The peripheral nervous system is made up of the nerves that branch out of the spinal cord to all parts of the body.

Peripheral nerve cells have three main parts:

Any part of the nerve can be affected but damage to axons is most common. The axon transmits signals from nerve cell to nerve cell and nerve cell to muscle. Most axons are surrounded by a substance call myelin, which facilitates signal transmission. When the myelin gets worn down, nerve cell signals get interrupted.

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 and 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 do sick and damaged nerves develop the positive signs of neuropathy; tingling, burning, biting, stabbing and shooting pains. This too is a brain-nervous system reaction, and unfortunately, this over reaction 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.

Currently, ordinary medicine has no cure for Peripheral Neuropathy. The extremely powerful drugs currently dispensed to suffering patients do not treat the 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.