Is Peripheral Neuropathy Inevitable if I Have Diabetes?

The 38.4 million Americans who are dealing with diabetes have to be more on guard when it comes to their health, given the potentially serious complications that are associated with this chronic disease.

One of the most common of these complications is diabetic peripheral neuropathy, which affects at least half of people with Type 2diabetes.

The extensive team at Michigan Avenue Primary Care includes experts in diabetes management, and we want to focus on diabetes-related peripheral neuropathy (PN), especially given that November is National Diabetes Month. Let’s take a look.

The road to diabetes

When you have diabetes, your body isn’t able to regulate the glucose levels in your bloodstream well, which creates an imbalance. Under normal circumstances, your pancreas produces insulin, a hormone that patrols your bloodstream to pick up glucose and deliver it to your cells, which need the sugar for energy. This action leads to healthy blood sugar levels.

With Type 2 diabetes, two issues typically arise:

1. Cells in your body become resistant to insulin
2. Your pancreas can’t create enough insulin to overcome the resistance

As a result, there’s too much glucose in your blood, which can lead to no small amount of damage to your cardiovascular system and peripheral nervous system, among other issues.

The road to nerve damage

Now let’s connect the dots between higher-than-normal levels of glucose and damage to your peripheral nerves. High levels of glucose can lead to several conditions that lead to nerve damage, such as:

• Damage to the small blood vessels that service your nerves
• Chemical changes in your nerves that affect signaling
• System-wide inflammation
• Oxidative stress

So, over time, high blood sugar levels can slowly cause malfunctions in your peripheral nerves. This complication typically affects the peripheral nerves that are farthest from your heart, such as those in your lower limbs and feet, as well as in your arms and hands.

This nerve damage is progressive and typically begins with mild numbness and tingling. As the neuropathy progresses, you can experience pain, as well as weakness, and you’re more vulnerable to diabetic foot ulcers. 

These ulcers affect one-third of people with diabetes, and half of these ulcers become infected. The last step in this trajectory is amputation — 20% of people with infected diabetic foot ulcers face partial or complete amputation of their affected foot.

Avoiding nerve damage

We just played out a worst-case scenario of peripheral neuropathy that ended in amputation. Now let’s improve this scenario.

Peripheral neuropathy isn’t an inevitable side effect of diabetes, but it’s a common complication. To avoid nerve damage, or at least contain it, we strongly urge you to be proactive about managing your diabetes with:

• Daily glucose monitoring
• Insulin therapies
• Improved nutritional practices
• Weight loss
• More exercise

These best practices are critical for side-stepping diabetic peripheral neuropathy and many of the other complications associated with the disease, up to and including serious heart disease.

So, if you’d like to maintain your peripheral nerve function and your overall health in the face of diabetes, a good place to start is to see us for the tools and resources you need to safeguard your health. To get the ball rolling, simply contact us at our clinic in Chicago, Illinois, located in The Loop. You can also visit our urgent care center during operating hours, Monday through Friday, 8 am to 4 pm.