you well for decades. Your feet got you through all those years on the playgrounds, the time hanging out with your friends, kickboxing class, football, ballet, and gym. Your feet got you through school, to classes, and helped you survive the days at work. They made it possible for you to chase after your kids, and if you're lucky, your grandkids. At times, they practically screamed at you.

There's a mental exercise. The way the body works when it comes to edema and how you're feeling is confusing. Your brain naturally tells you when your feet don't feel good, get off them. It makes sense, since you would rest the rest of your body when it's injured or ill.

Much of the problem with edema is that it builds up in the feet, and if the pressure remains, it causes more damage. The nerve damage, over time, will start to leave you with a numbness that makes walking suddenly very awkward. And regardless of the cause, you still want to enjoy your life.

Start with the basics, and begin taking more walks. As stated above, you can't abuse your feet anymore, but you also can't let them sit still all day. It's important to keep the blood flowing through the area, particularly in the case of diabetic foot problems.

Now, you have to be more careful when walking, because the loss of sensation means you don't feel it when your foot strikes the ground, or you barely feel it. The puffiness on the bottoms of your feet may be less visible than on the top of your feet, but you quickly noticed how it made things when you stand.

Mentally, you have to tell yourself, you're not the same anymore. Your abilities are hampered, and you have to learn a way around a hard truth. This is a disability. You might be, for example, 53 years old and have stage IV cancer. The meds that are meant to extend your life, or keep you from dying, are also causing havoc on your body. So in your case, as it's medicine-related, you aren't likely to see it go away.

But a disciplined, honest approach to the problem might get you back on your feet and living again. It's all about your mentality and how you choose to approach the ugliness of the situation.

Remember, bodies in motion stay in motion. The rest of it ends up being up to you. Will you live more carefully, rather than stopping? Will you remember to treat your feet well and find the most comfortable shoes you can? Will you remember to curb salts when the edema is bad? Or will you try to eliminate the cause of the edema and your restriction, the medicine that's giving you a chance at another year?

Instead of doing what comes naturally, when you can't feel your feet, get up and get going. Get them moving and get your blood flowing. Cut out the salts you don't need. Be a little more careful, even though it's not in your nature, and live the day. How many of them do you have left?

That's the mental side of getting past such a restrictive side effect. You've basically retrained your mind to respond to your feet differently. Practical things include ideas like wearing comfortable shoes, compression socks, eating a healthier diet, and possibly using a diuretic to help get rid of the excess water. But if you're on meds for a stage IV advanced metastatic cancer, you're going to have the issue for a long time. Or at least that's what my doctor tells me.