Diabetic foot exercises and their impact on peripheral neuropathy among type 2 diabetes mellitus patients

Neuropathy is nerve damage that occurs mainly in the feet and hands on diabetes mellitus (DM) patients. High blood sugar over a long period of time will cause complications, one of which is damage to small blood vessels (microvasculature) such as diabetic neuropathy with an incidence of 45.6%. Diabetic foot exercise (DFE) is a non- pharmacological therapy to overcome this. DFE improves blood circulation, strengthens small leg muscles, increases insulin production which is used in glucose transport to cells. This study aims to explore the difference in the degree of neuropathy in type II DM patients between before and after receiving DFE therapy. The inquiry about plan utilized a Pre-Experiment Group Pretest-Posttest Plan with a population of 105 individuals and a sample of 26 individuals decided through Quota Sampling. The investigate instrument utilizing the Neuropathy System Score (NSS) questionnaire. Information was analyzed utilizing the Wilcoxon Sign Rank Test. The results of this research stated that the average degree of neuropathy for the group before DFE therapy = 6.5000 (moderate) and after = 4.4615 (mild). DFE therapy had a significant effect on reducing the degree of neuropathy in respondents (P-value = 0.000). Thus, DFE therapy can be recommended to be applied to type II DM patients as a complementary therapy that can help reduce the degree of neuropathy.