Dr. Chunyu is here to answer that question.

Chunyu Jun found that now a variety of health methods are endless, not only the elderly, more and more young people are also beginning to be enthusiastic about the way of health. Many people like to use hot water to soak their feet, and there are many foot bath institutions vigorously promote foot soaking for health.

Is foot soaking really so useful that it's worth everyone's active participation and long-term commitment?

I'm afraid that's not the case from a modern medical perspective.

Humans walk upright resulting in the feet and lower legs in a long-term low hanging position, arterial blood supply and venous return relatively poor. Hot water foot soak can make blood vessels dilate, promote blood circulation in the feet, improve the cold extremities, and to a certain extent, relieve the lower limbs muscle soreness and fatigue and other discomforts. But at the same time, the local temperature rise and increased blood flow will bring other effects, and is not suitable for everyone.

(Image source: 123rf Gallery)

These types of people need to be careful when soaking their feet:

1) Because too high water temperature may lead to excessive dilation of peripheral blood vessels in the feet and legs, and more blood rushes to the lower limbs, resulting in insufficient blood supply to the brain, heart and other organs. Therefore, for patients with coronary heart disease and cerebrovascular disease may induce insufficient blood supply to the heart or brain, triggering discomfort such as chest tightness, chest pain, dizziness, or even fainting.

2) Diabetic patients must be careful when soaking their feet. High blood sugar can produce long-term chronic damage to various tissues of the body, and diabetic patients tend to develop vascular and neuropathy, resulting in insufficient blood supply to tissues as well as sensory and motor nerve dysfunction.

The complication of diabetic foot is a concentrated manifestation of vascular and neuropathy, with foot ulcers, infections, deep tissue destruction, and in severe cases, amputation may be required. Diabetic patients for temperature and pain perception than normal people are impaired, easy to burn, ischemia, high blood sugar, nerve damage and other reasons will affect the healing ability of local tissues and resistance to infection, resulting in wounds that are not easy to heal and may be secondary to serious infections. Therefore, diabetic patients should not soak their feet in water too hot, not too long, once there is skin trauma, rupture or diagnosed lower extremity vascular, neuropathy, it is recommended not to soak their feet, so as not to lead to related complications.

(Image source: 123rf Gallery)

3) Lower limb arterial occlusion patients have arterial ischemia, hot water foot soaking can only increase the blood flow to normal tissues, the occluded arteries will not increase the blood supply, but due to more blood shunt to the normal blood vessels and aggravate the ischemia of the diseased area, so such patients should not be soaked in the foot and other forms of heat therapy.

4) Lower extremity varicose veins, lower extremity deep vein thrombosis patients with lower extremity venous blood return obstacles, hot water foot soak will make the lower extremity arterial dilatation, local blood flow increases, while the diseased veins of the blood return is still poor, aggravating blood stasis. At the same time, hot water will also lead to increased tissue oxygen consumption, aggravating tissue hypoxia. Therefore, hot water foot soaking is generally not recommended for these patients.

5) For normal people, the water temperature is too high, it is easy to destroy the sebaceous membrane on the surface of the foot skin, so that the stratum corneum is dry and cracked. For patients with foot inflammation, wounds, ringworm and other skin diseases, it is even more unsuitable for foot soaking, may be secondary infection, aggravate the condition and other situations.

I hope Dr. Chunyu's answer can help you, welcome to pay attention to the headline number [Dr. Chunyu] to get more health science knowledge yo.

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