Redness
 

It was pointed out to me recently that when I'm having a foot pain flare, my feet turn bright red. (yes I am oblivious enough to have never noticed this myself)

I did a search for redness here and found a post from mrsD talking about magnesium, which I'm already taking. What I'm wondering is could the redness possibly be an indication of an allergy? And if it is, what kind would specifically cause redness on the feet?

What kind of magnesium are you taking? And how much?

Redness may follow pale coloration, as the blood flows back into the feet when cold. Is the redness connected to cold feet warming up?

I have alternating cold feet, warming up feet in winter. During the warm months, I don't have this unless I go in cold water in the lake.
We notice that exposure to cold water in summer makes everyone red!
(our water temps rarely get to 70, and last summer they were around 60)

Hmmm...I don't know about the redness, but in general, heat seems to aggravate my feet rather than cold, but not necessarily going from cold to hot. Magnesium I'm taking: Nutricology magnesium citrate, 170 mg 3x a day.

I've also been taking your advice to do the epsom salts soaks, which as you've pointed out, also contains magnesium. It really does seem to calm them down, but is it the magnesium, the coolness of the water, or both? Hard to say unless I tried it with just plain water, I guess.

My feet prefer it cool too. Heat aggravates them, and leads to burning sometimes.

I read a physiology explanation about temperature sensation once. It says cold sensations supercede heat. This is why menthol in foot or body rubs works well for most PNers.
So if the heat sensing neurons are misfiring, stimulating the cold ones block the heat feeling.

Your mag seems okay. It should be working to help your circulation.

Good points and good advice as always, mrsD!

What I really wanted to know is can an allergy (other than gluten) cause PN and is redness ever directly associated with a particular type of PN?

Well, possibly. Histamine release does redden skin.

Yesterday after dinner, my feet turned REALLY red.

I added curry spice to our chicken soup. The soup was totally benign and had no MSG in it. All I could think was I put too much curry in it. I had to rub Biofreeze on them, to get them to settle down. It is strange it happened right after your post too! :thud:

Oh no, I hope I didn't cause it!

And doesn't it add insult to injury? I love spicy food. I also used to love hot tubs and can no longer enjoy those either because they put my PN on a rampage.

Oh, and I meant to comment on your phestive pharmaceuticals, mrsD! They're very trippy!:cool:

Oh, thank you! It was quite a "battle" to get them to this state, too! I think I'll leave them there for a while. I typically put my flowers on my siggie, but lately many are asking me for more technical help so I'll leave this one up for a while.

I used to have a similar one on my avatar. I'll keep the avatar seasonal for a while at least...;)

One can pretend they are Lyrica getting thrown out? Or that they are dancing acetyl carnitine and B12... anything that suits you! LOL