Neuropathy

When your peripheral nerves are deprived of oxygen (anoxia), whether it is because of too much sugar or insulin in your blood can displace oxygen and make it unavailable to the cells. Sometimes inflammation in the lower back or sciatic nerve area of the buttocks can restrict blood flow. Common drugs like statins (to reduce cholesterol) can eat away the myelin sheath of the nerves which is composed mostly of cholesterol. High blood pressure medicine can cause neuropathy by decreasing blood flow at the extremities, like the feet or hands. In order to survive in this oxygen depleted environment, the nerve cells can temporarily shrink (atrophy) in order to present a smaller surface to the world and stay alive.

Inside your body, each nerve cell is separated from the adjacent cell by a synaptic junction and the shrinking of each cell because of lack of oxygen can increase this gap. A larger gap makes it harder for the electrical nerve impulse to get across. With peripheral neuropathy, once this gap inhibits peripheral nerve impulses, the minerals that are dissolved in the synaptic junction's fluid can leach out and this makes the fluid less conductive. Water alone does not conduct electricity - water needs minerals dissolved in it to make it conductive.

Most sufferers of peripheral neuropathy feel like their doctors do not fully understand what they are going through. It is hard to explain that we can feel numbness and pain, sometimes even at the same time! It can be discouraging to be prescribed anti-depressants. as if our discomfort was all "in our heads." Painful diagnostic tests and powerful pain killers only mask the pain, but does nothing for numbness.