 Hi guys, today we're gonna talk about the top signs of neuropathy. Now a lot of people think that neuropathy is just nominous and tingling on your feet, but neuropathy is more than that. There are a lot of signs that you didn't know that is actually from diabetic neuropathy. Let's talk about that right now. So guys before we jump to the topic, I want to encourage you to take the quiz in the description below to win a chapter from my diabetes book. Let's move on. Hi guys, I'm an anachronologist and a diabetes education expert. So I see diabetics all day long and then when they tell me about their symptoms and I say that's diabetic neuropathy, they give me like, what? I'm like, yeah, that's diabetic neuropathy. You know, people think that diabetic neuropathy is just some nominous tingling on your feet and takes on B12 and you'll be fine. Well, that's not really how it works, right? So diabetic neuropathy, it's neuropathy, right? So this affects your nerves. So what type of nerves do you have? Now you have sensory nerves, you have motor nerves, and you have autonomic nerves. Now depending on what is affected and most of the time most of these nerves are affected at the same time. Now your symptoms and signs may not reflect or come at the same time, but the rotation of these affected nerves will be different. You need to understand that because if you understand there are treatments for those signs and symptoms, but also it is important for you to understand that you're going through diabetic complications and it's time to take action and get these blood sugars under control. So now let's get started. The sensory neuropathy, that's the most common one. The most common one because that happens the earliest. Sometimes it happens actually even before diabetes establishes. Even in the pre-diabetes stage, some people present with sensory diabetic neuropathy. Now you may feel like extreme tenderness to touch, you may feel numbness, tingling, all these weird sensations or maybe like something crawling on you, especially starting at your feet, you know, and then starts going towards your legs. These are sensory. So we talked about the three things, right? Extreme sensitivity to touch. We talked about that numbness and tingling sensation and sometimes it may be a burning pain as well. Now, what about the motor function? Well, when you say motor function, you talk about efferent nerves, which means that the nerves that goes from your brain all the way to the final, final place where when you want to hold something, when you want to touch something, that is what the motor nerve does, right? So it basically gives you the strength to do something, gives the impulse for your muscles to take action. Now, think about this. If you are not having a motor nerve function intact, your balance will be affected, right? So you're not going to be able to walk right. So if you're having balance problems, that's actually both sensory and motor because when we are walking, we are constantly feeling the bottom of our feet, like our space on the floor, like, you know, and then we also feel our place in the space. So we sense that and then every time we touch, we make a move based on that sensation. But if you have a motor dysfunction, you will develop a loss of balance because that is a coordinated effort. What else? Well, muscle weakness, right? Sometimes people will come and say, you know, my legs are just weak, you know, I just cannot really function. I cannot lift them. I cannot really walk right. You know, the muscle dysfunction sometimes actually affects individual nerves, but most of the time affects both. We call them bilateral or both sided muscle weakness can develop as well. Also, another common thing that the muscle cramps, that happens especially at night. That's because your nerves are firing for no reason and you're getting these cramps at night. And that is a very typical sign of diabetic neuropathy as well. Now, what about autonomic neuropathy? Now, autonomic neuropathy, as you can understand from the name, it is autonomous. It does it without you even knowing it. So for example, your heart rate. So do you regulate your heart rate? No. What regulates your heart rate? Yeah, you guess it right. Autonomous nervous system. There is two nervous system that is in that class is sympathetic nervous system and parasympathetic nervous system. So sympathetic and parasympathetic. So sympathetic nervous system is what basically increase your heart rate. Parasympathetic nervous system, what calms you down. So when there's a dysfunction, it is not uncommon. When I put my celloscope on somebody's chest and normally what I expect is with breathing, your sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system balance changes constantly. It's like a fluid. So when people breathe, their heart rate changes. If your heart rate is not changing and it's like instead of going like this, you know, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop. And now it's constantly like this. Boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop. It doesn't even change with breathing. Now, that's a problem. There's a problem because I know it's supposed to change when you breathe. So that is a sign of atomic nervous system dysfunction. Did you know that your sweating is all about the sympathetic nervous system? Can you just sweat? Just sitting there and say, sweat, sweat, sweat, sweat, sweat. Unless you talk about a shameful moment, I don't think you're going to be able to sweat, but sweating is also determined with sympathetic nervous system. Now, normally we sweat to try to get the heat out. You know, your sympathetic nervous system kicks in. Let's say you're running away from a line, which doesn't happen normally, but I'm just saying you run your heart rate goes up, your sympathetic nervous system is active, you're generating heat. You have to dissipate that heat. Now you have to sweat out and that sweating is controlled by sympathetic nervous system. But if it is broken and it does not get activated and disactivated like normally it does, then you will be sweating. You'll be sweating your ass off all the time. Well, it's not funny, but if you're a constant sweater, you may want to think about that that may be actually a sign of diabetic neuropathy. Now, you might be wondering that you're losing your bladder control and you're getting old. Well, it may not be just getting old. It may be diabetic neuropathy. Again, the control of the bladder is determined with the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system coordination. So if you lose that control, you may have something called overflow incontinence where your sympathetic nervous system does not realize the contraction or filling of your bladder and you may end up with overflow incontinence. So that is another sign that you have to be looking for or you have to be aware of as one of the signs of diabetic neuropathy. Now trouble seeing is another one. Again, when there's a light, for example, you know, your people's constrict and then when there's when it's dark, your people's dilate, you're not in control of that. That's under autonomous nervous system control. If that is lost, again, you may start having blurry vision and, you know, it may be too lit, it may be too dark, your color perception may change. So these are the things that may be a sign of diabetic neuropathy as well. How about digestion? So we have more nerves in our gut than our brain. Interesting, right? Well, some people listen to their gut, but that's not that's not what they mean, right? So the guts actually have a lot of nerves. That's why when you get upset, you know, when something, you know, upsetting you, there's something called irritable bowel syndrome, your bowels will react to your emotions, but also, you know, the way that you feel, you feel like you want to go to the restroom, defecate. Well, that is controlled by your autonomous autonomic nervous system as well. And then your peristalsis, the way your bowels move is all out of your control. So basically, if there's something wrong with it, you're going to end up either with constipation or diarrhea or flatulence or you name it. So if you are having these problems, these are, again, could be a sign of diabetic neuropathy. Now, finally, the dizziness, again, we talked about this. This is similar to lack of balance. But again, our balance is coordinated with the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system. If you're feeling dizzy, it could be an inner ear problem. It could be a cerebellar problem due to the brain, but it could be very well due to a diabetic neuropathy. So it's not a bad idea to talk to a neurologist to get to the bottom of these symptoms. Now, some of these symptoms is not necessarily exclusive to diabetic neuropathy. So if you're experiencing these problems, talk to your endocrinologist and talk to your neurologist to get to the bottom of it. If your sugars are uncontrolled, definitely improving your control with the blood sugars will help dissipate some of these symptoms. And some of these symptoms can also be controlled with certain medications as well. So, guys, I hope you liked it. Please give a thumbs up, share, and we'll see you in the next video. And remember to subscribe. So, guys, before you go, please remember to take the quiz. Taking quizzes will allow you to understand and absorb that information that you're getting from this video today. 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