New York Police Officer Buys Shoes for Homeless Man

Many of you may have heard about the policeman in New York City that bought a pair of shoes for a homeless man. The reports are saying that the man was out in the freezing cold and had blisters on his feet. What many may not realize is that this small act of kindness may have made all of the difference in the world for this man. As the weather is getting colder, the risk of frostbite is increasing quickly. Frostbite can lead to many complications, but the worst one is amputation. By purchasing shoes for this man, it greatly reduced his risk of frostbite, infection and ulceration of the blisters on his feet.

Frostbite is a condition that sees a sharp increase during this time of year. Many of us start out trying to resist the cold by wearing as little clothing as possible to readjust to the cold weather. For your fingers and toes though, this can be a dangerous game. When your body gets cold, it shuts off the circulation of blood to your fingers and toes. However, it will pulsate on and off allowing blood to come back to your extremities every once in a while to keep them healthy. However, when your body heat drops significantly beneath 98.6 F this system of your body may stop working. When that happens frostbite occurs.

Frostbite is a dangerous condition because you do not know how severe the condition is until your skin thaws out. This is why it is so important that you see a doctor immediately so that your condition can be assessed. Sometimes treating the frostbite involves using a hot water bath or by using antibiotics and bandages if there is blistering. One of the most important things is to make sure you are sufficiently hydrated and to not cool down the area. The body part may feel hot being back in a warm environment but it is important to keep it away from ice and cold air because the thawing and re-cooling cycles do a lot of damage.

So, during the holiday season remember the power that a warm pair of shoes has to protect you from the harsh elements. Also, don't forget the power of a random act of kindness

As we go into this cold winter season, if you or someone you know has an encounter with frostbite, our office staff would be more than happy to help you schedule an appointment. Our offices serve the Methuen, Dracut, Reading and Tewksbury, Massachusetts areas. We are also happy to announce our North Andover office. It is located at 451 Andover St. Suite 300, North Andover MA 01845 and we look forward to seeing you there.

Cyber Monday--Check Out Our Website

Today is Cyber Monday and with that has come many sweet deals for anything ranging from travel to clothing and home decorations. If you haven’t taken advantage of these discounts, there is still time before midnight for you to get some shopping done. In order to get in on the hub bub that has been going on with all of the shopping this blog is going to describe to you all of the online opportunities we have.

First, there is a laser therapy website that you can access through clicking this link. This website will describe to you all of the medical conditions that can be treated with laser therapy. You can treat nail fungus, injured ligaments, injured tendons and plantar fasciitis with a laser. By visiting the website, you can find out all of the treatment options available.

Second, there is a website that describes all of the possible causes of heel pain. This website shows you all of the medical conditions that can cause heel pain. Along with those conditions, there are also descriptions of the treatments that can help alleviate your conditions.

Third, we have a shoe website where you can purchase shoes for all of your everyday activities. This includes shoes for diabetics, athletes, people with flat feet or high arched feet. Basically there is a shoe on this site for anyone. In order to find out what shoe is best for your foot type and health conditions, Dr. Wachtel can help you to figure out both your proper size and what kind of shoe will give you the best support.

Fourth, there is a link to a medical site with all of the over the counter podiatry treatments you can think of. There are pads for hammer toes, medicine for warts, braces for sprained ankles and many other supplies. To find out which of these many options would be best for you, Dr. Wachtel can examine your conditions and discuss with you the best treatment plans available.

Finally, we have several free books that describe to you how to care for your diabetes, the foot book, heel pain, runner’s foot care and a coloring book for kids about growing pains. Each of these books can be ordered on our website for free. They are chalk full of a lot of information that will help you to make more informed decisions about your healthcare.

So, go ahead and this cyber Monday check out all that our website has to offer. If you or someone you know has a foot condition, Dr. Wachtel would be more than happy to help you discover what is causing your pain. If you live in the Tewksbury, Methuen, Dracut or Wilmington, Massachusetts our office would be more than happy to help you schedule an appointment.

Morton's Neuroma

So, a couple of weeks ago, there was a blog that talked about Morton’s Neuromas. Since then, there was a comment where a reader asked for more information about neuromas and how to prevent them. So, here is some additional information, hope this helps.

Neuromas are a result of inflammation of a nerve due to irritation of that nerve as a result of a force rubbing up against the nerve causing it to become inflamed and larger. These neuromas most commonly occur in between the third and fourth toes. This occurs as a result of the small compartment size in this area. This small area leads to even greater pressure in the area. If you wear tight shoes, high  heels or you are overweight, you even further increase the pressure in the area. Otherwise, the increased pressure will make it more likely that the nerve can become inflamed.

So, how do you treat neuromas. Well, there are several different approaches. You can use padding to decrease the pressure in the area and allow the bones to spread apart to accommodate the neuroma. You can also use steroid injections to decrease the inflammation and pain. You can also wear wider shoes to allow the foot to spread. If none of these methods work though, surgery is always an option. The surgical approach involves removing the part of the nerve that is swollen. By doing this, you relieve the pressure in the area, thus removing the pain.

So, the pearls of wisdom to take home are that tight shoes are not good for your feet because they don’t allow your feet to spread. Throughout the day, your feet will become wider as a result of the pressure your body puts on them. You should also limit the usage of your high heel wear. High heels force your feet into an unnatural position and can lead to hammertoes, bunions, neuromas and other conditions. Losing weight is a great medical change that you can make because not only will it reduce pressure on your feet, but it will also decrease the likelihood of many other medical conditions.

If you or someone you know is having pain in between their toes or it feels like there is a pebble in your shoe, our office would be more than happy to help you schedule an appointment. Our office can be contacted at (978) 794-8406. Dr. Wachtel would be more than happy to help you determine the cause of your pain and the best treatment plan for you.  Dr. Wachtel serves the Billerica, Bradford, Dracut and Lawrence, Massachusetts area.

National Diabetes Day

This past week was National Diabetes Day. In honor of that day, msn.com released a list of things that you can do to help prevent or improve your diabetes. Among these items were several things that we talk about regularly and also several items that are a little less known. So, let’s talk about diabetes and what you can do to make life a little easier.

First off, there is that word that so many of us dread…exercise. It has been shown in studies that just 20 minutes of exercise can reduce your HbA1C. Your HbA1C is the number that tells you what your average sugar has been over the past several months. It is a good way to gauge how you have been doing day-to-day as opposed to just an individual number each morning that can be affected by a number of things.

Second, your diet greatly affects what your HbA1C level is. By simply eating more vegetables and less sugar and processed foods, you can decrease your numbers significantly. By choosing a healthy diet, you will also be able to lose weight.

The third one that we always hear is that you should be religious about checking your blood sugar levels. If you are not checking your sugar everyday, you will not be able to know when you need to adjust your food intake. If your sugar levels are low or high, both ends can be very dangerous. In order to prevent this, careful monitoring of your sugars is necessary.

Now, for a more obscure suggestions that were presented. Cinnamon, is said to decrease your sugar levels. However, there have been studies that have shown that too much can lead to dangerously low sugar levels. In order to prevent this, if you choose to use cinnamon as a way to reduce your sugars, then you will need to carefully monitor your sugars.

The most important thing to take home about diabetes is that it is a condition that can lead to many more health conditions. So, it is important to keep your sugar under control in order to prevent these additional conditions. We offer a free book on Diabetes that can be ordered by visiting our website. If you or someone you know has diabetes, our office would be more than happy to schedule you an appointment and you can contact us at (978) 794-8406. Dr. Wachtel serves the Methuen, Reading, Dracut and Tewksbury, Massachusetts areas.

Ulcer Treatment

So, now that we’ve talked about all of the different types of ulcers, let’s discuss treatment plans. This can be a tricky situation, because everyone’s body deals with an ulcer and its treatment a little bit different. Some of you will take to a certain form of treatment and have no issues, whereas others may require a cocktail of treatments to eventually heal the ulcer. So, what all do we have available?

Well, if the ulcer is related to veins or arteries, then it is important that we treat the vascular problem as well. If you are not getting blood flow to the area, then you are not going to be able to heal the ulcer, because good blood flow is required to bring the cells that heal you to the area.

Once blood flow has been established, treatment of the ulcer can begin. Depending upon the depth of your ulcer and the appearance, your podiatrist may want to do some tests to check to see if it is infected. If it is infected, then you will be prescribed antibiotics to take at home or may need to take IV ones at the hospital.

There are many different treatments out there including lotions, gels, skin grafts to encourage your skin to close over the wound and many other options. Each of these treatments is followed by a dressing to keep the treatment in contact with the skin and keep the ulcer protected. These options range from simple applications clear up to treatments that must be done by your podiatrist in order to treat it the best. The important thing for you to know is that podiatrists have a wide variety of treatments for you to afford you the best care possible. It has been proven that by partnering with a podiatrist the likelihood of an amputation due to an ulcer is significantly reduced. Some wound may take many months to heal, but through aggressive and consistent treatment plans we can work hard to give you the best chance of healing your ulcer.

If your or someone you know living the Dracut, Tewksbury, Lowell or Reading, Massachusetts areas has an ulcer, our office staff would be more than happy to schedule you an appointment. We can be contacted at (978) 794-8406. Dr. Wachtel will be able to work with you to find the treatment plans that work best for you.

What Causes An Ulcer?

Ulcers can be very difficult to treat depending upon what their origin is and how well you treat it. There are a variety of causes for ulceration including diabetic neuropathy (which is when your nerves no longer allow you to feel something touching your foot), the loss of blood flow to an area, the inability of veins to take the blood back to your heart, undue amounts of pressure in a particular area and smoking. For each of these cases, there are preventative measures that you can take to work towards preventing ulceration from forming. In this blog, we will discuss these measures and in the next one we will discuss treatment.

Diabetic neuropathy ulcerations are due to the inability to feel a pebble, a sock, a rough edge in your shoe and a variety of other objects. When you go all day walking without feeling the pain or presence of one of these items, you can end up rubbing an ulcer on a part of your foot. So, to help prevent this from happening or from becoming worse, these are a few steps you can take. Accommodative orthoses are total contact inserts that once in your shoes will make sure that there is an equal distribution of weight across the bottom of your foot. This helps to ensure that there is no one point that is taking on more pressure. You can also dump out your shoes each morning before putting them on and feel with your hands to see if anything is in them. Finally, if you or your significant other notices the start of an ulcer, go and see your podiatrist immediately so that treatment can be aggressive and a major ulcer can be prevented.

An area that loses blood flow can also form an ulcer. Prevention in this situation is to make sure you are going to your doctor regularly to check that you have good blood flow. If it is noticed that it has decreased then you will need to see a specialist to determine what the best route of treatment is. The best prevention of these ulcers is working to to not get to the point of no blood flow in a particular area. Otherwise, depending on how much blood flow you have, we may not be able to treat your ulcer as well, until the underlying problem is addressed.

If your veins are not working properly, you will notice that your legs begin to feel heavy throughout the day and that they are swelling due to the excess fluid in the area, you may develop an ulcer. Prevention for this type of ulcer is using compression stockings to assist or more aggressive compressive therapies. This will help the return of the blood and relieve the pressure on your veins.

Pressure ulcers result from inappropriate amounts of pressure to a particular area. This can occur in instances such as bed rest. Prevention for these include changing positions frequently to reduce pressure on the skin.

Smoking opens you up to ulcers because it ages the skin, causing it to thin and become dry. This predisposes the area to an ulcer. The best way to avoid these is to stop smoking. Smoking causes a wide array of medical problems to both the user and the people around them. Smoking is an addiction and can be very difficult to stop, but it is imperative to a healthy lifestyle that you do.

If you or someone you know living in the Dracut, Methuen, Lowell or North Andover, Massachusetts areas has an ulcer, our office staff would be more than happy to make you an appointment. We can be contacted at (978) 794-8406. Dr. Wachtel would be more than happy to help you with forming a treatment plan as well as suggesting prevention for the future.

Put Your Best Feet Forward This Election Day

The election for our next president is tomorrow and many people are still unsure who they should vote for. There have even been talks of people writing in for Mickey Mouse and Superman. Regardless of whom you decide to vote for come Election Day, one thing is for sure, as a nation, we need to put our best foot forward.

As you go throughout your daily schedule, we are often told that it is important to always put our best foot forward. From a podiatrist’s perspective though, you should really have two best feet to put forward at all times. Whenever you have injured one of your feet, it causes you to not be equal from one side to the other. This can result in a limp, large calluses forming on the bottom of your feet, extra stress on your tendons and ligaments and greater pain than usual on one foot or the other.

For these reasons, you will often hear your doctor say that the pain on one foot can be due to an injury of the other one. We often refer to this as favoring one foot because the other one is pain. This is why it is not uncommon for someone who has injured their Achilles tendon and is using a walking boot to treat it, to all of a sudden, a couple weeks down the road, begin to have pain in their other Achilles.

So, what can we do about this pain? Well, often times, the answer is going to be let us fix the underlying cause of your pain and the other symptoms should go away on their own. However, there are instances where people can significantly injure their other foot in the process of healing the first one. In these instances, it is important to treat both feet according to your doctor’s recommendations.

If you or someone you know has any type of foot injury, Dr. Wachtel would be more than happy to help you put your best feet forward. Our offices serve the North Reading, Lowell, Tewksbury and Dracut, Massachusetts areas. You can give us a call at (978) 794-8406 and our office staff would be more than happy to help you schedule an appointment.

Yellow, Thick, Fungus Nails

Do you have thick or yellow nails? This is due to nail fungus that is causing your nails to change color and to become thick. Unfortunately, fungus nails are very difficult to treat and often will not go away with typical treatments like creams and medications. Since these methods usually don’t work well, it often leaves you frustrated and not wanting to wear shoes that show your toenails. Don’t worry though, because there is another treatment plan that has shown a great deal of promise.

Laser therapy treatment is a relatively new innovation to come to the field of podiatry. It has several treatments including fungal nails, injured tendons and injured ligaments. Laser therapy makes use of specific wavelengths to jumpstart your injury into an acute, early injury stage removing it from the chronic state of injury it has been in. This part of the treatment helps to restore your nail to its normal state by decreasing the thickness of your nail and returning the color to normal. The other aspect of the treatment plan is that the laser therapy kills the fungus removing the infection that is causing the changes in your nails.

Since laser therapy is so new, many people are apprehensive about the treatment. However, there have not been any really serious contraindications to the treatment. Laser therapy should not be used on women that are pregnant and people that have a tumor in that area. The treatment itself varies in length depending on the individual and how severe your fungal infection is.

If you are interested in laser therapy for fungal nails or if you are having any other podiatric conditions, our office can be reached at (978) 794-8406. We would be more than happy to help you schedule an appointment so that Dr. Wachtel can discuss all of the treatment options available for you.  If you live in the Methuen, North Andover, Tewksbury or Lowell, Massachusetts area, we would be more than happy to see you and help you get back up on your feet.