MCVitamins News

Chemotherapy & Neuropathy

Individuals at risk for acquiring neuropathy are those associated with chemotherapy and also have the following conditions

·        Diabetes

·        Alcoholism

·        Severe malnutrition

Why? Because these conditions all result in the nerve damage, specifically the myelin sheath surrounding the nerve starts to deteriorate.  

Symptoms include:

·        Numbness, tingling (feeling of pins and needles of the hands and or feet.

·        Burning of hands and/or feet

·        Numbness around the mouth

·        Constipation

·        Loss of sensation to touch

·        Los of positional sense (knowing where a body part is without looking)

·        Weakness and leg cramping or any pain in hands and/or feet

·        Difficulty picking things up or buttoning clothes

Chemotherapy and other chemicals and drugs can cause the nerve’s myelin sheath to deteriorate and this is what needs to be repaired.   This can be done:

Go here to Neuropathy Treatment

The Difference Between Drugs and Nutrition Supplements for the treatment of Neuropathy 

No matter what the cause of your neuropathy, a person has only a few choices about what to do about it..

The Drug Approach

What a drug does is it forces the body to do something that it normally wouldn't do.. When it comes to a medication, the body reacts in certain ways to this medication and it is done in order to achieve a desirable effect.  For instance,  in order to balance itself and handle the effects of a drug, the body has to lower its blood pressure.   If this is what you want to happen because its a blood pressure medication, it's a good thing.   However, there are also various other ways the body can react to the drug and sometimes this is not such a good thing - this is called a "side effect".  It is the reason someone can wind up on 4 blood pressure medications.  Each drug is given in an attempt to balance another drug so as not to create the various side effects of the other drugs.  It is a balancing act. 

The Natural Approach

What a nutritional supplement does is give the body the actual tools it needs to fix the body. 

In the case of neuropathy, it is the nerve cell that is damaged.  The body needs certain tools (nutritional factors) to do this repair.   Drugs don't repair anything; they treat the symptom, not the cause of the problem. 

As with our example of blood pressure, if they don't know what is causing the high blood pressure, the drug just lowers it artificially.  

The cause of nerve damage is known - it can be the result of too much sugar in the blood, the chemicals used in cancer treatments, etc. - but one thing is known,  the damage is done to the cell and this causes the pain.  

You can cover this up with pain killers, or with other drugs that are manufactured to handle this, but the drugs aren't repairing anything.   They are trying to forces the body to not give you pain, not give you numbness, etc.,  And sometimes more damage to the nerve cell might happen due to the drug or other drugs you are taking,

The Nutritional Approach

Nutritional supplements are actually vitamins and minerals that the body needs to repair the cells.

In the case of neuropathy, there are specific ingredients needed by the body to repair the cells.  These are the supplements you want to take.

Another difference is that if you are taking a drug and just covering up symptoms, you have to continue to take the drug to get relief and sometimes even have to increase the drug to get the same relief.

If you take natural supplements, the body can fix the problem, and as long as you don't do anything to damage the cells again, there is an end to taking the supplements.

For neuropathy see:   Nerve Support Formula

Chris
McVitamins