Peripheral means nerves further out from the center of the body, distant from the brain and spinal cord. Neuro means nerves and pathy means abnormal, indicating disease.
Nerves are the communication lines of the body. Electrical signals from the brain travel through the nerves and give instructions to various parts of the body. The body receives information from the environment through the senses and sends this information to the brain via the nerves.
The majority of peripheral nerves are responsible for sensations you feel such as touch, pain and temperature. There are literally millions of these nerve-endings in your fingers, hands, toes and feet which are designed to keep you out of danger and away from the things that are hot, cold, and sharp etc.
Nerve damage or neuropathy normally occurs when the outer sheathing or the myelin (protective covering) of nerve cells degenerates. Without this protection the electrical signals are not transferred properly.
These symptoms depend on the type of nerves — motor, sensory, or autonomic — that are damaged. Some people may experience numbness, tingling, and pricking sensations, sensitivity to touch, or muscle weakness. It is the cause of numbness in the fingers and even left arm pain and tingling.
Numbness, pain, or tingling in the feet and ankles, or legs may, after several years, lead to weakness in the muscles of the feet and burning feet.
Others may suffer more extreme symptoms including burning pain (especially at night), muscle wasting, paralysis, or organ or gland dysfunction. Small fiber neuropathy affects the nerve endings in the fingers or toes.
Diabetic neuropathy can flare up suddenly and affect specific nerves so that an affected individual develops double vision or drooping eyelids, or weakness and atrophy of the thigh muscles. Nerve damage caused by diabetes generally occurs over a period of years and may lead to problems with the digestive tract and sexual organs, which can cause indigestion, diarrhea or constipation, dizziness, bladder infections, and impotence.
These nerves in our hands and feet also help us to control numerous small muscles and intricate movements in these regions of the body. It would also be difficult to walk without knowing what our feet are standing on or to pick things up if we had no idea how hard we were gripping something.
The sad fact is that after a while this misfiring of the nerves can get so bad that people are unable to walk or pick things up and can get to a point where they would rather have a limb amputated then continue with this nerve pain.
There are three types of peripheral nerves: motor, sensory and autonomic. Motor nerves send impulses from the brain and spinal cord to all of the muscles in the body. This enables people to do activities like walking, catching a ball, or moving the fingers to pick something up. Motor nerve damage can lead to muscle weakness, difficulty in walking or moving the arms, cramps, and spasms.
The sensory nerves send messages in the other direction — from the muscles back to the spinal cord and the brain. Special sensors in the skin and deep inside the body help people identify if an object is sharp, rough, or smooth, if it’s hot or cold, or if a body part is still or in motion. Sensory nerve damage often results in tingling, numbness, pain, and extreme sensitivity to touch.
The autonomic nerves control involuntary or semi-voluntary functions, such as heart rate, blood pressure, digestion, and sweating. When the autonomic nerves are damaged, a person’s heart may beat faster or slower. They may get dizzy when standing up, sweat excessively, or have difficulty sweating at all. In addition, autonomic nerve damage may result in difficulty in swallowing, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea or constipation, problems with urination, abnormal pupil size, and sexual dysfunction.
Most commonly, it is diabetics that suffer from this type of nerve pain and it is a major complication of the disease. It is the higher than normal sugar levels that creates the damage. Chronic neuropathy can start when your nerves are deprived of oxygen or anoxia.
Too many free radicals in your bloodstream can also attach themselves to the oxygen and make it unavailable to the cells. There are many reasons apart from diabetes which may cause peripheral neuropathy and it is sometimes a combination of reasons, some of which are listed here: Alcoholism, metabolic disorder, autoimmune disorders, Bell’s palsy, cancer, cancer treatments, chemotherapy, kidney failure, pressure on an area, rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, foods that are toxic, herniated disc, infectious disease (e.g., Lyme disease, HIV/AIDS, hepatitis B), leprosy, liver failure, side effect of different medicines, radiation treatment, surgeries that damage a nerve, vitamin deficiencies, anemia, zinc induced copper deficiency etc.
Most people with neuropathy are only treating the feeling of pain and not the cause of the problem.
The medicines like Lyrica and Cymbalta attempt to cover up only the feeling of pain. And they have their side-effects. Additionally, Cymbalta is an anti-depressant that very often is difficult to get off. Other electronic devices (infrared) that merely heat the feet have been tried unsuccessfully.
Homeopathic system of medicine has a better solution. Unlike allopathic medicine, homeopathy considers neuropathy a reversible condition. The writer has, by the grace of Allah, successfully treated many chronic cases of neuropathy.
Dr Asghar Ali Shah
Homeopathic Physician
dr_asghar_shah@yahoo.com