What is Peripheral Neuropathy?
Peripheral neuropathy is a term that describes a problem with a nerve, often in the foot or feet. The word Peripheral means ¬around the outside and so it refers to the ends of your arms and legs. Probably because the legs are longer than the arms, feet are more prone to be affected by neuropathy of some sorts. To understand what happens when you have peripheral neuropathy, and what sorts of Peripheral Neuropathy treatments are possible, some background information is useful.
Walk Without Pain with Neuropathy Treatment
Walk Without Pain is a podiatry clinic in Brisbane. We have a special interest in treating painful conditions of the foot and lower limbs, especially where prior treatments have been tried and failed. Serving over 180 patients a day between our nine expert podiatrists, we have a large range of services available to assist with all kinds of foot issues. We love helping our clients to get back on their feet, pain-free. So, if you’re experiencing foot, leg or thigh pain as a result of a nerve injury, after surgery or for unknown reasons, get in touch with us for assessment and neuropathy treatment.
We will talk about:
• Types of Peripheral Neuropathy
• Symptoms of Neuropathy in the feet
• Peripheral Neuropathy Treatment Brisbane
• What nerves do and why they matter
Types of Peripheral Neuropathy
There are many types of this condition. Only some of which have effective Peripheral Neuropathy Treatment Brisbane available. We like to divide the cause of nerve damage into three groups. These are: diseases affecting nerves, poisoning of nerves and physical injury to a nerve.
Disease: The single most common cause of peripheral neuropathy is diabetes. There are many other conditions that affect the nerves such as Parkinson’s Disease, Spina Bifida, familial disorders, Fibromyalgia, M.S. and vascular conditions such as Raynaud’s Disease. Post Herpetic Neuralgia (coming after a case of shingles) deserves a special mention below.
Poisoning: This is not as uncommon as you may think. Pharmaceutical drugs can damage the peripheral nerves. Chemotherapy for cancer is a great example of this. Alcohol use over a long period can also be a problem. Some chemicals such as pesticides and herbicides are implicated in causing nerve damage. This may affect people who work on a farm, in any industry that allows contact with chemicals (hairdressers from several decades ago) and home gardeners. Consider this: you really should not know what weed killer smells like. If you, like me, do know, it means we have breathed in the chemical. Were we always as cautious about not getting the poison on our skin as we should have been?
Physical Injury: In most cases, the injury to a nerve will cause pain ‘downstream’ from the point of injury. For example, a disc prolapse in the back might touch the Sciatic nerve. The pain can then be felt all the way down the limb to the little toe area. Some injuries, especially chronic constriction injuries can cause pain both up and downstream relative to the point of trauma. Peripheral Neuropathy Treatment Brisbane is most effective for this sort of pathology.
Symptoms of Peripheral Neuropathy
There are two general types of neuropathy: Anaesthesia or Paraesthesia. As you can probably deduce for yourself, anaesthesia is the absence of pain and other sensations. This might mean that a wound that should be painful isn’t. The para part of the word is like in paranormal. This means that you feel sensations that are not really there, such as the buzzing or stabbing pains.
The most common words used to describe the symptoms of peripheral neuropathy include: numbness, burning, tingling, pins and needles or flashes of stabbing pain. It is very common for the symptoms to be worse at rest. You may be woken from sleep, have difficulty falling asleep or find yourself restless while watching TV in a recliner for the evening.
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Neuropathy Treatments For Feet & Other Services Of Our Highly Experienced Podiatristsc
We offer our services to people from all walks of life: male or female, and young or old. What they all have in common is a need for expert service to resolve foot problems.
Having nine podiatrists means that no matter what your needs are, someone is always experienced in how to help you. It also means that we can offer you 120 years of experience between our podiatrists. In that time, we’ve seen pretty much every problem there is, so you can have peace of mind that we know just what to do. In addition to the expansive experience our podiatrists have, they also average 50 hours per year of extra training to stay current and at the top of our field.
We are one of the few clinics in Brisbane offering prolotherapy. Our musculoskeletal practitioners are experienced in this field and this has been a great boon for treating nerve pain and injuries. Our clinic has specialised equipment for shockwave therapy, in house ultrasonography and laser treatment. If you have intractable pain, we have several different techniques that can help to resolve it.
We can assist you with the following and more:
- Ankle pain
- Heel pain
- Heel spurs
- Knee pain
- Shin pain and shin splints treatment
- Ingrown toenails
- Plantar fasciitis treatment
- Achilles tendonitis
- Morton’s Neuroma treatment
- Metatarsalgia
- Patellofemoral pain
- Pronation and flat feet
- Fungal toenails and laser treatment
- Prolotherapy
- Different types of orthotics devices, including gap-free orthotics
We offer HICAPS rebates on the spot, Medibank Private and BUPA Alliance and no gap orthotics. It is because we can offer a wider range of neuropathy treatments than many other podiatry clinics. This can be especially helpful if you have tried and failed with treatment elsewhere.
What do nerves do and why do they matter?
Nerves do a wide range of things. As we are podiatrists, we will discuss these with a particular reference to the feet:
Sensation: Most obviously, nerves allow you to feel sensations such as touch, pressure, heat and pain. Lack of sensation in feet is a problem as you may not feel a shoe rubbing or other type of wound. Simple things like standing on hot concrete can become very damaging and result on burns to feet.
Balance and co-ordinating movements: Nerves give a lot of feedback to your brain that allows micro-adjustments to your posture to help maintain balance, cope with uneven surfaces and even out the pressure on each area of skin on the soles of the feet. Nerve damage can affect balance and stability leading to falls. It can reduce the cooperative way that body parts help each other to move causing mechanical inefficiencies with walking and overloading large muscles by the under use of small muscles.
Joint Innervation: Joints are also supplied by nerves (or innervated) by the peripheral nerves. The sensations coming back from these are mostly used by your brain to fine tune your movements. Only sometimes will you be consciously aware of sensations within your joints. If joints lose their sensation, your brain may not fire off the muscles around the joint to slow your movements before the joint hits bone against bone. This happens at the end of range of motion. This can cause a joint condition called Charcot’s Disease.
Muscle Movement: Nerves instruct the muscles how to move and when. They carry the electric ‘current’ that causes the fibres of the muscle to contract. The foot contains many small muscles packed in like sardines in a can. If they lose nerve input, they don’t do a normal amount of work. They can then waste away. Leaving the foot without important structural stability. Movements of the foot bones can then occur in unusual ways. This can cause damage to the skin, muscles, bones and joints of the foot.
Sympathetic functions: These are the things your body does that you cannot consciously control, like beating your heart. In the feet, this translates to opening and closing blood vessels, sweating heating and cooling and allowing more blood to flow to areas that require healing.
Don’t Put Life On Hold Any Longer, Book An Appointment To Start Your Neuropathy Therapy Today
Contact Walk Without Pain today to book your appointment to start a neuropathy therapy today and resolve your feet problems and get you back on track with your life. Pain in the feet can slow you down and really impact your daily life considerably. Problems can also become worse if they are left to consolidate for long periods or if you are an active, busy person. It is a good idea to address your foot problems as they arise to limit the damage that may occur with injury.
Walk Without Pain aims to make the healing process as smooth as possible and as attainable as possible, with great value for money. And it’s so easy to book an appointment on our website at any time of the day or night. For the best neuropathy treatment, make an appointment now.
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