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Burning feet

T

TriciaA

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My mother has type 2 Diabetes, she is 79 years of age and was diagnosed about 5 years ago.
For a long time now, she has sleepless nights due to her burning feet. She is up and down the stairs, soaking her feet in ice cold water, standing on the cold kitchen floor. It just go on and on. Her Dr perscribed Gabapentin (sp?), quite a few moths ago, she found that they did help when she first began to take them, however, over the past week or so, they don't seem to be doing anything.
She is at a loss on what to do now.
I am interested in hearing what members also suffer from this and also, if so, what do you do/take to help relieve this?
Many thanks
Tricia
 
Has the doctor suggested a cause?
If this is neuropathy, a period of very good blood sugar control should help.
Hana
 
my father in law suffered from similar symptoms, was put on pills etc (not sure which ones, sorry!) and he resisted low carbing for months. He finally started to do simple things like cut out bread, potatos and cereals and he has already noticed an improvement, 3 weeks in. Obviously as I am not a doctor I can't 100% confirm that cutting back on his carbs has stopped the pain but he is convinced so that is good enough for me :D
 
I sometimes get hot itchy feet when I have been naughty with my diet :oops:
 
I have this occasionally and wonder if it is a side-effect of my meds... I take statins as well as metformin and ones for my hypertension. Maybe I will measure my BG next time it comes on to see if it is the BG level. 8)
 
I have had many sleepless nights with burning feet and the strange thing is when you touch them they feel quite cool. I think tight BG controls plus I take benfotiamine have helped but I do get overheated very easily, without benfotiamine I also suffer with numb hands at night. This summer I am going to put some water in a hot water bottle and put it in the freezer so I have something cold to put my feet on, I also use a fan at night.
 
Hi TriciaA
Below (with luck) is some advice I gave some time back!


Re: Foot update 4 - not good news

Postby Insulinman » Sat Feb 14, 2009 12:14 am
Hi All
Hope this might help

I had a bad pain in a toe right leg, one toe had a star craze
it was Hospital treated with Hi Tech antibiotics
Later a vascular Mr said it was a "bit of crudd" its called Diabetic Foot?
The BDA in those day gave advice one was foot exercises as below.

Sit on a chair, both FEET on the ground:
One foot at a time heel hard down on the floor lift the toes up!
This HURTS like hell start with 5 or 10 goes, increase when you can
again same foot, Toes hard Down lift ancle up!
Hurts but not so much start with 10 to 15 goes
I did this for many months when I got to 100 Times.
My foot Pain went away? I still sleep with loose Blankets on my right hand side so I can hang my
foot out of the bed (even in very cold weather???)

I am on Insulin Lot of it, Now its in a Pump!
and thank God I still have my feet
Like the other guys Quote "I want to die with my feet ON"

Insulinman

Posts: 24
Joined: Sun Nov 23, 2008 10:10 pm
MOST DIABETICS WILL GET THIS CONDITION BETWEEN THE TIME!
I STILL HAVE "some burning"
BUT MOST OF THE PAIN HAS GONE??
I HOPE THIS HELPS (i am as old as Mum)

B
 
I had this for years along with raging restless legs until I finally realised that it was carbs and gluten foods that were driving it.

I dumped gluten and most carbs and adopted a very low carb nutritious diet based on protein, sat fats and vegetables and pure unrefined sea salt and haven't had a problem since.

Low carb isn't just good for Diabetes, it's good for all sorts of health problems.

PS. By the way, my neuropathy has gone, so have my 'gouty' toes, my jock-itch, thrush, dandruff, athlete's foot and other fungal issues, my blood pressure came down within three weeks and I was able to throw the BP tablets away, I have lowered my insulin to a fraction of what I was taking (and don't need it every day!) and only need one Metformin every other day or so.

What more can I say........
 
PPs. I did find when I had the burning feet, that putting them in HOT water helped more than cold.

Law of thermodynamics and all that.....

Putting them in cold water actually draws more blood to the feet and makes them hotter - putting them in hot water has the opposite effect - and it usually lasted long enough for me to get to sleep.

Low-carb is a much better solution though........
 
this sounds like neuropathy when your symtoms are burning feet and pain in the sole,i have developed this on my last foot check up and there's not a lot you can do. my control for the last 15 years has been excellent usully between 7 and 7.5 average. my doctor says its the diabetes .
 
Hi tricia i suffer from Peripheral Neuropathy and i have similar pains to your mother ....i was prescribed pregabalin & duloxetine (cymbalta)and the pains are now kept under control....
but it is advisible to keep tight control of blood sugars....Mark.
 
How can it be down to Diabetes, when going low-carb got rid of it???

Even having low BG numbers hadn't dealt with it, but removing the carbs did.

The fact that i have no more neuropathy quite clearly illustrates to me that it is not down to the Diabetes. I am still Diabetic. I still have to take insulin, although a much smaller amount. I still take Metformin albeit less. But I am not getting the 'Diabetic Complications' any more!

What I have learned is that carbs as we know them today are far removed from what our ancestors ate. They are very damaging. Why do you think that Diabetes is turning into an epidemic?? Something has to be driving it.

Today's processed foods are usually not only very high in processed carbs, but also contain a lot of sugar. Even processed meat often contains sugar. The manufacturers are pandering to our progressively sweet teeth by making their products sweeter and more enticing so that we will be good and buy them.

We were never designed to eat this stuff! Our bodies don't know what to do with it. We can't keep on stuffing it down and assuming that it works ok just because it tastes nice.

Anything processed has had most, if not all the vital nutrients removed (for instance, the wheatgerm that contains the bulk of the nutrients is removed during the refining process because it makes the bread go off quickly, and sold as pig food. The pigs are better fed than we are!). These are VITAL nutrients that would help our bodies use the food we eat. Without those nutrients, the food not only does more damage than good, but it also keeps robbing the body's own nutrient 'bank'.

Salt is another issue. We are told to eat less salt - why? Because it apparently raises blood pressure. Yes, it does, but that is because the vast bulk of the salt that people consume is cheap refined table salt, and that raises blood pressure because the other (at least( 83 minerals and trace elements that are in the pure salt have been removed and sold for profit. What you and I and millions of other people are getting is the leftovers - because we know no different. Sodium Chloride and nothing else. Another processed product the body can't use properly.

Lots of processes in the body are electrical. The body needs salt to complete these electrical processes.

All nutrients are 'synergistic'. In other words, they need other elements - vitamins, amino acids, minerals or even tiny bits of trace elements, in order to work properly. If we aren't getting them from our food, or from salt, where on earth can we get them from?

What I have learned is that we are being duped - left, right and centre - and we don't know it. No wonder we are suffering.
 
Hi AliB,
There are others who reverse their neuropathy by getting their levels down without low carbing so there seems to be more than one way of skinning a cat.
 
I have had burning itchy soles with the skin peeling off for the last few months. It is a lot better after moisturising 4 times a day . It started off feeling like elephant hide but now feels a lot more normal. Yesterday again I had 2 places on one foot where the skin has split and I have been putting calendula cream and shea butter on today. I am not sure if this is from diabetes or not.

The burning and itchiness usually starts in the evening and I can wake in the night with it when I moisturise again. I do have fungus toenails but no athletes foot at the moment as that has gone with the continuous use of vinegar (white or apple cider) between the toes in the mornings. I hoped the fungus toenails would clear up with low blood sugar readings but it hasn't.

I am new to the forum tonight so should say that I control my hereditary Type 2 with a low carb/low GI diet and exercise. I have never been very overweight ( worst was size 14) and have always eaten healthily. My fasting bs for the last 3 days have been 4.8 which is fantastic. I get worried if it goes near 6.0. I take various herbal supplements and am a homeopath so needless to say doctors meds are not in my vocabulary and won't be unless I can't keep control.
 
I did measure by BG last time it came on... around 5 so I doubt that's it.... mentioned it to my 'new' GP who as Indian chap and therefore well versed with DM and he sugg next time I see the DN she takes a look at my vitamin B12 levels... some side effect of metformin... but he didn't offer any other explanation such as neuropathy... but added it is summat to do with the nerves.
I usually just get 'hot toes' nowt on other parts of my feet. Running em under the cold tap helps for a while... 8)
 
My is the soles and it is very itchy . Today the skin has split in a different area but seems to be healing fast. I just have to constantly moisturise with foot cream. Am using Boots Intensive again as I think it could be best of a bad bunch!! Bs was 5.2 this morning .
 
Ricky, you are what you eat has never been more true.

I know you feel that putting vinegar on your Athlete's foot may have solved the problem, but if you stop the vinegar, eventually it will come back.

I have removed most carbs other than some cooked non-starchy veg from my diet and my fungal issues have all gone, but I know darn well, that if I start eating all the rubbishy carbs again, it will all come back to haunt me big-time.

If you look at any healthy cultures around the World - and there are still a few that have been untouched by our Western Diet - and analyse their diet you will see clearly that whether their diet is carbohydrate based or protein based, all the food they eat is unrefined, unprocessed and perfectly natural, grown and raised in and on good soil.

Some, based in South America eat a predominantly pulse based diet, some like the Maasai eat a predominantly meat and fat based diet - often consuming up to one and a half pounds of butter a day, some, like the Inuit eat an almost totally meat, fish and fat-based diet - fat making up 60 - 70% of their diet, but all these diets are based on natural foods.

Maybe they don't live quite as long as we 'appear' to (though some would question that in view of the heart disease and Cancer etc in our Society), but they have a much harder life than we do, and often in much more extremes of temperature than we do and without the 'luxuries'.

We all want a 'pill to end all ills' but at the end of the day it comes back down to us. We are totally responsible for our own health. It is our body. If we hand that responsibility over to the Doctors and things go wrong, how can we truly blame them? They are human just like us, and often can't read the signs until the 'disease' is far too well established. This system makes us way too reliant on other people and way too unreliant upon ourselves.

Even when Doctors advice goes wrong time after time after time, people still blindly put faith in them. Am I missing something??? I want to stop things before they start, not try and stick a plaster on after it has already happened!

Anyway, as I mentioned I have got rid of all mine - the Athlete's foot, the fungal nails, the 'jock-itch' and fungal patches, the thrush, the dandruff - all signs of systemic Candida and other yeasts and fungi. Whether people choose to do it the way I have is up to them, but for what it's worth, keeping an open mind on it may well prove to be the best 'cure' of all.
 
Since I wrote last my feet have stopped burning however they are still itchy but nothing like they were. All the splitting and peeling skin has stopped on my feet and it looks and feels more normal. I am still moisturizing like mad. No athletes foot and I stopped the vinegar ages ago. I still have fungal toenails. I keep hopeing they will grow out. New thing is my tips of my fingers have started peeling and my wrist but that is better than it is with constant moisturizing.
Basically my BG is controlled and I eat well. We only ever have unprocessed sea salt in the house. The only carbs I eat are in fruit and low GI veg and 1 slice of pumpernickel or Burgen bread a day.

The best thing I found for burning feet at night is to tape on the inside of ripe banana skin and put socks on. It really works .
 
Ricky said:
The best thing I found for burning feet at night is to tape on the inside of ripe banana skin and put socks on. It really works .
Click to expand...

How unusual :? Hope you use surgical tape and not sellotape! :)

Nigel
 
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