Senior Health Guide

Diabetic Neuropathy Isn't Just About Blood Sugar

Three generations in my family had diabetic neuropathy. Last month, my own nerve conduction study confirmed the genetics caught up with me too. ⠀ This week, that same test showed my signal speed improving for the first time in three years. ⠀ I walked my daughter down the aisle at her wedding without a single break to sit down. ⠀ I'm Dr. Emily Hartman. Board-certified neurologist, twenty-four years in practice, specializing in peripheral neuropathy. I'm 61. ⠀ My family was always the active kind. Gardening. Walking every evening after dinner. My grandmother out in her yard well into her seventies, or so I thought. ⠀ My grandmother was in a wheelchair by 64. Diabetic neuropathy, undiagnosed for years before anyone caught it. ⠀ My mother lasted a little longer. She managed her diabetes carefully, saw her specialists, did everything right. By 70, she needed a walker to get to her own mailbox. Her doctors always said the same thing when I asked why, given how well she managed her numbers: some families are simply more genetically susceptible to nerve damage than others at the same blood sugar levels. ⠀ I watched her lose her independence the same way she'd watched her own mother lose hers. ⠀ So when the tingling started in my left foot two years ago, I recognized it before my own doctor said a word. ⠀ I ran the tests on myself the way I run them on my patients. Nerve conduction study. Skin biopsy for small fiber density. ⠀ Diabetic peripheral neuropathy, moderate, both feet. ⠀ My doctor discussed a nerve decompression procedure, the same category of surgery my mother had. It gave her about a year of real relief before the numbness crept back in, worse than before. ⠀ I was scared. I wanted to try everything else first, because I already knew exactly where her path led. ⠀ I did physical therapy. I started gabapentin at a standard dose, which helped me sleep most nights. I tried a round of injections that gave me about three weeks of relief before it faded completely. ⠀ My surgery date got closer while my feet kept getting worse. ⠀ One night, legs burning too badly to lie flat, I picked up my laptop at 3 AM and typed something I would have raised an eyebrow at a year earlier. ⠀ "Peripheral neuropathy without surgery." ⠀ I expected stretching videos. Maybe another supplement with no real backing. ⠀ Instead I found something about topical delivery that I'd never been taught in twenty-four years of training, and it had nothing to do with the nerve biology. I already knew that part. ⠀ The nerve itself is protected by a fatty coating called the myelin sheath, the same way an electrical wire is protected by its plastic insulation. When that coating is under constant inflammation and the small blood vessels feeding it aren't circulating well, the signal running through it misfires, and that misfire is what your brain reads as burning, numbness, or a foot that won't cooperate. I could have told any patient that in my sleep. ⠀ What I didn't know was why almost nothing on a pharmacy shelf ever reaches that coating in the first place. ⠀ Most treatments target the pain signal itself, or in my case, they were about to remove tissue to relieve pressure on the nerve. ⠀ Almost nothing addresses the coating and the circulation feeding it directly, at the surface, where a topical product can actually reach it. ⠀ I found a formula built specifically for that layer. A small group of botanicals, used for generations for inflammation and circulation. ⠀ Frankincense, for the inflammatory process itself. ⠀ Comfrey, working through a different pathway toward the same target. ⠀ Myrrh, supporting both. ⠀ Angelica Sinensis, for circulation to the small vessels feeding the nerve. ⠀ Peppermint oil, to help the formula penetrate the skin faster. ⠀ All of it carried in a lipid-based delivery system built around sesame oil, since the myelin sheath itself is fat-based tissue, and a water-based product can't cross into fat-based tissue the way an oil-based one can. Beeswax seals it in so it has time to actually absorb. ⠀ That system is called Senzio Miracle Balm. ⠀ I didn't tell my surgeon I was trying it. I didn't tell my husband where the idea had come from. I ordered it that night and didn't say anything to anyone until I had something worth showing them. ⠀ I started the next day the package arrived. Small circular motions, morning and night, on both feet. ⠀ Day 3, the burning that usually kept me up until midnight let me fall asleep before eleven. ⠀ One week. I noticed I'd gone almost two hours without thinking about my feet at all. ⠀ Two weeks. I slept through the entire night for the first time in months. ⠀ Four weeks in. I stood at my kitchen counter making dinner for twenty minutes without shifting my weight once. ⠀ That was three months ago. ⠀ I cancelled the procedure. ⠀ At my last follow-up, my neurologist colleague ran the nerve conduction study again. He didn't say reversed. He said, for the first time in three years, my signal speed had moved in the right direction instead of the wrong one. ⠀ My grandmother never got that chance. My mother didn't either. ⠀ I'm still on gabapentin. I still see my specialist every few months. This isn't a replacement for either one, and I would never tell a patient to stop what's working. ⠀ It's the piece that was missing the entire time. ⠀ If diabetic neuropathy runs in your family, or your own feet have stopped cooperating no matter what you've tried, I want you to hear this from someone who watched it take three generations of women in her own family before she found the piece nobody had given any of them. ⠀ Senzio is 50% off right now, with a 60-day money-back guarantee, so you can see what thirty days tells you. ⠀ Small circular motions, morning and night, 2 minutes a day on the areas that bother you most. ⠀ P.S. I don't get anything from Senzio for writing this. I'm writing it because my mother never got the chance to try what I just tried, and I'd rather my patients hear about it from me now than find it themselves at 3 AM the way I did. ⠀ ~ Dr. Emily Hartman, MD, board-certified neurologist, peripheral neuropathy specialty, 24 years in practice