Exercise Slows, and May Reverse, Peripheral Neuropathy
I was recently diagnosed with peripheral neuropathy. I still have feeling in my fingers, but I’ve lost most of the feeling in my toes. Do you have any advice on ways I can manage this condition through exercise or supplementation?
—Lee, Cheyenne, WY
Peripheral neuropathy causes pain (sometimes described as tingling or burning) and numbness in the hands and feet. While HIV is one cause of the condition, it’s certainly not the only one. Diabetes and cancer treatments (such as radiation or chemotherapy) are also common causes. Sometimes the condition improves with treatment of the underlying cause, sometimes it doesn’t.
Resistance training is a great way to improve overall muscle strength, especially for people with peripheral neuropathy, and there’s research to prove it. In a 2006 study, subjects who walked for 1 hour, 4x/week, slowed down the worsening of their peripheral neuropathy.
Researchers at the University of Louisville showed that lower-body weight training (30 minutes 3x/week) improved muscle strength and quality of life in patients doing such routine tasks as walking to the car.
You should avoid high impact exercises (e.g., running on a treadmill or jumping up and down) because they more often result in foot injuries. Seated resistance exercises are an excellent choice, as are swimming, rowing, and pretty much any upper body exercise. If you don’t have access to weight machines, you can try these simple movements anywhere:
Hands — Touch the pad of your thumb with the pad of the index finger, moving the index finger down to the base of your thumb. Repeat this movement twice with the index, middle, ring, and little fingers in succession.
Legs & Feet — Straighten one knee and point your foot. Flex your ankle five times. Next, circle your ankle clockwise, and counterclockwise, five times each.
Balance — From a standing position, rise up slowly on your tiptoes, and then go back on to your heels. The knees should be kept straight, but not locked.
Bottom line: Exercise may not actually reverse the condition, but it can most certainly help. —S. Page
http://www.peacelovelunges.com/sports-fitness/ask-sam/will-exercise-help-my-peripheral-neuropathy/
How about some simple exercises like walking.does it help us in curing or preventing the disorder?
ReplyDeleteHi Ranimill,
ReplyDeleteThanks for your comment.
How helpful walking itself is, depends on the extent of your neuropathy. If the feet and lower legs are very painful then walking can obviously be a problem. It's not dangerous (unless you've lost feeling in your feet - then you need to be very careful) but can be painful. The problem is that neuropathy patients need to try to maintain their muscle strength and the only way to do that is by exercising. From what I can find out on the internet, you should walk as much as you can to help your leg muscles but listen to your feet! If it gets to be too much then stop. There are lots of foot and leg exercises you can do while sitting down and if you can find some elastic strips (fitness shops)you can also do resistence training without impacting and stressing your poor old feet. Basically, you hold the ends of the strips in your hands and pass them under your feet, then by pushing and stretching, you can achieve a reasonable work out to compare with walking.
Good luck.