How to Manage Diabetes-Related Tingling and Numbness

Unmanaged diabetes can have a profound effect on your nervous system and lead to persistent symptoms like numbness and tingling. These symptoms can become progressively worse and prevent you from exercising, working, and hanging out with your loved ones.

If you have chronic weakness, tingling, or numbness in your hands, legs, or feet, AABP Integrative Pain Care and Wellness offers effective pain management solutions.

Our experienced physicians design custom care plans that focus on nonsurgical strategies to reduce the severity of your symptoms so you can enjoy a higher quality of life.

How diabetes affects your nervous system

Diabetes is a chronic disease that develops when your body can’t convert sugar from your diet into the energy it needs to function.

Type 1 diabetes occurs when your pancreas doesn’t make insulin, a hormone that helps regulate sugar (glucose) in your blood. When you have type 2 diabetes, your body doesn’t properly use insulin or can’t produce enough insulin to keep sugar levels well controlled.

When blood sugar levels remain high for too long, they can damage nerve fibers—a condition known as diabetic neuropathy. Depending on the type of nerves affected, you can experience a range of symptoms beyond tingling and numbness in your hands and feet.

Complications of diabetic neuropathy can include:

• Muscle cramps
• Excessive sweating
• Increased heart rate
• Difficulties swallowing
• Foot infections and ulcers
• Sexual dysfunction
• Vision changes

While there’s no way to reverse diabetes-related nerve damage, there are steps you can take to prevent more serious complications.

Our pain management specialists provide treatments that make diabetic neuropathy symptoms easier to manage. They can also coordinate with your primary care provider on a care plan to ensure your blood sugar levels are well-controlled. Proper diabetes management is essential to prevent additional nerve damage, disability, and premature death.

Nonsurgical solutions to control diabetic neuropathy symptoms

Prescription medications are an effective strategy for managing nerve-related pain, tingling, and numbness. Our team might prescribe antiseizure medicines or antidepressants to manage mild to moderate nerve pain and related symptoms.

We also offer interventional pain treatments, including nerve blocks, which involve injecting a local anesthetic into the area surrounding a damaged nerve. Our physicians use advanced imaging technologies to guide the injection into a precise location near the nerve to maximize symptom relief.

When your diabetic neuropathy symptoms are severe and not treatable with nonsurgical therapies, you may be a candidate for spinal cord stimulation. Using minimally invasive techniques, we surgically implant a small generator under the surface of your skin that delivers electrical impulses to damaged nerves through lead wires.

The impulses disrupt pain signals from the nerve before they travel to your brain. You activate the stimulator with an external remote to address pain, tingling, and other symptoms as they happen.

Call AABP Integrative Pain Care and Wellness in Brooklyn, New York, today to schedule a diagnostic evaluation for tingling, numbness, and other diabetic neuropathy symptoms. You can also use the online feature to book an appointment.