Diabetes: Bring Back That Feeling

Loss of feeling, pain, burning sensations in the limbs is a serious problem faced by patients with diabetes; it can even contribute to issues such as foot ulcers.

A meta-analysis of four clinical trials by the British Diabetic Association shows that Alpha Lipoic Acid can help. They conclude that:

The results of this meta-analysis provide evidence that treatment with alpha-lipoic acid (600 mg/day i.v.) over 3 weeks is safe and significantly improves both positive neuropathic symptoms and neuropathic deficits to a clinically meaningful degree in diabetic patients with symptomatic polyneuropathy.

They saw improvements such as reduction in pain, numbness and burning in as little as 8 days from start of treatment.

Daily I.V. or intravenous therapy can be quite inconvenient and painful for some patients. Luckily, I have seen results with oral alpha-lipoic-acid. The dosages have to be adjusted accordingly, but it is definitely a viable alternative to I.V. treatment.

This study is not available online, but you can see the abstract on pubmed. Type in 14984445 in the search box.