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Living with nerve pain is not easy. If it has lasted a long time, you may have feelings of hopelessness, sadness, anger or even depression due to the constant pain. You may withdraw from people close to you or stop doing the fun things you used to do. If you have trouble coping with the emotions caused by your nerve pain, here are five suggestions for taking charge of those emotions and finding new perspectives. Your mind is a powerful thing — and you can use it to make a change in your life. Try these five ways to get an emotional handle on nerve pain: 1. Practice self-care.

In February 2020, Jan Griffith, a 68-year-old retiree from Redlands, California, was shocked to learn she had breast cancer. Luckily, an overdue mammogram caught it early – at stage zero. But Griffith had to get through four grueling rounds of chemotherapy and debilitating nausea and sickness that came with it. She was grateful that what she assumed was the most challenging part of having cancer was over. The following November, Griffith learned that wasn't the case. “I started feeling tingling in my toes and the tips of my fingers,” Griffith says.

Everyone needs a getaway now and then — a chance to break routines and gain new perspectives and experiences. However, traveling can have its challenges if you’re living with nerve pain (neuropathy), lower back pain, diabetes, or any other chronic condition that causes discomfort. Here are seven tips to maximize your enjoyment and minimize pain during your travels. The good memories you make along the way can be well worth the effort. Get comfortable in your seat. If you’re traveling by car, make sure your seat is upright and you have good posture.

“The Neuropathic Therapy Center at Loma Linda allows me to live my life.”  For Mark Knowlton, age 61, those words are no exaggeration. Mark walks, drives, does yard work, and plays with his grandkids. In the past year, he has been downhill skiing on a top-tier slope, gone boating, off-roading and fishing, and visited the Grand Canyon. He has done all of this despite severe neuropathy (nerve pain), tingling, and numbness in his hands, feet, and lower leg. Four years ago, the former college football quarterback was diagnosed with metastatic pancreatic cancer.

In 2006, Mark Bussell, DPT, developed a physical therapy technique called intraneural facilitation (INF) to relieve nerve pain, numbness and tingling. Since then, he has treated more than 4,200 patients with a high degree of success. Currently, Dr. Bussell and other therapists provide INF at Loma Linda’s  Neuropathic Therapy Center. How does INF work? The pain, numbness and tingling that occurs from damaged nerves are often due to blood supply being cut off to those nerves.

If you’re living with nerve pain, there is a definite benefit to eating healthy, low-inflammatory foods. A plant-based diet offers abundant opportunities for healthier nerves and less pain.  What’s also great, is how easy it is to prepare simple meals at home, where you control the ingredients that go into your meals.

Nerves have a special relationship with your blood for many reasons. There are two reasons that stand out: Blood removes waste products. Nerve firing requires energy, but after firing, there are byproducts called “metabolic waste” that shouldn’t remain around a nerve. You could compare this to trash around a house. Most of us have garbage services that assist with removing garbage from where we live. If something was to happen to the waste removal services, then it would be difficult for us to function.

The coronavirus pandemic has ushered in uncertainty, opportunities for resilience, and is set to shape a new era of medicine. For those who are sheltering in place and suffering from neuropathy, this can also be a time of stress and may leave them wondering what experts have to say about managing their pain at home. Our care team at the Neuropathic Therapy Center is committed to providing quality care for those with nerve pain during coronavirus pandemic. We are offering a variety of telehealth opportunities and tips on the blog to help during this time.

Doctors tell us the benefits of a healthy diet range from disease prevention, longevity and overall making you feel good. For those of us living with chronic neuropathy, smart nutrition choices are essential to minimizing nerve pain. March is National Nutrition Awareness month, and we’re taking this opportunity to shed light on metabolic neuropathy and how what you eat affects your pain.  What is metabolic neuropathy? Metabolic neuropathy is a secondary neuropathy to a disease process that is already occurring in the body.

You hurt. You hurt a lot, and the pain is frequent. As a result, you’ve conducted research and discovered your pain symptoms matched common signs of nerve pain. Empowered with that information, you begin taking steps to ease your neuropathy by making healthier lifestyle choices and working with a physician to identify the cause of your pain.   Upon completing several examinations, you receive an official diagnosis of neuropathy from your primary care physician.