Living with Peripheral Neuropathy

What is peripheral neuropathy?

If you have peripheral neuropathy, you have nerve damage in your peripheral nervous system (PNS). Your PNS transmits all the impulses from the brain and spinal cord to the rest of the body. For example: you accidentally touch the hot burner of your stove. Immediately the heat from the burner activates the nerve receptors in your skin and a message is sent to the spinal cord. In a nanosecond the message is interpreted and a message is sent back to your hand to remove it from the source of heat. So, in a knee jerk reaction, you touch the burner, it is hot and you remove your hand. The peripheral nervous system is different than your central nervous system (CNS). Your CNS has to do with your brain and spinal cord, and your peripheral nervous system has to do with everything outside of your CNS.

There are more than one hundred types of peripheral neuropathies, and each type has their own set of symptoms. The peripheral nerves have three types: motor, sensory, and autonomic. The motor nerves have to do with movement of muscles. Sensory nerves have to do with touch. The symptoms the patient experiences depends on what nerves are impaired. If motor nerves are impaired the patient may have problems moving, there may be weakness of muscles or paralysis. If sensory nerves are impaired the patient may complain of tingling or burning pain, or the patient may not feel sensations such as hot and cold. If the autonomic nerves are impaired there may be any number of problems regulating temperature, breathing, heart rate, blood pressure, organ and hormone functions.

What causes peripheral neuropathy?

Peripheral neuropathy is either acquired or inherited. Acquired peripheral neuropathy can be caused by an injury to a nerve, an autoimmune response as in rheumatoid arthritis or lupus, alcoholism, tumors, toxins, nutritional deficiencies, metabolic disorders as in diabetes mellitus, and vascular diseases. Inherited peripheral neuropathy is caused by genetic mutations, in which a mistake is made in the genetic code.

How is peripheral neuropathy treated?