Dr. Elliot Johnson

Surgeon warns about the numbness in your feet

I've performed 1,100+ leg amputations in 25 years as a surgeon. And when a diabetic comes to me asking what they can take for the numbness in their feet, I already know exactly where they're heading. First they stop feeling their feet. Then they cut themselves and never feel a thing. Then that cut turns into an ulcer that won't heal. And 3 to 5 years later, they're on my table. I'm Dr. Elliot Johnson. Vascular and limb-salvage surgeon. 25 years in practice. I still perform amputations, but only when it's truly necessary. Bone infection. A wound gone septic. Diabetics whose feet have been dying, unfelt, for decades. What I see every day? Diabetics in their 60s being sent toward my table who should never have gotten there. People whose feet went numb years before the wound ever formed. And I was part of the system sending them. I've watched diabetics take Gabapentin for 25 years. I've seen thousands start it. Thousands who felt some initial relief and thought their problem was being handled. And I've seen what happens 3, 4, 5 years later when they come back to me. The 63-year-old who took Gabapentin faithfully for three years. Never missed a dose. Did everything her doctor told her. Came to me with an ulcer under her heel she never felt open. It had been there for weeks. It wouldn't close. She hadn't felt the floor under that foot in over two years. Her nerves had been dying the entire time she was taking the medication. And the numbness had climbed the whole way up her sole. The 67-year-old. Six years on Lyrica. "Just managing it, Doc." The numbness quietly swallowing his feet. Feeling getting weaker every year. Then the maximum dose stopped working entirely. Testing showed the small fibers were nearly gone. Couldn't feel a pin on the bottom of his foot anymore. An infected toe was the only conversation left. I took it. The 71-year-old. His doctor actually laughed when he mentioned trying something without a prescription. Was still burning every night despite maximum-dose Gabapentin. Sensation testing was catastrophic. Feeling in his feet? Gone completely. I see these diabetics when they reach me. They're grateful someone's finally doing something. But I know what they lost. They had years to turn this around. Years to address what was actually happening inside the vessels feeding their nerves. Years to save themselves from an amputation that leaves a diabetic with roughly a 50% chance of losing the other leg within five years, and a survival rate worse than most cancers. Their neuropathy was giving them a warning the entire time. Gabapentin just turned down the volume while the real problem kept building underneath. When my own feet started burning at 54, I knew something patients don't. Burning at night that woke me at 2 AM. That numbness starting at the toes. The strange sense of not quite feeling the floor when I got out of bed. And sensation that was fading a little more each month. A colleague looked at my symptoms and said what doctors say to every patient. "Standard protocol. Start with Gabapentin 300mg at night. Should take the edge off." I knew it would help the burning. That wasn't the point. I'm the one who takes the feet off at the end of this road. I started researching what was actually happening inside the vessels feeding my nerves, because I have spent 25 years watching where this ends, and I was not going to walk into it. Because I know what diabetic neuropathy actually is. And I knew Gabapentin wasn't going to fix it. Or the numbness that was climbing alongside it. I spent months going through the research. Journal after journal. Study after study. What I found made me furious that I'd spent two decades taking off feet without anyone addressing the thing that starts it. Here's what nobody tells you, because we were never trained to. Your nerves aren't dying randomly. And your feet aren't going numb randomly. They're the same problem. Same root cause. Destroying sensation fiber by fiber. The first is glycation. After years of high blood sugar, glucose molecules physically stick to the walls of the tiny vessels feeding your nerves. The vessels stiffen. They narrow. The blood supply to the nerve fades. The second is starved circulation. Poor blood flow to the nerve creates chronic oxygen shortage. The small fibers that carry sensation from your soles need a constant microscopic delivery of blood every second to stay alive. When that delivery is choked off, they suffocate. Some misfire, and that's the burning. Others go silent, and that's the numbness that hides the wound. The third is collapsed nitric oxide production. That's the signal your body uses to open its own blood vessels. When high blood sugar damages the lining of those vessels, they stop producing it, and the delivery to the nerve collapses further. Without it, the circulation cannot reopen on its own. Gabapentin addresses none of these. Zero. It quiets the pain signal in your brain for a few hours so you feel less burning. Then it wears off. The glycation is still choking the vessels. The circulation is still starving the fibers. The nitric oxide is still collapsed. And the numbness keeps climbing while you feel just enough relief to think you're being treated. Your nerves keep dying and your feet keep going numb while a pill keeps you comfortable enough to look away. That is not treatment. That is a business model. October 8th. 11:40 PM. I was reviewing research after a late day in the operating room. My own symptoms were getting harder to ignore. The burning waking me twice the night before. The numbness across my soles a little wider than it had been. I was exhausted and getting angry about it. I was going through studies on diabetic microcirculation and nerve repair. Not looking for anything specific. Just determined to find something that made sense. Then I found it. Study after study on photobiomodulation, specific wavelengths of red and near-infrared light, and what they do to sugar-starved nerve tissue. Specific wavelengths, 660nm red and 850nm near-infrared, do something to diabetic-damaged tissue that no pill does. They drive the body's own nitric oxide to widen the starved vessels. They stimulate Nerve Growth Factor, the body's repair signal for damaged nerve endings. And they calm the inflammation that high blood sugar grinds into the tissue day after day. Near-infrared photobiomodulation improved microcirculation, stimulated Nerve Growth Factor, and was associated with measurable improvement in sensory function and reduced neuropathic pain in diabetic subjects over 8 to 12 weeks. All three root causes. One mechanism. No pill, no fog, no higher dose. I sat there at 11:40 PM looking at what I had been missing for 25 years of taking feet off. The light opens the circulation today. Blood begins reaching foot tissue that has been starved for a decade. And it feeds the fibers over time. The ones that haven't died yet start to recover. The sensation that has been fading for years starts to come back, and the burning that comes from misfiring, dying fibers starts to quiet. Not masked. The circulation actually opening. The fibers actually getting fed. I had never once connected wearable red light to the diabetic feet I'd been amputating for 25 years. At 12:06 AM I searched for a device using the exact clinical wavelengths the research uses. Not a random red bulb off a marketplace. The real wavelengths, 660nm and 850nm, in a wearable wrap at the dose the research actually supports. I found Nouvera Neurosoothe. Built around 660nm red and 850nm near-infrared. The exact two wavelengths the published photobiomodulation research is built on, printed on the panel. Not a trace of red light to justify a label. The real thing. I ordered it that night. I started October 9th. 20 minutes every evening, wrapped around my feet while I read. Day 5. I slept through until morning for the first time in months. No 2 AM burning waking me. I didn't trust it. I figured it was a fluke. Day 8. I was in the shower and I could feel the water on my soles again. Not differently. Properly. Like a switch had flipped back on a sensation I hadn't realized I'd been losing for two years. Week 3. The night burning had dropped to a flicker. I lay in bed testing my feet against the sheets, waiting for the fire. It didn't come. Week 4. I felt the pavement under my feet on a walk I hadn't taken in months. Month 2. I ordered my own follow-up testing. Microcirculation to the feet, measurably increased. Sensory testing, measurably improved across both soles. The numbness that had been climbing had stopped, and pulled back. A colleague looked at the results and said: "Elliot, what are you doing? Sensation doesn't come back like this. That doesn't happen with neuropathy." "It does," I told him. "When you actually open the circulation and feed the fibers before they die, instead of just quieting the pain. The blood reaches the nerve again. The fiber recovers. The feeling comes back." I started recommending it to the diabetics in my practice who were heading toward my table. People whose feet had already gone half numb. James. 72. Had a partial foot amputation scheduled for an ulcer that wouldn't close. His wife found Nouvera. Two weeks, small change. Week 3, he slept through the burning for the first time in a year. Week 4, he felt the bath mat under his feet. By week 8 the wound was finally granulating and the surrounding sensation was coming back. We held off the surgery. He still has the foot. David. 71. His doctor laughed when he said he was trying red light. Maximum-dose Gabapentin, still burning every night, numbness to mid-sole. Eight weeks later he could feel the floor again and the burning had quieted to almost nothing. His doctor asked him to write down what he was using. Michael. 67. Six years on Lyrica. The numbness had quietly swallowed both feet. He worked with his doctor to keep his prescription steady while he used Nouvera every evening. Two months in, sensation was returning across his soles for the first time in years. "I can feel my own kitchen floor again. That's not nothing when you're 67." In 25 years I had never seen sensation come back like that. Because for 25 years I only ever saw these feet at the very end, on my table, when it was already too late. I am not telling you this because I am against Gabapentin. It quiets the burning. It gives temporary relief. It works exactly as designed. But it does not open the starved circulation. It does not restore blood flow to oxygen-starved nerve tissue. It does not stimulate Nerve Growth Factor. It does not bring the nitric oxide back. It does not stop the numbness climbing. It does not lower your risk of the wound you can't feel. It quiets the pain signal for a few hours while the real damage keeps advancing toward my table underneath. And I see what happens to the diabetics who stay on it long enough. I'm the last stop. Your symptoms right now, the burning at night, the numbness creeping across your soles, the floor you can't quite feel, they are your warning system. And you have two choices. Keep masking the burning with a pill while the circulation keeps starving your nerves and the numbness keeps climbing. Or open the circulation and feed the fibers while there is still feeling left to save. I think about what I almost did. Not just accepting a Gabapentin prescription. That is not the point. I almost spent years comfortable while my own nerves died silently toward the point of no return. I almost became the patient I was scheduling for surgery, wishing someone had told them earlier that there was another way to save the foot before it reached my table. Because once the sensation is gone, once the wound won't close, once the infection reaches the bone, the amputation is not a choice anymore. It's the only thing left. And a small fiber that has fully died does not come back. You do not get a warning before that point. Your symptoms right now are the warning. Use them. Nouvera Neurosoothe is a fraction of what you've already spent chasing this. Less than a single specialist visit. Less than a year of the copays and dose increases that never moved the needle. Compare that to years of medication that only fogs the burning while your feet go numb, or a wound-care center and an amputation that no pill was ever going to prevent. It comes with a 90-day money-back guarantee. Use it every evening for three full months. If the burning isn't quieter, if you aren't sleeping better, if the feeling isn't starting to come back, send it back in any condition and get a full refund. No questions asked. I have never seen a prescription come with that. I have never once seen a surgery come with a money-back guarantee. That is how confident I am in what these two wavelengths actually do. Save your feet now, while you still can. Dr. Elliot Johnson Vascular and Limb-Salvage Surgeon, 25 Years in Practice P.S. Give it 60 to 90 days. See the difference for yourself. You have nothing to lose except a fraction of one clinic bill and a few weeks. The upside is saving yourself from an amputation that permanently changes your life, and feeling your own feet again. P.P.S. You are not too late yet. You can still feel some of your feet, even if the numbness is climbing. That means the fibers have not completely died. Open the circulation now, before they do. Before the Gabapentin stops touching it, before the numbness swallows the last of the feeling, and before a wound you can't feel makes the amputation the only conversation left. Individual experiences vary. Nouvera Neurosoothe is a wellness device and is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. It is not a substitute for medical care of diabetes or neuropathy. Do not stop any prescription without your doctor. If you have a foot wound, sore, or ulcer that is not healing, or any sign of infection, redness, swelling, drainage, or warmth, see a doctor promptly, as diabetic foot infections can progress quickly.