Neuropathy And Your Quality Of Life

Today's post from neuropathydr.com (see link below) talks about the quality of a person's life when they have neuropathic problems to deal with. Most doctors will only look at the physical aspects of neuropathy and only evaluate what can be proved scientifically (they may only have a limited time to do that) but the psychological effects and the effects on your quality of life are just as important. It's a no-brainer; a happier person will react better to treatment.
The article forms part of a large website promoting medical clinics but the information is well-sourced ,accurate and very helpful. Following the link to the original page will allow you to contact them if you wish.

Peripheral Neuropathy and Your Quality of Life

If you’re suffering from peripheral neuropathy, you know how much it affects your life.

Every single day…

Even the simplest tasks can be difficult if not impossible…

To anyone unfamiliar with peripheral neuropathy and its symptoms, they might just think “your nerves hurt a little…”

But at a peripheral neuropathy sufferer, you know better…

Peripheral neuropathy not only affects your health, it can wreck your quality of life.

How Do You Define Quality of Life?
Generally speaking, Quality of Life is a term used to measure a person’s overall well-being. In medical terms, it usually means how well a patient has adapted to a medical condition. It measures[1]:

• Your physical and material well being
• Your social relationships – how you interact with others
• Your social activities
• Your personal fulfillment – your career, any creative outlets you may have, how involved you are with other interests)
• Your recreational activities – your hobbies, sports, etc.
• Your actual health – what your health is really like and how healthy you believe you are

How do you feel about these aspects of your life? Your attitude and approach to your illness, both your neuropathy and the underlying cause of your neuropathy (i.e., diabetes, HIV/AIDS, lupus, etc.) can make a huge difference in how well you adapt to your neuropathy symptoms.
Neuropathy Symptoms Aren’t Just Physical
The pain of peripheral neuropathy falls into the category of what is considered chronic pain. It usually doesn’t just come and go. You can’t just pop a couple of aspirin and forget about it. It’s pain with its root cause in nerve damage.
The nerves that actually register pain are the actual cause of the pain. When you’re in that kind of pain on a consistent basis, it affects you in many different ways[2]:

• You become depressed and/or anxious
• Your productivity and interest at work is disrupted
• You can’t sleep
• It’s difficult for you to get out and interact with other people so you feel isolated
• You sometimes don’t understand why you’re not getting better

What You Can Do To Improve Your Quality of Life
You may feel like your situation is hopeless, especially if you’ve become mired in depression.
But it isn’t.
There are things you can do to lessen the physical (and emotional) effects of peripheral neuropathy and help you function as normally as possible:

• Pay special attention to caring for your feet. Inspect them daily for cuts, pressure spots, blisters or calluses (use a mirror to look at the bottom of your feet). The minute you notice anything out of the ordinary, call your doctor or your local NeuropathyDR® clinician for help. Never go barefoot – anywhere.
• Treat yourself to a good foot massage to improve your circulation and reduce pain. Check with your insurance company – if massage is actually prescribed by your doctor, they may cover some of the cost.
• Only wear shoes that are padded, supportive and comfortable and never wear tight socks.
• If you smoke, quit. Nicotine decreases circulation and if you’re a peripheral neuropathy patient, you can’t risk that.
• Cut back on your caffeine intake. Several studies have found that caffeine may actually make neuropathy pain worse.
• If you sit at a desk, never cross your knees or lean on your elbows. The pressure will only make your nerve damage worse.
• Be really careful when using hot water. Your peripheral neuropathy may affect the way you register changes in temperature and it’s really easy for you to burn yourself and not even realize it.
• Use a “bed cradle” to keep your sheets away from your feet if you experience pain when trying to sleep. That will help you rest.
• Try to be as active as possible. Moderate exercise is great for circulation and it can work wonders for your emotional and mental health.
• Make your home as injury proof as possible – install bath assists and/or hand rails and never leave anything on the floor that you can trip over.
• Eat a healthy, balanced diet. If you don’t know what you should and shouldn’t eat, talk to your NeuropathyDR® clinician about a personalized diet plan to maintain proper weight and give your body what it needs to heal.
• Try to get out as often as possible to socialize with others.

We hope this information helps you to better manage your peripheral neuropathy symptoms. Take a look at the list above and see how many of these things you’re already doing to help yourself. Then talk to your local NeuropathyDR® clinician about help with adding the others to your daily life.

http://neuropathydr.com/blog/general-information-on-nd-protocols/peripheral-neuropathy-and-your-quality-of-life-2/

EARLY ANTIBIOTIC EXPOSURE LEADS TO LIFE LONG METABOLIC DISTURBANCE IN MICE

A new study published in Cell suggests that antibiotic exposure during a critical window of early development disrupts the bacterial landscape of the gut, home to trillions of diverse microbes, and permanently reprograms the body's metabolism, setting up a predisposition to obesity. Moreover, the study shows that it is altered gut bacteria, rather than the antibiotics, driving the metabolic effects.

The new study by NYU Langone Medical Center researchers reveals that mice given lifelong low doses of penicillin starting in the last week of pregnancy or during nursing were more susceptible to obesity and metabolic abnormalities than mice exposed to the antibiotic later in life.

Most intriguing, in a complementary group of experiments, mice given low doses of penicillin only during late pregnancy through nursing gained just as much weight as mice exposed to the antibiotic throughout their lives.

"We found that when you perturb gut microbes early in life among mice and then stop the antibiotics, the microbes normalize but the effects on host metabolism are permanent," says senior author Martin Blaser, MD, the Muriel G. and George W. Singer Professor of Translational Medicine, director of the NYU Human Microbiome Program, and professor of microbiology at NYU School of Medicine. "This supports the idea of a developmental window in which microbes participate. It's a novel concept, and we're providing direct evidence for it."

The researchers stress that more evidence is needed before it can be determined whether antibiotics lead to obesity in humans, and the present study should not deter doctors from prescribing antibiotics to children when they are necessary. "The antibiotic doses used in this study don't mirror what children get," says Laura M. Cox, PhD, a postdoctoral fellow in Dr. Blaser's laboratory and the lead author of the study. "But it has identified an early window in which microbes can influence metabolism, and so further studies are clearly warranted."

In one experiment in the study, Dr. Cox administered water with low doses of penicillin to three groups of mice. One group received antibiotics in the womb during the last week of pregnancy and continued the medication throughout life. The second group received the same dose of penicillin after weaning and, like the first group, continued it throughout life. The third received no antibiotics. "We saw increased fat mass in both penicillin groups, but it was higher in the mice who received penicillin starting in the womb," Dr. Cox says. "This showed that mice are more metabolically vulnerable if they get antibiotics earlier in life."

The treated mice also grew fatter than the untreated mice when both were fed a high-fat diet. "When we put mice on a high-calorie diet, they got fat. When we put mice on antibiotics, they got fat," explains Dr. Blaser. "But when we put them on both antibiotics and a high-fat diet, they got very, very fat." Normally, adult female mice carry three grams of fat. The animals in the study fed the high-fat diet had five grams of fat. By comparison, the mice who received antibiotics plus the high-fat chow packed on 10 grams of fat, accounting for a third of their body weight. The treated rodents were not only fatter but also suffered elevated levels of fasting insulin, and alterations in genes related to liver regeneration and detoxification -- effects consistent with metabolic disorders in obese patients.

This work confirms and extends landmark research published by Dr. Blaser's lab in 2012 in Nature. That research showed that mice on a normal diet who were exposed to low doses of antibiotics throughout life, similar to what occurs in commercial livestock, packed on 10 to 15 percent more fat than untreated mice and had a markedly altered metabolism in their liver.

Among the unanswered questions in that study was whether the metabolic changes were the result of altered bacteria or antibiotic exposure. This latest study addresses the question by transferring bacterial populations from penicillin-exposed mice to specially bred germ-free, antibiotic-free mice, starting at three weeks of age, which corresponds to infancy just after weaning. The researchers discovered that mice inoculated with bacteria from the antibiotic-treated donors were indeed fatter than the germ-free mice inoculated with bacteria from untreated donors. "This shows us that the altered microbes are driving the obesity effects, not the antibiotics," says Dr. Cox.

Contrary to a longstanding hypothesis within the agricultural world that holds that antibiotics reduce total microbial numbers in the gut, therefore reducing competition for food and allowing the host organism to grow fatter, the team found that the penicillin did not, in fact, diminish bacterial abundance. It did, however, temporarily suppress four distinct organisms early in life during the critical window of microbial colonization:Lactobacillus, Allobaculum, Candidatus Arthromitus, and an unnamed member of theRikenellaceae family, which may have important metabolic and immunological interactions. "We're excited about this because not only do we want to understand why obesity is occurring, but we also want to develop solutions," says Dr. Cox. "This gives us four potential new candidates that might be promising probiotic organisms. We might be able to give back these organisms after antibiotic treatments."

The researchers worked with six different mouse models over five years to obtain their results. To identify bacteria, they used a powerful molecular method that involves extracting DNA and sequencing a subunit of genetic material called 16S ribosomal DNA. Altogether, the scientists evaluated 1,007 intestinal samples, which yielded more than 6 million sequences of bacterial ribosomal genes, the order of the nucleotides that spell out DNA. Studies like these are possible because of technological advances in high-throughput sequencing, which allows scientists to survey microbes in the gut and other parts of the body. The Genome Technology Center at NYU Langone Medical Center played a key role in identifying the genetic sequences in the study.

Life With Neuropathy Personal Video Vid

Listen to this Youtube video account - you'll all have been there and struggled just the same in dealing with neuropathy and wondering what the best approach is. Rachelmarye is trying to avoid drugs in favour of as many natural treatments as possible including exercise and diet.

Neuropathy SUCKS :(
rachelmarye Published on 11 Sep 2014

 

We like to call these videos our homemade reality show. No scripts and no fake celebrities! We are as real as you can get. These are our videos all about how we live our lives as a military couple. We met and married in Hawaii, then moved to Kentucky, and now we live in Georgia! Come hang out with us, kick back, relax and have fun! Don't forget to SUBSCRIBE!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQe8cuo6D1o

Managing Neuropathy In Daily Life

Today's post from painhq.org (see link below) is a personal neuropathy story that will undoubtedly resonate with many readers. The writer has severe neuropathy in his feet and legs and like so many, has had to develop strategies to learn to live with the pain and discomfort. He offers no miracle cures but concludes that maybe the best we can do, is to be kind to ourselves and find small ways to make life easier. Worth a read - it may put your own case in perspective.

Managing my pain, managing my feet
J. Hawthorne

Figuring out how to manage your neuropathy can be a long, slow process. When you think you’ve got it figured out, something can change and you have to adjust your pain management strategies.
I am 59 years young and have had Type 2 Diabetes for the past 15 years. But that’s not where my journey began. I first noticed a problem when I developed a very sharp, persistent, pain in the corner of the big toe of my left foot. Slowly, the pain progressed to the top of my foot. Eventually, it spread to my right foot, to my ankles and my lower legs. The pain changed from the feeling of sharp pin points to larger throbbing areas on the top of my feet. After a visit to my doctor, we determined that I had neuropathic pain.

It wasn’t until three or four years later that I was diagnosed with diabetes. We were then able to narrow my pain diagnosis to diabetic neuropathy. The neuropathy has since spread and it’s beginning to affect my hands and my fingers.
Looking for treatment My first form of treatment for the neuropathy was actually through a research trial at a hospital in Kingston, through Queen’s University. I believe the trial was looking at a combination of the drugs gabapentin and duloxetine (Cymbalta). My experience with the trial was great; someone would check in with me every three days or so to see how the drugs were working and what my pain levels were like. We’d adjust the medications based on what was or wasn’t working. That trial lasted for three months.

I’ve tried some alternatives to manage pain. I had a naturopath who would give me ionic foot baths. The salts turned the water to a rust colour and it was supposed to help take some of the iron out of my body. I can’t say I found this helpful. But it did make me think about everything going on in my body that I might not even be aware of.

I still take gabapentin. I take it twice a day, to get the maximum allowed daily dosage. Though I’m in a bit of a transition period. My doctor retired and I’m waiting for my new doctor to take up his practice. Once I start seeing him, I might explore other treatment options.

Balancing a day and trying to sleep; simple things, like visiting a friend for tea, are affected by my neuropathy. I might have to stand for half of the visit to rock my feet, or pace, in order to manage the pain. For me, it’s about keeping my body moving and to keep stretching my feet out. Of course, there’s a balance; if I’m too active, and push myself too far, I can cause a bout of pain lasting two to three hours. Building in time for extra rests and breaks between commitments is critical.

In a 24-hour period, I might experience six hours of extreme pain (four of which occur at night). I don’t sleep very much at night, that’s when the pain is the worst. When I tell people I don’t sleep in my bed, they think I’m joking. More often I’m sleeping on the living room floor with my feet propped up on my chesterfield. Sometimes the elevation doesn’t help and I just need to walk it off. Winter is harder because I can’t exactly go for a walk at 2 am through all the snow and ice. Sometimes I’ll pace in my kitchen doing dishes, or I’ll do a few loads of laundry. Every once in a while, when I have a good night, I’ll sleep until noon.

My feet almost always feel tight and uncomfortable. Some days are absolutely great and others are extremely uncomfortable. I decided to retire a year earlier than originally planned. I was having extreme amounts of difficulty managing my blood sugar count. It was hard to focus, I was concerned about my vision and there was so much pain.

My neuropathy doesn’t seem to be tied to better management of my diabetes. Though I do feel better since having bariatric surgery. I’ve been able to reduce some of the drugs I use to manage my diabetes. I’ve been able to get more involved in my community and get out a bit more.

Finding support I heard about a neuropathy support group from an ad on TV. I’ve been involved with them for 3 or 4 years now and I find that it helps. The support group has different speakers come in – pharmacists, massage therapists, doctors. They all share different ways of dealing with pain.

It’s also good to connect with people. Because everyone’s in pain, we all have a common denominator. While our neuropathy may not all be the same, there’s always someone who understands it and we can share what has or hasn’t worked over the years.

My advice for anyone newly diagnosed with neuropathic pain?
Figuring out how to manage your neuropathy can be a long, slow process. When you think you’ve got it figured out, something can change and you have to adjust your pain management strategies.
You need to be good to yourself – exercise and watch your diet. Try and get out and be active in your community or with your church. Sometimes this can take your mind off of your pain. In general, be kind to yourself. 

https://www.painhq.org/connect/personal-stories/detail/managing-my-pain-managing-my-feet