What is peripheral neuropathy?

Your peripheral nervous system connects the nerves from your brain and spinal cord, or central nervous system, to the rest of your body. This includes your:

• Arms
• Hands
• Feet
• Legs
• Internal organs
• Mouth
• Face

The job of these nerves is to deliver signals about physical sensations back to your brain.

Peripheral neuropathy is a disorder that occurs when these nerves malfunction because they’re damaged or destroyed. This disrupts the nerves’ normal functioning. They might send signals of pain when there’s nothing causing pain, or they might not send a pain signal even if something is harming you.

Symptoms

The three types of peripheral nerves are:

• Sensory nerves, which connect to your skin
• Motor nerves, which connect to your muscles
• Autonomic nerves, which connect to your internal organs

Peripheral neuropathy can affect one nerve group or all three.

The symptoms of peripheral neuropathy include:

• Tingling in the hands or feet
• A feeling like you’re wearing a tight glove or sock
• Sharp, stabbing pains
• Numbness in the hands or feet
• A weak, heavy feeling in the arms and legs, which sometimes may feel like your legs or arms lock in place
• Regularly dropping things from your hands
• A buzzing or shocking sensation
• Thinning of the skin

About Us & Peripheral Neuropathy

An elaborate medical history about onset, duration and progression of symptoms and clinical examination will be done which might help in determining the cause. They may also refer you for further tests like NCS to know the extent and type of nerve fibre affected. Based on the findings, customized treatment plan will be formulated ranging from treating the cause (Eg. Uncontrolled Diabetes Mellitus) to medications that help in controlling pain & preventing further nerve damage.

Peripheral Neuropathy Physiotherapy

Our Neurophysiotherapist will conduct a comprehensive clinical assessment which includes collecting a detailed history of your symptoms and how these symptoms affect your daily activities.
The assessment also includes administering different tests to more objectively evaluate your functional limitations. A customized exercise plan will be jointly designed from the findings of the clinical assessment, results from laboratory testing and imaging studies.

Our physical therapist will focus on the following:

• Maintaining and improve functions via a range of motion – passive range of motion exercises consist of progressive stretching and self-stretches
• Strengthening muscles – this includes exercising against increasing resistance, use of weights, therabands and isometric exercise
• Balance training provides stability to prevents falls
• May also recommend braces and/or splints to enhance balance and posture

We are also specialized in the use of electrical rehab modalities like Functional Electrical Stimulation. This enables the physiotherapist to provide a multi modal approach to your therapy.