Diabetic Neuropathy - Types, Symptoms and Complications

What is Diabetic Neuropathy, what causes it? What are the types? What are the symptoms of Diabetic Neuropathy? All these questions and more shall be answered in this article.

Neuropathy means disease or dysfunction of one or more peripheral nerves, typically causing numbness or weakness. Diabetic Neuropathy or DN may thus be defined as nerve damage due to complications arising from having diabetes.

In this condition the high sugar content of blood leads to damage of nerves mostly those found in the hands and legs. However since the condition affects all peripheral nerves, and organs being innervated, it can equally affect organs and systems of the body.

So what are the symptoms of the condition? Well, symptoms vary depending on the type of neuropathy and the nerves affected. There are four main types of diabetic neuropathy. These are; Peripheral neuropathy, Autonomic neuropathy, Radiculoplexus neuropathy and mononeuropathy.

Peripheral Neuropathy affects the feet and legs first, then the hands and arms. It causes grievous foot conditions such as ulcers, infections that can become gangrenous and require amputations, deformities and bone and joint pain.

Its symptoms include, loss of reflexes, especially in the ankles, a tingling or burning sensation, numbness or reduction in being able to feel pain or temperature changes, loss of balance and coordination, muscle weakness, sharp pains or cramps and increased sensitivity to touch.

Autonomic neuropathy, refers to neuropathy of the autonomic nervous system. This system is responsible for the control of organs like the lungs, heart, bladder, stomach, intestines, sex organs and eyes.

This variant comes loaded with a lot of symptoms, nay complications. These include the inability of the body to detect that sugar levels are low (hypoglycaemia unawareness), increased or decreased sweating and bladder problems like urinary tract infections, incontinence or urinary retention.

In addition to that sufferers may exhibit difficulty regulating body temperature, difficulty swallowing, and gastroparesis. This latter being the phenomena of the stomach being slow in emptying, leading to vomiting, nausea, bloating and loss of appetite. Associative of this, sufferers may experience constipation, uncontrolled diarrhoea or a combination of the two.

In addition to this, in men, it may lead to erectile dysfunction, whereas in women, cause vaginal dryness and other sexual difficulties.

Further the condition leads to an increment in heart rate when the sufferer is at rest. At the same time because the sufferers body is unable to adjust blood pressure and heart rate, s/he will experience a sharp drop in blood pressure after sitting or standing. This may cause her/him to feel light headed or faint.

Furthermore, the condition may lead to changes in the way the eyes adjust from light to dark.

Mononeuropathy

Also called focal neuropathy, this painful specie is characterized by damage to a specific nerve of the body. This could be a leg, torso or face nerve. It often appears without warning and is most common in older adults. Fortunately it is not long-lasting and symptoms usually reduce and disappear on their own over a few weeks or months without further intervention.

Its signs and symptoms depend on which nerve is involved and may include: paralysis on one side of the face (Bell's palsy), pain in lower back or pelvis, difficulty focusing the eyes, double vision or aching behind one eye; pain in your shin or foot, pain in the front of your thigh and pain in your chest or abdomen.

At times, mononeuropathy occurrence may be due to nerve compression. A common type of such nerve compression in people with diabetes is Carpal tunnel Syndrome. What is this? Carpal tunnel signs and symptoms include; a feeling of weakness in the hand and a habit of dropping things, numbness or tingling in fingers or hand, especially in thumb and other fingers apart from ring finger.

Radiculoplexus, also known as diabetic amyotrophy is the DN specie affecting mostly hips, thighs buttocks or legs. The prognosis for this type is better as people tend to get better over time. It is evidenced by weight loss, sudden, severe pain in the hip and thigh or buttock, abdominal swelling, if the abdomen is affected and difficulty rising from a sitting position.

Another type of neuropathy is Thoracoabdominal Neuropathy.

Generally speaking the warnings signs which one should watch out for and respond to immediately by seeing a health care professional are; burning, tingling, weakness or pain in the hands or feet that interferes with daily routine or sleep; a cut or sore on the foot that isn't healing or appears to be taking too long to heal, is infected or getting worse.

This is important because worst case scenarios where such cut or sore become ulceric, if left untreated, may leave it gangrenous. Surgery or even amputation of the foot may then be the only solution.

Other warning signs are dizziness and changes in sexual function, digestion or urination.