Common symptoms include pain, tingling, weakness and burning in the legs and feet, but some people also experience muscle spasms, diarrhea, incontinence, impaired speech, impotence and sexual dysfunction. Of all the deleterious effects of excessive alcohol consumption, neuropathy is the most common. The true incidence of alcoholic neuropathy in the general population is unknown, and figures vary widely depending on the definition of chronic alcoholism and the criteria used to detect and classify neuropathy.
There are no medications that can help improve loss of sensation, strengthen muscle weakness, or assist with the coordination and balance problems caused by alcoholic neuropathy. However, some people notice an improvement in symptoms alcohol neuropathy a few months after discontinuing alcohol intake. While peripheral neuropathy generally cannot be cured, there are several medical treatments that can be used to manage the pain of alcoholic neuropathy, aiding in your recovery.
Understanding and treating alcoholic neuropathy
However, neuropathy is generally an exclusion criterion for transplantation. Physical therapy and orthopedic appliances (such as splints) may be needed to maintain muscle function and limb position. Motor nerves are the nerves responsible for all voluntary skeletal and somatic movement such as moving the leg or arm. People who drink heavily on a regular basis and have one or more of the following symptoms should contact a doctor. Give us a call and we can help find the right treatment program for you or your loved one – even if it’s not ours! Lauren Smith has worked as a journalist and copywriter for the last decade, covering a range of topics including health, energy, and technology in the US and UK.
- The damage may be the direct result of long periods where you drank too much alcohol.
- According to Simms et al., 2008a, Simms et al., 2008b, using similar protocol of intermittent alcohol (20%; v/v) ingestion, the alcohol concentration in the blood ranged from 4 to 93 mg / dL in Wistar rats submitted to 20 ingestion sessions.
- When alcohol is responsible for damage to the peripheral nerves, a person has alcoholic neuropathy.
- Valproate demonstrated varying effects in different studies of neuropathic pain, with three studies from one group reporting high efficacy [125–127] and others failing to find an effect [128, 129].
- Superficial sensation, especially nociception, was predominantly impaired and painful symptoms were the primary complaint in most patients in this group.
- People who struggle with alcoholism should try to eat a healthy and balanced diet, even if they don’t feel hungry.
- High amounts of alcohol use are causal risk factors in the development of disease in the heart, liver, pancreas, and brain (including the brains of children in utero).
An alcoholic neuropathy diagnosis is typically the product of a multipronged medical analysis. Your medical history will be evaluated, physical examinations will be administered, and you’ll likely have to undergo both blood and nerve tests. Another theory is that oxidative stress and increased free radical activity is the primary contributing factor when it comes to alcoholic neuropathy.
Neurological Effects of Alcohol
This protocol is a voluntary, self-administration model, mainly devoid of aversive stimulation. As there is no specific amount of alcohol known to induce peripheral neuropathy (Chopra and Twari, 2012) the voluntary intake protocol was an adequate choice to avoid stressful stimuli by treatment. Conversely, we assured that the animals would be exposed to eight weeks of treatment as it is a time length capable of inducing systemic changes to reproduce alcohol-related peripheral neuropathy (Mellion et al. 2013).
Thermal hyperalgesia and mechanical allodynia were also present with decreased mechanical threshold of C-fibres. The hyperalgesia was acutely attenuated by intradermal injection of nonselective PKC or selective PKCε inhibitors injected at the site of nociceptive testing. Western immunoblot analysis indicated a higher level of PKCε in dorsal root ganglia from alcohol-fed rats, supporting a role for enhanced PKCε second messenger signalling in nociceptors contributing to alcohol-induced hyperalgesia [16]. Miyoshi et al. [15] found that a significant decrease in the mechanical nociceptive threshold was observed after 5 weeks of chronic ethanol consumption in rats. Injection of (S)-2,6-diamino-N-[[1-(oxotridecyl)-2-piperidinyl]methyl] hexanamide dihydrochloride (NPC15437), a selective PKC inhibitor, once a day for a week after 4 weeks of ethanol treatment.
International Patients
Vitamin E is used to refer to a group of fat-soluble compounds that include both tocopherols and tocotrienols. Treatment with vitamin E was found to be beneficial in the treatment of patients with diabetic peripheral neuropathy [104] and neuropathic pain in streptozotocin-induced diabetic rats [105]. Recently https://ecosoberhouse.com/article/who-sober-alcoholics-are-and-what-it-means-to-be-sober/ findings from our laboratory also suggest the benefecial effects of both α-tocopherol and tocotrienol, isoforms of vitamin E, in the prevention of hyperalgesia and allodynia in rats administered ethanol for 10 weeks [55]. We found more potent effects with tocotrienol as compared with α-tocopherol [55].
- Motor nerves are the nerves responsible for all voluntary skeletal and somatic movement such as moving the leg or arm.
- Thus, deficiency of these vitamins was felt to be unlikely in Danish beer drinkers at that time and, indeed, measured vitamin concentrations were mostly normal.
- Alcohol has a toxic effect on the nerve tissue, and excessive alcohol use can lead to a condition called alcoholic neuropathy.
- For instance, painkillers, antidepressants, and anti-seizure medications can be instrumental in terms of pain management, although these aren’t considered scientifically approved treatments.