Peripheral Neuropathy Solutions: Your first Visit
At All Seasons Integrative Health, your first visit for peripheral neuropathy in our office would consist of a consultation with the doctor, to determine whether or not you have peripheral neuropathy symptoms. If your peripheral neuropathy is treatable, then you can decide to move forward with a peripheral neuropathy exam.
Peripheral Nervous System Exam
With peripheral neuropathy, we need to evaluate the peripheral nervous system tissues like your reflexes, motor nerves, and sensory nerves. We'll be doing some testing including some thermography to determine how your autonomic nerves are functioning by seeing if there is some decreased blood flow. Especially in your extremities, specifically in your hands or feet. These tests are performed to determine where the affected nerve damage is present and what is causing peripheral neuropathies. Blood tests may be ordered to help rule out chemical, hormonal, metabolic disorders, or vitamin deficiencies.
We'll also want to do an evaluation to check your brain and spinal cord. Especially the nerve roots to make sure that there are no nerve root compressions going on to avoid further nerve damage. If your peripheral nerves are compressed at the nerve root in the spine, we would need to add some additional physical therapy treatment to address the brain and spinal cord at the nerve compression.
Next, we'll assess your peripheral nervous system all the way down the nerves from your lower back, to your hips down, to your feet as well as from your neck down to your shoulders and into your hands for nerve damage. We are looking for anything to show up reflecting muscle weakness.
Our muscle strength testing will reveal where there is a motor neuropathy like muscle weakness. As well as our sensory nerves assessment, detecting any sensory neuropathy affected nerve damage like a sensory loss that occurs with carpal tunnel syndrome. Other tests may be ordered that evaluate the peripheral nervous system for nerve pain, muscle pain, or myofascial trigger points that might be contributing to your peripheral neuropathy. We are looking for exactly where the root cause of your problem might be stemming from.
Neuropathic Pain
The typical peripheral neuropathy is sensory neuropathy, usually from diabetes. When a diabetic has high blood sugars for a long period of time, it can cause damage to the peripheral nerves due to the underlying cause: high blood sugar causing diabetic neuropathy. This ends up also causing nerve damage in the peripheral nerves and the nerve fibers themselves. Diabetic neuropathy is then actually caused by a chemical toxicity from the high blood sugar.
The sensory nerve tissue damage ends up giving symptoms of numbness and tingling sensations. That could be lead to burning sensations that doesn't go away. An example of how it feels is similar to when you've ever laid on your arm and your arm goes to sleep to the point where it's just completely numb. Then as you start to move your arm around it starts to wake up. You have a tingling, prickly kind of sensation, until it returns to normal sensation. But, before then you'll notice some intense, severe pain as the nerve compression starts to diminish.
The problem with peripheral neuropathy is that people can end up having this kind of chronic pain due to just the restriction of blood flow or in the diabetic case, having too much blood sugar that causes toxicity and damages the nerves. So we need to get some blood work done to make sure that you don't have diabetes or anything else that may cause peripheral neuropathy.
Neuropathic Pain: Peripheral Neuropathy Treatments
After we've taken you through the tests, the doctor then will outline a treatment plan for you which could consist of multiple different therapies. They will all be custom tailored to all of the symptoms you have going on and to all of the findings during the evaluation.
Low Level Laser Therapy - K Laser Treatment
A possible treatment could consist of K Laser Therapy, which is a class four laser. It helps significantly improve blood flow. The K Laser even helps regrow that nerve tissue and stimulates the cells down to the mitochondria. It can produce more energy to help restore your cells to as close to normal as we possibly can get.
Brain and Spinal Cord Therapy
Treatment of the brain and spinal cord might also include Spinal Decompression Therapy. If you have some nerves that are being affected or compressed at the spine, spinal decompression therapy can help remove that restriction and allow any of the nerves that were compressed to start to function normally again. This could bring back normal nerve health and help reduce any future problems that may be stemming from any issues in the spine or spinal cord.
Other treatments that may be done are vibration therapy. Vibration therapy helps to stimulate the proprioceptive nerve fibers. Which are nerve fibers that go to your muscles, tendons, ligaments, joint capsule, and joint synovium. The vibrations help get the proper signals going back and forth between the peripheral tissues, the spinal cord, and brain.
Wrapping it up
Other things that will be reviewed or ordered are blood tests for any kind of vitamin and mineral deficiencies that might have occurred. This will be evaluated and you will be given a specific nutritional supplement prescription or a dietary food change that could help restore your body's chemistry to normal and eventually getting you to optimal health.
Your treatment plan will be designed to give you the best results as fast as possible. Treatments will be outlined for you so that you will understand how long the treatment plan will be. How much the treatment plan will cost. If there's insurance involved, how much your insurance will reimburse, and what is your patient responsibility. That way before you even get started with any treatment, you will know what to expect. We want to get you to finally feel good and live your full potential, because you deserve it! To see a guide to peripheral neuropathy click here!
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Neuropathy
Class IV Laser Therapy
