Peripheral Neuropathy is the term used to describe disorders of the peripheral nerves. Even though over 20 million people in the U.S. suffer from this debilitating condition, accurate information about this multifaceted disorder is hard to come by.

Countless people continue to suffer needlessly simply because they are unaware that revolutionary advances in biotechnologies effectively treat and reverse damaged nerves.

Neuropathy means “disease or abnormality of the nervous system,” which is not a very helpful definition. We need to think of neuropathy as any actual damage that has been done to the nervous system.

While diabetes is one of the most frequent causes of peripheral neuropathy, there are other potential causes aside from diabetes:

• Chemo-induced neuropathy

• Autoimmune diseases

• Spinal stenosis

• Disc herniation and degenerative discs

• Poor circulation

• Shingles 

• Side effects from trauma/injury/accidents

• Lyme disease

• Idiopathic neuropathy

• Chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyradiculoneuropathy (CIDP)

• Multiple Sclerosis (MS)

There are two types of symptoms with peripheral neuropathy – negative and positive. Negative signs, which come first, are when damage to the nervous system brings about a loss of a particular function, for example:

• Loss of reflexes

• Loss of strength

• loss of sensation such as numbness

These negative signs are rarely detectable to the patient initially because the brain compensates for the difference in the losses as a form of protection.

Only after some time does sick and damaged nerves develop the positive signs of neuropathy:

• Tingling
• Burning
• Biting, Stabbing & Shooting Pains

This too is a brain-nervous system reaction, and unfortunately, this overreaction rips apart the fiber of the patients’ nerves doing further damage.

Each patient will describe their symptoms in their own individual language of “pain.”

This can easily confuse a doctor not trained in the recognition and treatment of neuropathy patients.

So the patient usually continues to suffer, going from doctor to doctor, to stronger and stronger doses of pills until they are either completely drugged up and “out of it” or lost in their own world of suffering.

Some neuropathies come on suddenly, others over many years. Many people are affected only by a weakness in the arms and legs that leads to difficulty standing, walking, or getting out of a chair.

The loss of sensation from the feet, ankles, and toes contributes to patients not having a “good sense” of where their feet are in space (if they are touching the ground, for example) and this causes them to fall very easily.

These under-recognized sensory losses can only be detected with a proper clinical exam. Premier Health of Summit has the necessary tools to uncover the underlying cause of this “silent” nerve damage.

Some patients will eventually become unable to walk at all. Others start with a tingling, pin-pricking feeling that turns into deep sharp stabbing pains and burning electric shocks.

These debilitating problems can also be at their worst at night while trying to sleep because the pain never goes away.

In fact, once started it only gets worse – frequently preventing people from getting around, losing mobility, and eventually requiring amputations.

Currently, ordinary medicine has no cure for peripheral neuropathy. The currently dispensed treatments for suffering patients do not treat nerve damage. They numb the brain and simply mask symptoms in an effort to numb the pain.

Most patients cannot tolerate a drugged existence but feel they have no other option against this horrifying pain.

Sadly, the pain medications eventually stop working as the nerve damage continues to progress.

Have other questions or need scheduling? Call or text
908.913.7508 or email support@go.drbriananderson.com

Doctors all over the world are telling patients suffering from peripheral neuropathy that “nothing can be done” or “you are going to have to live with it.” They believe that there is no help for patients suffering from the debilitating wrath of peripheral neuropathy.

This could not be further from the truth. According to the National Institute of Health, “peripheral nerves have the ability to regenerate as long as the underlying nerve cell has NOT been killed.”

What does this mean? “Not been killed”... it means that if you wait too long to where the nerve is dead, it cannot be helped. However, the truth is that as long as you have not sustained 85% nerve damage, you will most likely be able to get a 60-100% improvement in your condition.

The most commonly prescribed treatment for people suffering from neuropathy are anti-seizure medicines that were never created to treat neuropathy – they were created to treat epilepsy!

Essentially, these anti-seizure treatments slow down your brain so that you don’t feel the neuropathy symptoms you are experiencing.

For example, if you have burning sensations in your feet, these medicines will slow your brain down so that the pain signals coming from your feet will become muted, allowing you to think your condition is improving.

However, this approach does absolutely nothing to stop the progression of neuropathy.

Fortunately for you, if your doctor's treatments fail, it doesn't mean you're incurable... it just means your doctor was looking in the wrong place!

The majority of doctors tend to get so sidetracked focusing on the area involved that they overlook something incredibly obvious:

If you interfere with any systemic aspect of the nervous system, it can make you feel numbness, burning, tingling, pain, and weakness in other places – like your wrist, hands, arms, legs and feet.

So the key is to take a comprehensive, system-wide approach to identifying the root cause imbalances in what's known as functional neurology.

Have other questions or need help? Call or text 908.913.7508 or email support@go.drbriananderson.com