Horselover, I'm not really sure what you are asking of us when you say, "advise". Are you asking should you or shouldn't you take Cymbalta?
Is there something else you would like from us. You've given us the barest information about yourself, that you love horses and have diabetes, and want us to tell you what to do? Tall order, and a set-up for us here.

How can we advise you when we don't really know a thing about you? How can we know how much pain you have, or when, or what it does to your life? How can we know about what workup you've had for causes other than neuropathy? Your diet? Your stresses?

What I'm trying to tell you is that asking us for broad strokes of advice will get you our individual philosophies, or our individual philosophies on one particular day (I can tell you that my "philosophy" can vary depending upon how I'm feeling that day, week, moment.)

So, in the broadest sense:

You tell us you are depressed and it is very important to treat depression. Depression causes not only psychic pain but physical pain. Depression itself is a terrible stressor, to the body and brain, and pain improves when depression is treated.

The Cymbalta manufacturers have gone out of their way to get approved for depression with pain, or chronic pain. I have to say I know they did this AFTER another drug company was doing the same thing for another drug, and it was working, so they figured out how to get good sales with this pitch)

It IS an extremely good medicine for the two problems. People sometimes say the very next day after beginning it that their pain is better.

Whoever prescribed it to you DID have a sense of you, that you are down and hurting. So it's a good place to begin, whatever else you are doing.

If your neuropathy is from diabetes, you are very lucky. With good diabetic control, and with use of supplements (as in the stickies) and exercise, there is no reason at all for the neuropathy to not improve. That's not just the pain, that's the neuropathy itself.

Diabetic neuropathy happens because the high blood sugar damages both blood vessels and nerves. Blood vessels bring oxygen and food to nerves, and nerves, well, that's what we're talking about. Bringing your blood glucose down will take away the cause of the problem.

The supplemetns in the stickies help heal the nerves, so they are very important. Lipoic Acid, omega fatty acids (fish oil), acetyl l carnitine, the B vitamins--you'll find that people have put together a menu of them and make very good suggestions.

So, you are luckier than those here who need IVIG indefinitely, luckier than those of us with idiopathic pn, who don't know the cause and have the concern that one day it will make itself known in a not-so-happy way.

Things could be worse. This is a chronic disease, like your diabetes, and can be managed.

But if you are depressed, it's hard to hear all this, hard to read the stickies.

So, do what you must to get yourself in shape to read, take notes, and get moving. Let us know more about yourself.

This is a good group here. There are smart people, wise people, like-minded people and people with different ideas. But it is universally a supportive place to have landed, so make use of us, make use of hte work that's gone into the stickies, and ask what you must.

Good luck on your journey to better health.