What is neuropathy?
Neuropathy refers to a condition that affects your peripheral nervous system. It occurs when your peripheral nervous system suffers damage or disruption. Neuropathy is the degeneration of peripheral nerve endings in your hands or feet.
There are different types of neuropathy, and the symptoms vary widely, depending on which nerves the condition affects. Neuropathy can change one or more of the following types of nerves in your peripheral nervous system:
- Sensory nerves, which send messages from your sensory organs to your brain
- Motor nerves, which control the voluntary movement of your muscles
- Autonomic nerves, which monitor the unconscious functions of your body
What causes neuropathy?
Common causes of neuropathy include a variety of injuries as well as underlying health issues, lifestyle habits, or autoimmune disorders that can affect sensitive nerves in your peripheral nervous system, including:
- Sports injuries
- Falls
- Car accidents
- Kidney disorders
- Hormonal diseases (Diabetes)
- Drugs (certain cancer medications and antibiotics)
- Tumors
- Alcohol abuse
In addition to these, repetitive physical trauma incurred by your muscles, tendons, and ligaments can put undue stress on your nerves. Over time, this type of gradual physical trauma can pressure or even sever nerves from your spinal cord in the same way the physical trauma from injuries of car accidents does.
Neuropathy can occur from chronic pressure on the brachial plexus (a nerve bundle that originates from the cervical spine and forms the nerves of the arm and hand) due to a reduced cervical curve and spasms in the SCM and scalene muscles. Neuropathy in the feet can occur from chronic sciatica or chronic pressure on the sciatic nerve from muscle spasm, disc degeneration or spinal stenosis.
Diabetes can also contribute to neuropathy causing the inflammation of blood vessels. This causes capillaries in the extremities to form scar tissue causing distal nerve endings in the hands and feet to degenerate resulting in decreased sensory perception and numbness. Decreased circulation in the extremities causes the nerves to degenerate. This is called diabetic neuropathy.
How do you treat neuropathy?
Dr. Hartman has implemented a program used by hundreds of doctors all across the country called Blueprint to Neuropathy that gets over a 90% success rate with completely reversing peripheral neuropathy. When starting this program, you will receive 2 state-of-the-art pieces of medical equipment to use at home 1-2 times per day. You will receive an electrical stimulation device used to re-educate nerves that is used in the Cancer Treatment Centers of America to treat neuropathy caused by chemotherapy use. You will also receive a low level light therapy machine that is backed by 21 white paper research studies proving its efficacy for treating neuropathy. This infrared light therapy machine helps the body to produce more nitric oxide and promotes angiogenesis or the creation of new blood vessels for circulation. This accelerates tissue and nerve healing.
If you’d like to learn more about how Dr. Hartman can treat your neuropathy, call or schedule an appointment online today.
