A glucose tolerance test can be anything from 2 hours or up to 5 hours in duration, you have to fast overnight then when you arrive they test your fasting sugar levels, then give you a very sweet drink to consume, after an hour they draw blood again to see how your system is reacting to the sugar challenge, then every hour after that, it's not a bad idea to get insulin levels checked at the same time.
Prior to having a GGT, a doctor sent me for just an overnight fasting glucose test which come back normal, the doc at the time said I did not have any sign of diabetes, how wrong was he, i have since learn't that many full blown diabetic 2 people can have normal fasting sugars, so it is a pretty useless test that a lot of doctors seem to rely on when testing for diabetes.

best of luck anyway
Brian :)

The GTT can be painful/brutal if you get hypoglycemia during it.

And it is only as good as the doctor who can interpret it. Some doctors are poor at this and ignore the low readings as problematic near the end. This is why I suggest a fasting INSULIN instead. This will show elevated insulin, and reflects insulin resistance.

Really high and really low sugar readings I believe impact the nerves. They starve in both scenarios. This is why supplements help, as they improve energy output in the mitochondria of the cells when glucose is unavailable. Acetyl carnitine enables fatty acid metabolism when glucose is low, for whatever reason.

The GGT is also painfully boring if you don't take a good read with you. ;)

When I have mine done now--
 

--I bring an iPod which has been stocked full of National Public Radio podcasts--hours and hours worth. Otherwise, just sitting there between sticks (one is not allowed to exercise, even walk around, as that skews the results) would be maddening.

Great thread on B6, mrsD! Some of it made my head spin a little, but I'll take another stab at trying to understand it all.

It seems like I have several things to shake a stick at now. There's the B6, and then there's the glucose that you all are talking about. But then when I looked again at that old test, I saw this: BUN/CREATININE RATIO: 31.6. Now, this blood work was taken first thing in the morning, when I tend to have had a liquid intake deficit, so maybe that was why. But it seems like a serious enough thing that it should be looked at again(?), not that I'm thinking it's related to PN.

Then I got my script for the additional bood work (I really wish now that I'd make a copy of the other script so I'd know what the neuro ordered before):

Rheumatoid factor
DNA (DS) ABS
Sjogren's ABS

The first one seems pretty straighforward, but I can't rememeber why or even if it has anything to do with PN...maybe she ordered it because I complained about stiffness and joint pain.

The DNA test...I Googled that one and am still clueless. I hope someone here knows (I'm betting on mrsD)

I did find some past discussions here about Sjorgren's and discovered that it can sometimes have some PN effects, but that many docs obstinantly don't recognize the connection. So whether that's the culprit or not, at least my neuro is trying to look at more than just the most obvious causes.

Dehydration can increase BUN... If this was done fasting, you might have not been drinking water enough.

Many drugs can increase BUN too:
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/e...cle/003474.htm
The most common one is the family of thiazide diuretics which are very commonly used for blood pressure ..example hydrochlorothiazide.

I would get tested for gout, since the BUN ratio is elevated.
Long term gout can affect the kidney, as well as cause pain in the feet and elsewhere.

And as far as the other tests--
 

--they are for variations of the anti-nuclear antibody (DS=double stranded); even rheumatoid factor is considered by some to be a variation of that antibody pattern.

And that reason is that all of the anti-nuclear antibody associated vascular/connective tissue disorders can be associated with peripheral neuropathies, either through direct compressive effects or through vascular insufficiency.

Take a look at:

http://neuromuscular.wustl.edu/antib...x.html#vascgen

Thanks for the anti-boredom tips, glenntaj. A good book or interesting programming (I'm an NPR fan too--Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me and This American Life are my favorites) can sure help!

And yes, mrsD, that's what I was trying to say about the high BUN/Creatinine, that it was probably just dehydration. But I thought in my Googling I read that it could be associated with renal failure, which scared me. I think that maybe it would be easiest to get it tested again when I'm sufficiently hydrated, and if turns out normal, I'd have one less thing on my list to worry about.

And glenntaj, thanks for the link. I will look at it right now and learn what I can.

I really appreciate everyone's input! :grouphug:

Update and question on glenntaj's link
 

I looked at your link, glenntaj, and noticed that throughout that list, I saw "asymmetric". I always characterized my PN as symmetric. My question is, do your symptoms have to be perfectly symmetric to be considered so, or do you just have to have both feet/hands affected in some way? I thought that the latter was the case, and that even though my left big toe might be burning, the side of my right foot is what's hurting at that moment. And this can all change in 15 minutes or less.

No, not at all.
 

Very few people that have neuropathy, from any cause, have truly symmetric neuropathy at all times. Even people who have toxic neuropathy, such as from chemotherapy, may have one part of the body affected more than others--and that part may switch over time, and go back and forth.

Symmetric in the end just means both sides of the body midline have expereinced some effects. Symptoms in just one part of the body consistently imply a mononeuropathy, often becasue some nerve area is particularly vulnerable to compressive effects. Often, what seems to start our asymmetric can affect both sides of the body midline over time, though in different places.