A diabetic patient asked her doctor, “Do I have nerve disease? I feel numbness in my hands and feet with a burning sensation, will this get better? Can you help me?” The doctor replied, “Unfortunately, I’m sure I can control your blood sugar and medicate you for the pain, but the neuropathy is progressive and irreversible.” “Progressive and irreversible!” For decades, this has been the correct answer given in medical schools, on medical exams, and by doctors when explaining it to patients. “Neuropathy is progressive and irreversible.” This means there is no hope for treatment. If your disease is hopelessly untreated, depression and disability are likely to occur. “Progressive and irreversible.” This is the old view of the understanding of neuropathy. And now I can solve your problem. By relieving the pressure on the compressed nerves associated with neuropathy, 80% of patients’ symptoms can be relieved. If you get your foot sensation back, you won’t have any more ulcers and you won’t have to have your leg amputated. Your balance may even improve. I think that would be a new neuropathy, which I like to call a “new condition. The new condition is the first good news for people with diabetic neuropathy. The outlook for “restoring sensation and relieving pain” is positive and hopeful. A male patient sat in my office and said, “I know I have neuropathy. I’ve been to many doctors who give me electrical tests and then tell me I have it, but they say there’s nothing they can do. How do you know that I have neurological compression and know that I can be cured? How do you know I’m most likely to be well in 3 months?” I developed a new treatment for neuropathy, but only if the symptoms of neuropathy were caused by the presence of nerve compression. In 1989 I developed a new neurosensitivity meter. This nerve sensitivity test is painless, does not require needles, and is not expensive, and is called a pressure specific sensitometer (PSSD). All you need to do is sit comfortably in a chair and the PSSD instrument makes contact with your fingertips, toes or lips to complete the test. Two round metal probes gently press on your skin, pressing a button when you first feel that pressure, and then again when you can tell whether you’ve pressed once or twice. It doesn’t hurt at all. By comparison, you can feel how easy the probe is to touch, and you can tell the minimum distance between the probes at two similar points, and the PSSD can use this information to determine whether you have nerve compression and nerve necrosis. If the nerve has started to necrotize and you can’t distinguish between two probes that are very close together, then it’s time to perform a nerve decompression procedure. I use the PSSD to be able to measure peripheral nerve function, to understand the anatomical narrowing of the nerve distribution area, and to determine where the nerve is compressed. A gentle tap on the nerve (positive Tinel’s sign) will determine if the nerve can regenerate; if the skin feels a tingling when tapped at the site of nerve compression and the PSSD shows moderate nerve degeneration, then there is an 80% chance of recovery and functional recovery is expected within 3 months of the procedure. If the PSSD shows more severe nerve degeneration, the time to regenerate the nerve into the toe is increased to 1 year. A summary of pain resolution strategies Peripheral nerve pain can arise from 3 types of lesions, all of which can be treated by appropriate methods. These 3 types of lesions are classified as follows: 1. neuroma – causing nerve damage. 2. Nerve compression – local pressure is applied. 3, neuropathy – affecting the nerves of the body is a systemic disease, most likely to involve the legs and feet, followed by the hands. However, at the same time, such diseases make it more likely that the nerves are compressed in certain knowable areas. The research I have done on peripheral nerve diseases over the past 25 years has shown that: painful neuromas can be removed; scarring can be removed from compressed nerves; and even for neuropathies, chronic nerve compression caused by narrowing of anatomical sites can be released to restore sensation, relieve pain, prevent ulcer formation and amputation, and restore limb coordination. These are all new approaches to the treatment of neuropathy.