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Peripheral neuropathy is a frustrating, painful, and sometimes disabling condition that affects millions of people across the world. Now, if you're one of those people, I promise you need to watch this video until the very end, because it's going to help you. If there is a chance to slow down the progression of your neuropathy, to actually stop the progression, to reverse the progression, or even to completely reverse your neuropathy, the answer is contained in this video. I'm Dr. Ken Berry, a family physician with 20 years of clinical experience, and this video is going to help you with your peripheral neuropathy. Peripheral neuropathy is so pervasive that I guarantee several of your friends and family members already suffer from it, so please consider sharing this video on your social media, on your Twitter, your Instagram, your Facebook, because watching this video might help someone understand the root causes of peripheral neuropathy, and with that knowledge they can then begin to slow down the progression, reverse it, or even cure it.
So first, let's get out of the way things that are definitely not going to help, because people spend money every day on products that are promoted to help peripheral neuropathy, and I'm going to give you the short list of stuff you can save your money on. These are wasted money, and you don't need to buy them ever, because they don't even address the root cause of the neuropathy. They're going to waste your money and they're not going to fix anything. Anything that you rub on externally: if you have peripheral neuropathy in your feet, toes, or legs, and someone is selling a cream, a salve, a lotion, or a balm that you rub on your skin and this is somehow supposed to help the peripheral neuropathy, that's foolishness. That's a waste of money and it's never going to help.
I've actually seen lauded doctors and experts out there say that you should decrease your salt intake or decrease your saturated fat intake. Not only is there no research to back this up, but it actually goes against the actual neurological physiology in the human body. Your nerves need salt, and they are made of fat, so these two recommendations are foolishness. Some people say that taking a certain multivitamin or a certain vitamin complex is going to cure your neuropathy. That never does work. It might help a tiny bit if you have a vitamin or mineral deficiency, but if you don't have one of those deficiencies, that's not going to help at all. You'll see nerve support formulas out there that come in capsules, pills, and maybe even shakes and powders. This is another complete and utter waste of money. You don't need any of these things. The things I talked about above are not going to help your peripheral neuropathy at all.
There are a few prescription medications that will help the symptoms of peripheral neuropathy: the burning, the itching, the aching, the pain, and the numbness. But they in no way address the root cause, and each one of these has a long list, not of possible side effects, but of probable side effects. You're going to have side effects if you take one of these medications. They include Lyrica, Neurontin, amitriptyline, and Tegretol. Some of these are medications for seizure disorders, and most are for depression or mood disorders. They will knock the edge off your symptoms, but in no way will they cure, reverse, or slow down the progression of your neuropathy.
Now let's go through the list of things that are known to cause peripheral neuropathy. I'm going to start with the least likely. These are the one-in-a-thousand or one-in-a-hundred things that might be causing some of your neuropathy, or in the very rare individual might be causing the majority of the neuropathy. These are the very rarest of causes. I'm not saying all these things are super rare; I'm just saying they're probably not what's causing your peripheral neuropathy. They include alcoholism, if you drink alcohol for too many years; amyloidosis; chemotherapy, which can lead to neuropathy; toxic levels of heavy metals, which can lead to neuropathy; porphyrias; diseases of the autonomic nervous system; B12 deficiency, which can absolutely cause peripheral neuropathy; idiopathic polyneuropathy, and you may know from other videos on this channel that idiopathic means we don't know what the heck is causing it, but at least they can put a diagnosis on it; paraneoplastic syndromes, so if you have cancer in a specific location in your body, that can lead to some peripheral neuropathies; Lyme disease, a rare but known cause of peripheral neuropathies; sarcoidosis; and small vessel vasculitis. Any of these things can lead to peripheral neuropathy.
Now let's talk about the most common causes. These are the ones you want to focus on, because probably 90% of peripheral neuropathy in the world is caused by one of these things, and they really boil down to two different things, which I'll get into after I name this list. Diabetes is absolutely a huge cause of neuropathy, and so is hyperglycemia. Pre-diabetes is also a cause. Years before you develop type 2 diabetes, when you're in the very earliest stages of pre-diabetes, you can be developing neuropathy. In fact, that's how many people are diagnosed with type 2 diabetes: they go to the doctor and say, "Doc, my feet are burning and I don't know why." Chronic hyperinsulinemia, which is part of pre-diabetes and also part of the next one, metabolic syndrome, can absolutely cause it too. Chronic inappropriate inflammation, just chronic inflammation caused by your diet or something else entering your system, leads to chronic inappropriate inflammation, and that inflammation can attack your small nerve endings in your feet, toes, legs, hands, arms, and other parts of your body. Autoimmune conditions also play a role. If your immune system is strong but confused about where the boundary between you and not-you begins, your immune system can actually start to attack your nerve endings.
So the hyperglycemia that comes from type 1 diabetes, type 2 diabetes, and pre-diabetes, and the hyperinsulinemia that comes years before pre-diabetes even starts, is the problem. This chronically high blood sugar, or multiple spikes of high blood sugar every time you eat an inappropriate meal for you, actually glycates the proteins on the myelin sheath of the little nerves out in your periphery. The longer a nerve is, the more likely it is to be affected. When your myelin sheath is glycated, your immune system comes along, your macrophages start to say, "Hey, this doesn't look right, there shouldn't be a glycated protein right here," and they start to phagocytize it, or engulf it, and actually destroy your nerve ending. So you've got the perfect storm: hyperglycemia leading to glycation, and then your immune system, which is confused because there's a weird glycation on a protein that shouldn't be there, starts to attack that with chronic inappropriate inflammation. That's the second big arm of this. You will actually start to have inflammation around the arteries, because your immune system is confused by all this inflammation everywhere, all the time, every day, so it starts to attack parts of you that it shouldn't. In some people this manifests as Hashimoto's thyroiditis, in some as lupus, Sjögren's, or the other autoimmune conditions, and type 1 diabetes, where the immune system attacks the beta cells in the pancreas. In some people, your immune system starts to attack your small nerves out in the periphery of your body, in your legs and arms, and that destroys the nerve cells.
You may have heard of phantom limb pain. If someone has an arm or leg cut off in a trauma, or cut off because of severe uncontrolled diabetes, they can actually have phantom pain out in that foot that's no longer there. From this example we know that nerve pain can often come from the absence of a signal. Your nerves, from your smallest toe to your biggest toe to your leg, are always communicating with your brain, sending the "okay" signal back and forth. If your brain is not getting an "okay" signal from your toe, because hyperglycemia or chronic inappropriate inflammation in the immune response has destroyed that nerve, at some point your body manifests that as pain, even though there's nothing technically wrong with an amputated foot. The foot can't be giving you pain anymore, but you're still getting a pain signal. All of this works together to lead to peripheral neuropathy.
Now let's talk about the testing you need. Ninety percent of the testing you need is going to be right up top in this list, and then I'll talk about the less common and more esoteric causes. Right off the bat, you need a hemoglobin A1c and C-peptide, both checked immediately, to see what your glycemic situation is: where you are with pre-diabetes, hyperglycemia, or type 2 diabetes, so you can start to reverse it. You need a complete metabolic panel. You need a CBC with differential. You need an ESR (sed rate) and a CRP. You need a vitamin B12 level check, because B12 can lead to peripheral neuropathy or worsen it, or be caused by some other cause. You need a complete thyroid panel, and I talked about all the testing this entails in other videos on this channel; if you search "Dr. Berry thyroid" on YouTube, you should find it. You also need a GGT and a hepatitis panel. Sometimes people with chronic hepatitis that has never been diagnosed go to the doctor complaining of burning in their feet, toes, and legs, and that's how the hepatitis is discovered. You need a VDRL test, which tests for syphilis. Syphilis is the great imitator; it can present with virtually any symptom whatsoever, peripheral neuropathy being one of them. You need heavy metal testing, and there are usually two panels of heavy metal testing, so ask your healthcare provider for both heavy metal panels so you catch any toxicity you may have. Outside the lab, you may undergo electrodiagnostic studies and even nerve biopsies and skin biopsies, looking at the small nerve fibers in those biopsies. You probably won't make it all the way down the list. You'll likely find the reason for your peripheral neuropathy high up on this list, but if your doctor can't find the cause, you may keep going down the list until you've had the full set of these tests done.
So after all that, what actually works? What actually helps peripheral neuropathy? Multiple studies show this. I've put links to all the research I used in creating this video in the show notes below. I don't want you to ever blindly believe me or anyone else. I want you to check it out for yourself. Here are the things that absolutely do help the most. I'll start with the least likely to help and talk about things that are going to help 80 or 90 percent of people with peripheral neuropathy. Making sure that, either in your diet or in a supplement, you're getting an excellent source of all the B vitamins is absolutely vital. You have to have that for proper nerve function. Making sure you're getting enough magnesium and potassium, either in your diet, a supplement, or both, is vital. Making sure you're getting enough vitamin D is important, and if you take a vitamin D supplement, use vitamin D3, not vitamin D2. Then make sure you're getting plenty of omega-3 fatty acids, preferably from your diet. If you must take an omega-3 fatty acid capsule, that's your choice. I actually have videos on this channel about good dietary sources of all of these things that you can watch, because I'd much rather you eat real food and get your omega-3s, vitamin D, potassium, and magnesium than just take a supplement and ignore your diet.
Now let's talk about the two things that are absolutely going to slow down, reverse, or completely cure peripheral neuropathy in the majority of people. There will be exceptions if you have one of the weird causes I talked about earlier, but for 80 or 90 percent of people, you're having hyperglycemia, chronic inappropriate inflammation, and a confused immune system. Those are the three major causes of at least the majority of peripheral neuropathy pain. Diet: you absolutely need to transform your diet, slowly or quickly depending on how severe your symptoms are, from whatever you're eating now to a very low carbohydrate diet. You need to get all the sugar, both added and natural, out of your diet, because that spikes your blood sugar. You need to get all the grains out of your diet, wheat, rice, oats, corn, and the rest, because they break down immediately into sugar, which spikes your blood sugar. Remember hyperglycemia. If you're eating low carb, that's fine with me. If you're eating a keto diet, that's going to work too. If you're eating a carnivore diet, that's going to work too. Your diet is really the most important thing you can change to help lessen your symptoms of peripheral neuropathy.
Then fasting. If you have moderate to severe peripheral neuropathy symptoms, you absolutely need to ramp up your daily fasting as quickly as you can, from the eight hours you fast while you're asleep, to a 14 to 20 hour daily fast. When you get up to 14 hours a day and do that for a while, you're going to start to notice an improvement. The higher you're able to ramp it, 16, 18, or 20 hours, the quicker you'll notice improvement. Keep in mind that nerves grow very slowly, and nerves regrow very slowly. If hyperglycemia caused glycation, and that led your phagocytes to come in and destroy a tiny nerve ending in your toe or foot, causing peripheral neuropathy pain, going low-carb, keto, or carnivore won't fix that overnight. It's going to take weeks or months for that nerve to regrow and find the other end it lost when it was interrupted. So don't expect overnight results. That's not how the human body works when it comes to nerve physiology. Nerves regrow very, very slowly, and it may take several months. But if you suffer from severe peripheral neuropathy, I don't have to tell you that if anything makes it better, it's worth waiting a while for that improvement. I've actually had contact with patients in the past who committed suicide because their peripheral neuropathy was so severe and so disabling.
I try to post at least three new videos on this channel every week, so please consider clicking the subscribe button and the little bell button beside it, so that every time I post something new, you'll be one of the very first people to know. This is Dr. Berry, and I'll see you next time.