Today's post from neuropathydr.com (see link below) written by the ever-reliable Dr John Hayes Jr, looks at nutritional neuropathy; one of the more common causes of neuropathy, if you have ruled out most of the causes from other illnesses. Basically it means that you are suffering nerve damage from a lack of specific nutrients in your system and that comes from dietary deficiencies. The article explains how nutritional neuropathy works and offers various means to address it. Worth a read if you're worried that your diet and life-style choices may be contributing to your nerve damage.
Posted by john on July 25, 2016
If you’ve been diagnosed with neuropathy as a result of[1]
• Diabetes
• Cancer
• Lupus
• Shingles
• Exposure to toxins
• Lyme Disease
• HIV/AIDS
• Repetitive stress injury
We don’t need to tell you how miserable the symptoms can be…
If you
• Take your medication…
• Take precautions to account for muscles weakness or loss of strength in your arms and legs…
• Do whatever your doctor tells you to do and your symptoms still aren’t improving.
In addition to the neuropathy caused by your illness, you could be suffering from nutritional neuropathy.
What Causes Nutritional Neuropathy?
One of the leading causes of nutritional neuropathy is vitamin deficiency, especially Vitamin B12. If you don’t eat meat, dairy products or even fish, you might not be getting the vitamins you would normally get from those foods.
If, in addition to your underlying illness, you also suffer from
• Anemia
• Gastritis
• Crohn’s disease
• Other chronic digestive problem
Your body is probably not getting the nutrition it needs from what you’re eating. That can lead to nutritional neuropathy.
Any condition you have that affects your body’s ability to absorb the nutrients and vitamins from your food can lead to nutritional neuropathy. And that just makes a bad situation worse if you already have some other type of neuropathy caused by one of the illnesses we just mentioned.
How Nutritional Neuropathy Affects Your Body
Even though the name implies that nutritional neuropathy is linked to your digestive system, it can affect much more than that.
Your body runs on what you feed it. If your body isn’t getting the nutrition it needs, the malnutrition begins to affect every system in your body. Eventually it affects the peripheral nervous system. The nerves are damaged and no longer function properly.
If your nutritional neuropathy affects your autonomic nervous system, it can lead to problems with blood pressure, an inability to control your bladder or bowels, or even sexual dysfunction.
If your nutritional neuropathy affects your sensory nerves, you can have problems with your sense of touch – not just possibly an inability to feel sensation but a heightened sense of sensation. Imagine the sheets on your bed feeling like sand paper against your skin.
If your nutritional neuropathy affects your motor nerves, you can lose the ability to control your muscles, you could lose your balance and the muscle cramps you experience from your neuropathy can be even worse.
Even if your neuropathy is being treated with physical therapy or even drug therapies, you still need a healthy diet to give your body what it needs to heal.
If you want to give yourself the best possible chance of avoiding nutritional neuropathy, you need the right diet.
Good Nutrition Can Be Your Secret Weapon
The very first thing you need to do is make sure you’re giving your body the right tools to fight back against nutritional neuropathy. That means a healthy diet and managing your digestive condition.
Talk to your doctor, preferably a NeuropathyDR® clinician, about all of your underlying medical conditions. Your diet will not only need to include the vitamins and minerals, but you also need to take into account any digestive problems you may be experiencing that will prevent your body from absorbing the good stuff you put into it.
A healthy diet should include[2]:
• Whole grains and legumes to provide B vitamins to promote nerve health. Whole grains promote the production of serotonin in the brain and will increase your feeling of well-being.
• Fish and eggs for additional vitamins B12 and B1.
• Green, leafy vegetables (spinach, kale, and other greens) for calcium and magnesium. Both of these nutrients are vital to healthy nerve endings and health nerve impulse transmission and, as an added bonus, they give your immune system a boost.
• Yellow and orange fruits and vegetables (such as squash, carrots, yellow and orange bell peppers, apricots, oranges, etc.) for vitamins A and C to help repair your skin and boost your immune system.
• Sunflower seeds (unsalted), avocados, broccoli, almonds, hazelnuts, pine nuts, peanuts (unsalted), tomatoes and tomato products, sweet potatoes and fish for vitamin E to promote skin health and ease the pain of nutritional neuropathy.
• Ask your neuropathy specialist for recommendations on a good multivitamin and mineral supplement to fill in any gaps in your nutrition plan.
Foods you should avoid:
• Coffee and other caffeinated drinks.
• Fried foods and all other fatty foods. Fatty foods suppress the immune system and that’s the last thing you need when you’re fighting nutritional neuropathy.
• Control the amount of animal protein you eat. High-protein foods elevate the amount of dopamine and norepinephrine which are both tied to high levels of anxiety and stress.
• Avoid drinking alcohol. Alcohol consumption limits the ability of the liver to remove toxins from the body and can make a bad situation worse.
Talk to your local NeuropathyDR™ treatment specialist for a personalized diet plan to help you to help your body to heal with the right nutritional support for nutritional neuropathy and your digestive issues.
We hope this gives you some tips to get started on the road to putting nutritional neuropathy behind you. Working with your medical team, including your local NeuropathyDR™ specialist, to design a nutrition plan tailored to your specific needs is a great place to start.
For more information on recovering from nutritional neuropathy, get your Free E-Book and subscription to the Weekly Ezine “Beating Neuropathy” at http://neuropathydr.com.
[1] http://www.webmd.com/brain/understanding-peripheral-neuropathy-basics
[2] http://www.nutritionmd.org/health_care_providers/endocrinology/diabetes_complications_neuro.html
http://neuropathydr.com/nutritional-neuropathy/
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