Does Your Neuropathy Support Formula Include This?



As diabetes increases, so will peripheral neuropathy. Many turn to supplements for help, but you need to make sure your neuropathy support formula contains this.

Diabetic neuropathy is serious stuff and can become one of the most devastating and life-destroying side effects of diabetes.  Worse, there are few treatments that can effectively treat the pain.  Imagine that your feet are on fire.  Walking, sitting and even sleeping can be difficult.  I have had a grown man cry from the pain and frustration.

You can try some of the anti-seizure drugs like Neurotonin (gabapentin) or Lyrica, but the results from these drugs are not exactly stellar and can leave you walking around like a zombie.  And since you were probably limping around like a zombie before you took the medications, it’s hard to see this as an improvement.

The best approach possible to avoid diabetic peripheral neuropathy is to not become diabetic in the first place.  Diabetes is very bad for all of your nerves.  That is why Alzheimer’s dementia and Parkinson’s disease are being considered as a Type 3 diabetes.   That is why tinnitus may be a decades-early warning sign that you are on your way to diabetes.  It’s all because glucose is the preferred form of fuel for your brain and nerves.  Mess with that, and you’ve got problems.

Let’s say that the first hurdle to avoiding diabetic neuropathy is a little past (in other words–you’ve been diagnosed with diabetes).  The next most important step is to do everything possible to manage your blood sugar.  This does NOT mean taking the medications you’ve been given the way you’re supposed to be.  Here’s a wee bit of knowledge…the most commonly prescribed first line medication for diabetes is metformin.  Metformin is designed to improve the way your liver uses glucose.

Yep.  Just your liver.  As a prediabetic or a diabetic, every single cell in your body is having a problem using blood sugar the way and at the levels it is supposed to be used.  That means your liver, your heart, your muscles and your brain.  And how many of these important organs does metformin address?  Just one.  That means that, using metformin in the hopes of lowering your risk of developing peripheral neuropathy is not a bet you should be placing.

Lifestyle changes (my general recommendations can be read by clicking here), on the other hand, increase every single cell’s relationship with insulin and blood sugar in your body.  To me, this seems like a much better option than a medication that only works on a single cell type in your body.

Besides lifestyle, there are certain supplements that have been show to increase the efficiency at which your neurons work.  This particular article highlights one of the most powerful.

While you have to keep in mind that this is a mice study, researchers found some very interesting results when mice who were prone to diabetic neuropathy were given coenzyme Q10 and compared to mice who were not given CoQ10.  Here’s what they found:

  • The mice not given CoQ10 had a loss of sensation, decreased touch and pressure sensation, more pain sensitivity to cold (allodyna), and the sciatic nerve was not working as well (decreased conduction velocity). Overall, the nerves were not happy.
  • All these changes were mostly absent in the group with the daily CoQ10 treatment when started at 7 weeks.
  • There was a 33% loss of neurons in the lumbar 5 nerve root ganglia (DRGs).  This loss was not present when CoQ10 was used.

Overall, it was clear that coenzyme Q10, when used early, protects the nerves from damage that occurs during diabetes (Tweet this).  While lifestyle changes are a must, if would be a smart idea to include CoQ10 as a part of your neuropathy support formula.

The question is, however, can CoQ10 help with diabetic peripheral neuropathy once it’s already present?  If you have taken CoQ10 to help, did it work for you?

James Bogash

For more than a decade, Dr. Bogash has stayed current with the medical literature as it relates to physiology, disease prevention and disease management. He uses his knowledge to educate patients, the community and cyberspace on the best way to avoid and / or manage chronic diseases using lifestyle and targeted supplementation.







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