Nerve Pain (neuropathy)
How to Use Capsaicin Ointment to Ease Pain
Chronic pain has a devastating impact on your quality of life. Often, though, the medicines you would take to relieve pain can trigger dangerous side effects over the long term. Several readers report…
Surprising Gabapentin Side Effects
The Food and Drug Administration first approved Neurontin (gabapentin) in 1993 to treat epilepsy. Anticonvulsants are not normally blockbuster drugs. Perhaps that is why the original manufacturer, Par…
Lyrica and Weight Gain | Can It Be Reversed?
Pregabalin (Lyrica) has become a go-to drug for nerve pain (neuropathy). There aren't many medications in the doctor’s tool kit for this kind of problem. A similar drug, gabapentin, has been approve…
New Concerns About Gabapentin and Pregabalin (Ly…
A review of the FDA’s Adverse Event Reporting System (FAERS) revealed some disconcerting data about commonly prescribed drugs for nerve pain (ISMP QuarterWatch Reports (March 27, 2019). This indepen…
Lyrica (Pregabalin) Side Effects Include Confusi…
Lyrica used to be widely advertised on television to treat fibromyalgia or diabetic nerve pain. A few years ago there was this ad featuring Terry, a retired police officer. Terry describes his diabeti…
Is Vitamin Deficiency at the Bottom of Burning S…
What could cause a burning sensation on the bottoms of the feet? This symptom seems to indicate nerve damage, technically termed peripheral neuropathy. There are a number of potential causes, ranging …
Will Cannabis Cream Really Ease Neuropathy?
People with neuropathy are often desperate for relief. The causes of this nerve pain may vary, from drug side effects to the aftermath of an infection. Sometimes too little or too much of a common vit…
What Natural Remedies Could Help Neuropathy?
Neuropathy (pain, numbness or tingling, usually in the feet or hands) is caused by a malfunction of the nerves in the skin. We need such nerves to tell us about the world around us, and when they st…
Low Dose Naltrexone (LDN) Provides Surprising Pa…
Patients living with severe chronic pain have limited options. Opioids have been shunned. You can read about how the "War on Opioids Punishes Desperate Pain Patients" at this link. Doctors have substi…
Show 1311: Why We Should Fight Back Against Agei…
This week on our nationally syndicated radio show, we explore the impacts of negative attitudes toward aging and how to fight back against ageism. In the US, many people hold negative stereotypes abou…
Show 1304: Fixing Your Foot Problems
In our nationally syndicated radio show this week, we have a guest live in the studio. Podiatrist Jane Andersen will be ready to answer your questions about foot problems and what you can do about the…
Can You Help Nerve Pain with a Diet Rich in ALA?
Doctors often have a hard time treating nerve pain, also called neuropathy. When diabetes causes neuropathy, physicians ask patients to control their blood glucose very strictly. In addition, they may…
Vitamin B12 Helps Ease Nerve Pain of Diabetes
People with type 2 diabetes often develop a painful nerve disorder called diabetic neuropathy. People with this condition may experience numbness, tingling, burning or pain in their hands or feet. The…
Will CBD for Pain Make You Fail the Marijuana Te…
One lesson learned from the terrible opioid crisis of the past few years: a lot of Americans are in a lot of pain. With doctors increasingly reluctant to prescribe narcotics for pain relief, people ar…
Can a Supplement Relieve Neuropathy Pain?
People who experience neuropathy pain tell us it can be excruciating. Sometimes this is a side effect of cancer treatment, though other individuals develop nerve pain as a consequence of taking a stat…
Show 1203: How Yoga Can Help You Age Gracefully
Stress is nearly ubiquitous in modern life. We all know it isn’t healthy, but we may not have a lot of tools for escaping or alleviating it. People under stress may feel they don’t have enough tim…
Will CBD Oil Ease Neuropathic Pain?
Pain due to misfiring of neurons (aka neuropathic pain) can be extremely difficult to treat. Once a pain pathway sets in, disrupting it becomes an enormous challenge. People have tried acupuncture, su…
Will Acupuncture Ease the Pain of Neuropathy?
Peripheral neuropathy, pain in the feet and legs (or occasionally even in the hands and arms), can be challenging to treat. Ideally, of course, the physician would identify what was causing the nerves…
Substitute Pain Relievers Appear in Suicide Atte…
Public health authorities have been working hard to control the opioid epidemic and reduce the number of people dying from narcotic overdoses. This effort has had some success, but it has also had som…
Are You Taking an Off Label Med for an Unapprove…
Has your doctor told you if you are taking a drug for an unapproved use? By unapproved we mean for an “indication” that has never received a review from the FDA. It is estimated that when teenager…
Do Fluoroquinolone Antibiotics Damage Heart Valv…
We have been tracking a tale of woe and intrigue with fluoroquinolone (FQ) antibiotics for more than 25 years. One reader reported hallucinations and a terrible skin rash after taking ofloxacin (Floxi…
Show 1174: What to Do About Skeeter Syndrome
Have your summer evenings outside been spoiled by the whine of a mosquito coming in for a bite? How do you deal with the resulting itch? Mosquito bites usually itch for a while and then go away, but s…
Statins and Nerve Damage (Peripheral Neuropathy)…
By now, almost everyone agrees that statins like atorvastatin, lovastatin, rosuvastatin and simvastatin can cause muscle pain (myalgia). Most clinicians also acknowledge that statins are also linked t…
Do Statins Cause Nerve Pain (Neuropathy)?
Statin enthusiasts have a hard time accepting that statin-type cholesterol-lowering drugs have side effects. There is even one clinical trial analysis from the UK that concluded “At the doses tested…
Gabapentin and Fuzzy Thinking: A Recognized Side…
We have been writing a lot about GABA drugs like gabapentin (Neurontin) and pregabalin (Lyrica). That because a report from ISMP (Institute for Safe Medication Practices) has a QuarterWatch article: …
How to Help Neuropathy with Hiking Boots
Neuropathy is pain that originates from the nerves. For some reason, due to diabetes, damage or some other difficulty, the nerves send pain signals even when the area is not in imminent danger (the us…
Special Creams Fail to Fight Pain
Americans spend hundreds of millions of dollars on specially formulated topical pain creams. Medicare Part D paid more than half a billion dollars for such prescription products in 2015. Doctors may p…
Seniors Swear by Marijuana Oil for Pain Relief
In an increasing number of states, the legislatures have legalized the medicinal use of marijuana. (Ten states and the District of Columbia have made recreational use legal, usually in addition to med…
Low Dose Naltrexone Worked for Pain
Have you ever heard of low dose naltrexone (LDN)? Most people have never heard about this interesting drug. It was created in 1963 and approved by the FDA in 1984. Many physicians are also unaware of …
Will Alpha-Lipoic Acid Help Your Nerve Pain?
Nerve pain (neuropathy) can be excruciating, and the medications doctors prescribe to alleviate the pain don't always help a great deal. However, alternative medications such as alpha-lipoic acid can …
Do People Who Eat Fish Grow Old More Healthfully…
Does eating fish or taking fish oil make any difference for your health? For decades, researchers have touted the anti-inflammatory benefits of the omega-3 fatty acids found in fish oil. They have sug…
Will Benfotiamine Ease Your Foot Pain?
Have you ever dropped a heavy can of food on your toe? The nail turns purplish-black and the foot hurts like crazy. After a few days, though, the pain calms down and only hurts when you wiggle or stub…
Can the Antidepressant Amitriptyline Mess Up Mem…
It is estimated that nearly two million people take the antidepressant amitriptyline every day. We suspect that most are not taking this drug to improve mood. That’s because amitriptyline (Elavil) h…
What Is Behind the Rise in Gabapentinoids?
The opioid epidemic has doctors looking for alternative treatments to ease pain. Many have turned to a category of medications called gabapentinoids. What Are Gabapentinoids? This category includes th…
Does Cannabis (Marijuana) Ease Nerve Pain or PTS…
How well does marijuana work against pain or post-traumatic stress disorder? That is a question many patients and physicians would like answered. Now that opioids have been vilified, people in chronic…
Will Overdosing on Vitamin B6 Cause Irreversible…
Most people think of vitamins as benign nutrients. If a little is good then a "lottle" is better. In other words, the more the merrier. Most of the time people do not get into trouble if they take a l…
Serious Tramadol (Ultram) Side Effects & Wi…
America is undergoing a massive opioid anxiety attack. It has been called an epidemic by lawmakers and the media. While many people used opioids responsibly for chronic pain, there has been substantia…
Overlooked Antibiotic Side Effects Can Destroy L…
Antibiotics are amazing. The discovery of penicillin was one of the greatest advances in modern medicine. But Americans love of antibiotics has gotten out of hand. They think of such drugs as magic bu…
Are There Natural Remedies for Nerve Pain?
Physicians find neuropathy difficult to manage. This nerve pain can easily become chronic if it is not interrupted early in its course. When pain originates in the nervous system itself, relatively f…
Lyrica (Pregabalin) Is An Ineffective Sciatica T…
Sciatica sucks! Sadly, so does sciatica treatment with pregabalin (Lyrica). That's the conclusion of a new study published in the New England Journal of Medicine (March 23, 2017). Even though the drug…