How to Know When Nutrition Can Help With Numbness and Tingling

Nutrition can play a role when dealing with numbness and/or tingling in your hands and feet. So can posture, sleep, stress and repetitive injuries. So when do you know if you should look into diet and nutrition? To determine the underlying cause of your symptoms, a good practitioner will usually take a full history asking you many questions.

Often, it will help practitioners, and yourself, to journal all your symptoms. The following entries should be written down; what you ate, when you last ate, activities before symptoms appear, and what makes it better or worse. Journals are an easy way to see if nutrition, posture or something else is associated with numbness and tingling that you are experiencing. The abnormal sensations that you have such as numbness, tingling, burning or pain are termed peripheral neuropathy (PN). Peripheral Neuropathy (PN) is a condition caused by damage to the peripheral nervous system

There are different conditions in which nutrition may be indicated. One example would be blood sugar. Many people have numbness, tingling and burning in their limbs that are caused by blood sugar issues. The first task, if applicable, is to adopt a proper eating style. Reducing your blood sugar can have profound effects on numbness and tingling as well as many other aspects of health. If after changing dietary habits and not seeing results, a practitioner may want to use different types of herbs and nutrition to address the cause.

These types of supplement usually consist of ingredients like chromium, vanadium, pectin, alpha-lipoic acid, niacin, and certain types of mushrooms. High blood sugar can have negative effects on nerve function as it produces a chemical by product that causes oxidative stress. Oxidative stress can be nutritionally managed by antioxidants such as Vitamin E, Essential Fatty Acids, and Glutathione. However, the main priority is to maintain healthy blood sugar.

Stress is an epidemic that leads to a myriad of problems for a person. High constant Cortisol levels have a negative effect such as lowered immune system, fatigue, inflammation, and malabsorption. Often people with long-term stress can begin to exhibit numbness and tingling in their hands or feet. There are multiple indirect correlations as peripheral neuropathy can be a consequence of immune dysfunction, inflammation, and malabsorption. B12 deficiencies are one example of malabsorption possibly due to stress. B12 as well as other B vitamins play a role in maintaining proper nerve function.

Once again, first priority is to maintain proper Cortisol function through the reduction of stress. Stress comes from many different events such as occupation, physical (exercising and health), emotional, chemical (internal and external), food allergies, pathogens (bugs) and blood sugar problems. Once these situations are uncovered and addressed, nutrition may indeed play a role in supporting proper adrenal function as well as the underlying causes of stress. Nutritional and herbal support such as Phosphatidylserine, flower essence and licorice can be extremely effective.

What is the cause of your problems?

As discussed earlier, peripheral neuropath can be from stem from a wide range of causes. It is important to find the root cause. Thereby making it much easier to find the correct therapy, nutrition, or exercise to will reduce the insult being placed on the nerves. After discovering the insult, nutrition can accompany the different causes of peripheral neuropathy, whether it is repetitive stress or a problem with blood sugar regulation.

Nutrition can be a short-term aide while address other areas of concern, an example would be inflammation. Inflammation is a common problem because of injuries that one might sustain. While undergoing rehabilitative therapies, nutrition to address inflammation such as antioxidants, proteolytics, and even metabolic support can greatly reduce inflammation and improve the function of nervous system.

It is also important that you find a qualified practitioner to evaluate all aspect of your health and not to just focus on how to cover up the symptoms that you are experiencing. Many tests can help you understand if nutrition would be beneficial in your case. By understanding your body and writing down all the events during the day, it not only helps you but practitioners that are involved.

 

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Copyright © 2008. Dr. Shane Steadman, DC, DACNB, CCCN, Mountain Health Chiropractic & Neurology Center, LLC. All rights reserved. Do you struggle with the vast amount of information on peripheral neuropathy? Dr. Steadman is the expert on nutrition and therapies that could have you get back to doing the things you love. Subscribe to the Mountain Health Special Report to learn more ways to improve your life. Simply enter your information in the box on the left hand side of this page.

For more information how we can help you reduce your peripheral neuropathy symptons, give us a call today at 303-781-5617.

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