Alcoholics often develop peripheral neuropathy because of the nutritional deficiencies caused by not eating correctly while they are drinking. You are off to a good start with the vitamins. B1 , B12, and D3. Make sure the D you are using is D3 and the B12 you are using is methylcobalamin. These are the usable forms of the vitamins for your body. A good multl B vitamin and a good multi vitamin would be a good idea. It's important that she eats a balanced nutritious diet.

Since she may also have diabetes, she should be given an A1c Test which indicates the average blood sugar level over a 3 month period. This would help to diagnose whether she is a diabetic or not. Repeat the test 3 months later after she has been taking the vitamins and eating well for that period. I wouldnt jump to conclusions based on that first test since she has just started to take action to turn things around. Its possible that a combination of dietary deficiencies and diabetes has caused her peripheral neuropathy

The good news is that peripheral neuropathy caused by alcoholism/ dietary deficiencies is one of the few causes of peripheral neuropathy that can get better long term.

Hi SoulfulYin

Welcome to NeuroTalk .

I have relatively minor peripheral neuropathy in my hands arising from alcohol abuse (public knowledge on NeuroTalk). I quit years ago thanks to a combination of my hard work and skilled help from my mental health care team.

Your mother might find this forum Alcoholism, Addiction and Recovery a source of both information and support.

Thanks for the info! Yup, she's been taking Jarrow's Methyl-B12 for about 7 days now, and D3 once every morning as well. I don't know if there's a better form of B1, but if there is I'll definitely try and see if we can get some of that instead, through her doctor or otherwise.

I don't think she necessarily has diabetes yet, at least whoever had said her glucose was a little high hadn't said she had diabetes. I did a bit of looking stuff up and apparently she is in prediabetes range though. I'm not sure if prediabetes can cause neuropathy, but all things considered I'm not going to ignore it or anything. I'll try n help her get a healthier lifestyle going-- we'll order some multivitamins, maybe B complex too, but I'm a little worried about getting her too much of something, so if we get multi B vitamins and/or multi vitamins, should she be taking less of the B1, B12 or D3 she's taking right now too?

We've already noted some improvements since she started taking the B12, B1 and D3. But my Mom's not exactly gonna be happy until the pain's all gone, and whenever she's presented with something she might have to stop doing (like eating fast food or sugary stuff) she ends up in tears because she feels overwhelmed, I'm assuming at least. She told me she feels like I'm the only one trying to help her get better, which is an awful feeling for me but especially her. It takes weeks to get to talk to someone qualified to actually help, and then they only tell us that increasing the gabapentin dosages can help. She knows she's doing the right thing, she knows it's going to help her, but I guess it's just hard for her to have to turn everything around while also dealing with long-lasting and sometimes intense pain. I really hope we can get to a point where she at least can be happier soon...it's killin' me to see her like this.

Benfotiamine is a more readily absorbed form of B1.

Jarrow B Right is a very good multi B complex.

B6 you have to be careful not to take too much of.

The combo of B12, benfotiamine, D3 2,000 iu , and B Right would be fine to take

--that in some people even blood sugar readings in the prediabetic range can cause neuropathy.

But I think the much more obvious aspect here is vitamin deficiency. She had gastric bypass surgery in the past--that is absolutely associated with difficulties absorbing vitamins, especially the B-complex ones and especially B12.

And B12 deficiency (that level of 387 you mentioned was much too low, despite typical American lab ranges; in Europe and Japan the lower range limits usually start around 500-550--we just seem to take a long time to catch up to more recent clinical thinking) is not only associated with peripheral neuropathy, but with multiple systems degeneration that can include cognitive/memory issues and motor problems. In fact, in gerentological circles it is established that among elderly people with cognitive/memory issues one really ought to check their vitamin levels first before assuming dementia or Alzheimer's; B12 and other B-vitamin deficiency is quite common as people get older as the intrinsic factor needed to break out cobalamin from foodstuffs in the stomach significantly declines with age (with or without alcohol consumption).

I'd see if you can get your mother's doctors to monitor her vitamin levels regularly, and to continue her physical therapy. Hopefully she will improve over time, but neurological damage takes a long time to heal, if it can, and the recovery is often patchy and incomplete.

I know we've seen at least a little improvement since I got her on the B12, as both her PT and OT, and my grandma, noted how much faster she was moving. It probably wasn't a huge increase, but we'll take any improvement we can get. I'll see about getting some Jarrow B Right, too, but I'm very worried about her B6 going over and causing even more issues. This particular problem seems very delicate to handle, and I'm far from qualified for it...we'd go get blood tests, but we have no way to get around right now-- we're practically stuck. And that's not even the hard part, it's her having to come to terms with the fact that the healing is going to take time. She's really really impatient with painful situations like this. And it doesn't help that her memory is still shot (which I'm suspecting to maybe be due to liver damage from alcohol causing repetitions of hyponatremia, since her sodium seemed to drop back down when she had to go back to the hospital weeks ago for low sodium again). I think it's improved a little, but there's no way she can return to her job as an accountant the way she is now, even though she's been working almost entirely from home the past year. It's probably why her doctor has kept her on a fluid restriction ever since she left the hospital, too.

Another issue we're running into is that her insurance doesn't cover frequent PT or OT visits, nor does it cover short term care for them to help her get back on her feet, and we're already strapped for money as it is. And for some reason she becomes a lot more immature and unwilling to work out when it's a relative (like me) trying to help her as opposed to PT or OT. I've been there when they visit-- they ask her to do something, and she tries with a little comment of uncertainty as her only protest, if she does protest. When I want her to work out, she tells me to wait 5 minutes and then takes another 2 minutes when I get back to sit up and reach for her walker. And then it's a struggle to get her to do some workouts that she already has done before with PT or OT.

It's just rough. And I guess it's gonna be like this until she's able to ditch the walker, which could be months. I'm not really looking forward to that...

It's only been a few days since my last post regarding this, but I'm becoming more and more worried about my mom's memory rather than her neuropathy. I mean the neuropathy's bad to the point that she can hardly go up the stairs, sure, but even so it'd be easy for me to just help her up the stairs and then call someone to drive us around. Better yet, even if she COULDN'T leave, she could still WORK. She's an accountant (I think. It has something to do with managing money/bills. Whatever it is she does, it requires her memory be in tip-top shape), 90% of what she does, she can do at home on her laptop (and has been almost exclusively since the pandemic). But now that her memory's shot? No chance of making enough money to pay rent alone, let alone other bills like internet or insurance.

My mom's memory seems to have stagnated in it's recovery-- or it's improving so slowly that I can't even tell if it's getting better. It's worrying. She forgets things almost immediately sometimes still, she forgets to pay bills, she forgets so much she has to write down every single thing that's said to her during calls with people like her doctor or the neurologist or she won't remember any of it. We don't even know what could be causing it, and now we're at a point where we're drowning in so many bills that we're gonna have to put off even trying to go get blood tests, which also cost money we don't have. And then there's her glucose levels which are also elevated (116), and I've seen neuropathy doesn't really get better until that's accounted for, but dealing with that in and of itself right now just seems like such a large beast to handle, mainly because we have no money to just buy diet-related foods that would help lower/keep her blood sugar in check. It just feels like we're stuck in a shrinking cage and every time we try to reach out to grab the key to unlock it, the cage shrinks even faster.

I'm sorry to have to sound like such a downer-- I just...I'm at a lost at what to do here. Every story that I've read regarding neuropathy didn't also have to deal with memory loss, so I guess our case is a terribly unique one. But it makes me wonder what we can even do to fix it? She's been on her current vitamins (B1, Methyl-B12 and D3) for only 10 days so far, in the case of the B12. D3 has been a couple days longer (maybe 3/14), B1 has been since 3/9. I've done some more looking things up since it feels like we're so inundated we can't just go and get tests or anything, I've seen some problems with the liver (such as cirrhosis) can also cause memory issues due to hyponatremia being a frequent complication of it (which she did have at the beginning of all this, and then it came back maybe a week or two later)...alcohol damages the liver, right? Maybe that's what we're dealing with. Then again, I'm no doctor, and the only thing I even know about is her B12 levels (which were taken weeks ago), so maybe not. Maybe it's her magnesium, or her B6 levels. But before we can even find out what it is via a test, we need both a ride there and the wealth stability to even afford it.

When I read Icehouse's story, it seemed like such a miracle that gave me so much hope that my mom could recover just the same, except for one big problem: I don't think Icehouse had to deal with memory issues at all during his recovery journey, which makes me think that our journey is going to be even harder for it.

Someone from Pathways is going to come and draw my mom's blood sometime this week I think, so at least we have that going for us. Don't need to have someone drive mom there, we can find out her sodium levels that way. And then maybe I can ask her doctor or whoever calls us back for her nutrition levels. Maybe her memory issue is really just low magnesium/vitamin B. It'd make life so much easier for us both if it were as simple as giving her supplements for a few weeks and then maybe 1-3 times a week after to get her memory back.

I hope everyone's doing okay, either way. Advice would be appreciated though, because it feels like I'm running out of time to save my mom.

Hi SoulfulYin,
Apart from you and your mother, do you have any other close relatives or support people who can help. I may have missed it if you wrote in a post already, but I'm not even sure if you're an adult and it worries me very much that you are maybe dealing with the responsibilty of helping your mother become well again all on your own.

I'm asking this because of personal experience and I know how difficult it has been for my own daughter, who is actually a young adult, to suddenly become a carer of sorts for me while I was and am still going through some full-on health issues in the past few years.

Do you have a good relationship with your mother's doctor? They should be helping you sort out her health care.