What you should know about Diabetic Neuropathy and How a Podiatrist Can Help You

Is the most common type of diabetic neuropathy. It affects your outer body parts, including your feet, legs, hands, and arms. The most common symptoms are numbness, pain, a pins-and-needles sensation, numbness, weakness and tingling in hands, legs, feet and lower body parts.
Treatment: Include antidepressants, pain medications, anti-seizure medications, and pain-relieving creams.

Affects some of your body’s organ systems. This includes your heart and blood vessels, digestive system, urinary tract, sexual organs, sweat gland, and eyes. Here are some symptoms of nerve damage to key parts of your nervous system. Feeling dizzy, lightheaded, difficulty swallowing, nausea, vomiting, bloating, constipation, and episodes of severe diarrhea, low sex drive, controlling urination or feeling the urge to go frequently, difficulty reading, trouble seeing in the dark.

Treatment: Modifying your diet, medications to help your stomach empty that your doctor can prescribe as well as medications to ease constipation, medications to ease diarrhea and antidepressants.

Focal Neuropathy

Affects a specific nerve or area at any site in the body. The most common symptoms are inability to focus the eye, sometimes double vision and aching behind one eye, paralysis on one side of the face which is known as Bell’s palsy. Severe pain in the lower back or pelvis, pain in the front of a thigh, pain in the chest, stomach, or side and pain on the outside of the shin or inside of the foot.

Treatment: Antidepressants, anticonvulsants, topical medications that may bring pain relief include capsaicin cream and Lidocaine patches and most importantly treating the underlying cause.