It's World No-Tobacco Day! Horrible Foot Problems Caused by Smoking:

In honour of World No-Tobacco Day, we thought we’d shed some light on how smoking cigarettes can affect the health of your feet.   You’ve heard how smoking can affect your lungs and heart, causes your fingernails and teeth to turn yellow, and even causes bad breath, but no one ever mentions how it seriously affects your feet.

In our clinics, we see some heart breaking problems caused by smoking.  Sometimes chiropodists at our clinics can tell just by looking at a patient’s feet that they smoke!  Surprised?  The skin on their feet is often thinner, shinier, and reddish in colour.

Your feet are the furthest body part from your heart, which means that even under the best of circumstances, they don't receive as much blood circulation as other parts of your body. And if you smoke, your body is definitely not working under peak conditions.

Smoking causes poor circulation, or more technically, peripheral arterial disease. Arteries are the blood vessels that bring fresh oxygenated blood to all tissues of the body.  The further the arteries are from the heart, the smaller they are.  The best arteries are wide open.  Smoking causes a substance called plaque to build up in the arteries, causing them to become stiff and narrowed (and sometimes plugged), often affecting the arteries that run down your legs to your feet, which in turn, reduces the ability for blood to reach your feet.  Peripheral arterial disease can be a painful and debilitating disease, often leading to infection, gangrene and eventually , amputation.  Smoking is the leading cause of lower extremity amputations, which is ENTIRELY PREVENTABLE!

Here is a list of signs and symptoms of Peripheral arterial disease, and some problems it can cause:

1.      The development of peripheral artery disease will make you 5 times as likely to die from a cardiovascular heart disease

2.      Pain in your legs and/or feet when walking or standing

3.      Numbness and tingling in your feet are the beginning affects of neuropathy, generally caused by poor circulation.  This nerve damage makes your feet numb or unable to feel sensations, and can reduce your ability to feel your feet, or pain, heat, or cold.  Foot injury is more likely if you suffer from neuropathy.

4.      An inability to fight foot infections

5.      Wounds, cuts, and lacerations heal slowly or poorly

6.      Cold feet

7.      Possible changes in the shape or structure of your foot

8.      Foot Ulcers on the foot, and toes

9.      Feet turn blue or reddish in color

10.  May develop Beurger’s disease – a painful disorder that involves leg pain and gangrene of the hands and feet that are very are painful, and is a result of smoking

11.  Amputation of your toes or foot

 

Smoking can also cause the growth of your toenails to slow down.  It  can cause the texture of your nails to change, and a certain shape of the nail can indicate lung cancer,  often caused by smoking.  Clubbing of the nails (Hippocratic nails), often indicates lung problems.

If you notice any of the signs noted above, please book and appointment to be thoroughly assessed by our chiropodists.

Later, we’ll discuss how researchers have discovered that taking toenail samples from a person who smokes, can identify their risk of lung cancer! 

Posted via email from Northumberland Physiotherapy and Foot Care Centre's posterous