NeuroTalk Support Groups

NeuroTalk Support Groups (https://www.neurotalk.org/)
-   Peripheral Neuropathy (https://www.neurotalk.org/peripheral-neuropathy/)
-   -   SFN - alcohol makes symptoms worse but is it the cause? (https://www.neurotalk.org/peripheral-neuropathy/237759-sfn-alcohol-makes-symptoms-worse-cause.html)

JimJamJones 07-09-2016 05:38 AM

SFN - alcohol makes symptoms worse but is it the cause?
 
Hey, so for the last 3 1/2 years i have been having, what i now realise is nerve problems with my hands and fingers. When it began, i was heavily stressed at work but safe in the knowledge i was about to embark on a 6 month trip travelling around south america. Just before i finished up with the work however, i noticed my fingertips had suddenly started to feel sore and were hurting when i touched the keyboard on my computer but, i just put this down to being RSI due to the heavy workload i had been under, and expected it to heal over the course of the travelling. Unfortunately, nothing changed.

Fast forward to today, past all the theories on what the problem could be (RSI, RA, arthritis, TMS) i have now come to the conclusion that it is small fiber neuropathy. Predominantly showing as allodynia in my fingertips - a sunburnt feeling which spreads up the side of my fingers, up the nerves into my forearms but only when my fingers are used i.e. tapping on a keyboard, lightly swiping a smartphone. I noticed also that 6 months ago that my left foot has started to have some paresthesias as well, feeling kind of cold and slightly prickly underneath.

After going through multiple docs and neuros i finally found one who diagnosed me with SFPN, which seems to fit. I have had all of the blood tests available and ENMGs, which came up fine. Aside from a high B6 due to Bvitamin supplementation, which has now lowered, and also a Lyme test which i was told was high but referred only to a recent infection and probably wasnt the issue... (doc offered me antibiotics for this but i declined as he said it was very unlikely the cause and ive read about people getting bad neuropathy from the antibiotics themselves).

Now, the only time ive ever noticed any change/ worsening of the symptoms is when i am hungover, sick or tired. Ive read about alcoholic neuropathy and have considered this but im definitely no alcoholic. Its true, I have always drunk a fair amount of alcohol, yeah, im a 30 year old british male so its very common for us to go out on weekends and drink with friends, but i only ever drink 4-5 drinks if i do go out and im quite happy to go several weeks without drinking. Nonetheless, starting this week, i have decided to quit alcohol entirely.

Is it common to have worsening neuro symptoms when hungover or is it just because my body is run-down? Do you think that quitting alcohol will "cure" these issues? Should i reconsider taking the Lyme antibiotics?

My SFN is definitely quite mild and progressing slowly, i know it could be 10x worse, but reading these forums really starts freaking you out!

Thanks for your responses :)

glenntaj 07-09-2016 07:40 AM

For symptom starting in the upper extremities--
 
--you should also investigate the possibility of cervical spine nerve root compression--radiculopathy--as your symptoms do sound quite consistent with compression of the C6/C7 nerve roots.

This is more common than many think, especially these days in our keyboarding and driving environment, which can contribute to cervical spine problems--it's not just a condition of sudden trauma. An MRI of the area is a good idea just to make sure.

mrsD 07-09-2016 10:10 AM

When trying to reveal a PN trigger, it is often useful to keep a journal of your days. What you ate at each meal, activities and exposures to toxins (golf courses, solvents, gardening chemicals etc). Food intolerances can cause PN symptoms... nightshade veggies can be a big culprit. (potatoes, tomatoes, peppers). Paprika and hot sauces, are part of the nightshade family.

MSG in processed foods can stimulate NMDA pain receptors.

Consider getting B12 measured. You should be at 400pg/ml or above. Lab ranges today are outdated still and report normals in the 200 range.

Sometimes the DNA mutations in methylation chemistry in the body will cause nerve damage. Getting this DNA testing may reveal a genetic error of metabolism for you.

MTHFR Mutation | MTHFR Gene Mutation | What is MTHFR? - MTHFR.net

None of the above are reliably targeted by doctors, but they are real issues that occur in people daily.
Your journal may reveal your trigger. We have had males
come here with hand issues that traced to overuse during exercise. (hands from weight lifting or push ups and feet from excessive running or bad shoes). Tying shoes too tightly, and wearing tight watches can compress nerves as well.

In regards to your alcohol symptoms, it may be that you are low in B1..which is thiamine.
Some people are genetically not able to handle alcohol because of this, and so they have symptoms with this problem. B1 also handles carbohydrates as well. So sugar and carbs may
cause PN symptoms due to poor metabolism. When you read here you will see some people posting about benfotiamine ( a longer acting B1 type) helping them. This supplement really began in Europe and at one time was very expensive. But now it is affordable and commonly available in US.
Trying a paleo type (low sugar and carb) diet may change your symptoms, and a journal would show that for you.

DavidHC 07-09-2016 12:31 PM

Sorry to hear that you're in this state. I'm in my 30s too and with SFN. It started in my hands and feet and then with some autonomic symptoms and then expanded to my face and trunk, and now it's all over. The cause is still not known, but autoimmunity is suspected even though all tests have turned up negative.

I still suspect alcohol myself, since I wasn't an alcoholic but I did binge drink and that can cause PN/SFN. I stopped drinking as soon as I knew alcohol was a neurotoxin and noticed the correlation between a night of drinking and my symptoms. I haven't touched it for a year or so now.

Stress and exhaustion are huge trigger for me, so I try my best to reduce both, getting plenty of sleep and avoiding stress.

Diet is another trigger. With some unfortunate lapses, I've been on a paleo diet or the autoimmune protocol, and it has made a huge difference. In fact, for a while I didn't even eat fruit and so it was more of a paleo ketogenic diet, and I'm thinking of going back into full ketosis again. Here's a link to a paleo autoimmune protocol, which is really based on the idea that there is intestinal permeability or leaky gut and inflammation and the idea is to reduce it: http://www.thepaleomom.com/the-autoimmune-protocol.

It may be worth trying this cream: http://www.neurotalk.org/peripheral-...min-cream.html. I continue to find great relief.

I also use a number of supplements always looking to finding ones with the fewest fillers and additives. I do use B12, benfotiamine, D, NAC, digestive enzymes, C, folate and some others.

I wish you good luck in finding the cause and healing. It's not a fool's errand; people do find the cause at times. it's certainly not impossible and definitely worth the effort, however frustrating it can be.

JimJamJones 07-09-2016 01:49 PM

Thanks everyone for your speedy replies,

@Glenn, i had at one point considered the possibility of a C6/C7 radiculopathy however, as i have never had any neck pain, the symptoms are spread amongst all of my fingers and my left foot we decided that there wasnt enough evidence to warrant further testing i.e. an MRI - im a little paranoid here that doctors may just pick up on whatever they can see and attribute that to your problem leading to unnecessary surgery..


@MrsD - thanks for your valuable input! ive read so many of your replies already having been reading this forum for some time now :)

Regarding a journal, i have actually been keeping one for around about 3 or 4 months now, though i cant see any correlation between my symptoms and my diet whatsoever. The only thing which i can guarantee to make things worse is a day or two after drinking alcohol, the more i drink the worse it is, and also a poor nights sleep.

i had already tried going gluten and dairy free for about 3 weeks but with no change so now im starting out of the keto diet along with no alcohol. Ive yet to try the nightshade diet though or MSG, both sound like good options! :)

Regarding B12, i had that tested and it came in at 475pg/ml which seemed ok and my b6 was actually 800pg/ml initially but thats now down to 180. Its still high but I get the feeling b6 is actually a red herring anyways... With the MTHFR Mutation would it still apply now that the b6 levels have returned to more normal levels?

Starting last week I am now taking bentofiamine - 500mg a day, Alpha L acid - 250mg and also B12 - tablets at 5000mg just for the hell of it to see what happens :D Though this is all early days so i havent noticed any improvement yet. I will keep you posted.

How long would you think i need to test these diets/ supplements for to get a result? 1 week? 3 weeks? longer?


@David - Sorry to hear about your symptoms, can i ask how quickly did they spread for you from you hands/ feet to the rest of your body? Did you also notice symptoms were stronger after a night drinking? and did it make any difference if you drank things other than beer?

thanks again!

mrsD 07-09-2016 04:03 PM

I hope you are using methylated B12 (methylcobalamin) and methylfolate? Your B12 is quite low at the level you posted.

B6 is only marginally affected by the mutation MTHFR... it is B12 and folate that cannot be activated properly in people who inherit this problem.

As a rule only 2 - 3 weeks is needed for an elimination diet. The gluten issue requires several months however of avoidance.

Histamine can also be culprit....
Here is my histamine thread.

http://www.neurotalk.org/pn-tips-res...ight=histamine

There are over 100 causes of PN so finding a trigger/cause is difficult. However, once you get a handle on flares and what causes them, you can tailor your supplements to what you found is your trigger(s).

DavidHC 07-09-2016 05:08 PM

Thanks. I don't have as much pain as I have tingling, numbness, creepy crawlers, electrical currents and the like. But I do have pain now and then and more of it recently, but so far I've gotten off relatively easily, if someone with body wide SFN and so many symptoms can say such a thing. The worst symptom is shaking or internal vibrations especially when I try to sleep. I never have peace when I lie down, which is depressing to say the least.

Anyway, if you search under my username, you'll see a My Story thread or some such thing where I go into detail about my case. It spread within months and became body wide, and I gave up all alcohol, so I wouldn't know. 95% of my drinking was beer though, and beer is the worst because of the grain, gluten to be precise, and so the impact it has on your intestinal lining and gut microbiome. I think alcohol/beer (not to mention your typical high carb North American diet) contributed greatly to my current predicament, to creating intestinal permeability, inflammation and possibly autoimmunity. There is plenty of evidence for this, but sadly I didn't know about it until it was too late.

mrsD 07-09-2016 06:21 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by DavidHC (Post 1216575)
Thanks. I don't have as much pain as I have tingling, numbness, creepy crawlers, electrical currents and the like. But I do have pain now and then and more of it recently, but so far I've gotten off relatively easily, if someone with body wide SFN and so many symptoms can say such a thing. The worst symptom is shaking or internal vibrations especially when I try to sleep. I never have peace when I lie down, which is depressing to say the least.

Anyway, if you search under my username, you'll see a My Story thread or some such thing where I go into detail about my case. It spread within months and became body wide, and I gave up all alcohol, so I wouldn't know. 95% of my drinking was beer though, and beer is the worst because of the grain, gluten to be precise, and so the impact it has on your intestinal lining and gut microbiome.


@David - Sorry to hear about your symptoms, can i ask how quickly did they spread for you from you hands/ feet to the rest of your body? Did you also notice symptoms were stronger after a night drinking? and did it make any difference if you drank things other than beer?

thanks again!

The left over symptoms after drinking come from the aldehydes that are not being removed quickly enough from your body.

And yes the type of alcohol matters. There are different congeners in various alcohol types. The popularity of highly filtered vodkas reflects this. The filtering and purifying of vodkas today remove the congeners which are produced by the fermentation process.

Biology of a Hangover: Congeners - How Hangovers Work | HowStuffWorks

We have a long thread here about alcohol and the body damage it causes, and is also a support thread to stop drinking entirely.

http://www.neurotalk.org/alcoholism-...europathy.html

Scattered thru that thread are new studies about the toxicity of alcohol on tissues. My internet is slow tonight so I can't isolate those links for you at this time.

glenntaj 07-10-2016 06:48 AM

And--
 
--cervical radiculopathies, especially when they are lower in the neck (C6/7/8) don't necessarily cause neck pain, but commonly refer pain to the medial scapula on the affected side (or, in my case, both sides) with pain progressing down the arm and into the hands. Sometimes neck pain is there, but often not. And if cord compression is involved, one can get symptoms in the torso, legs, feet . . .

Take a look at this image of typical radiculopathy pain patterns:

cervical radiculopathy - Bing images

And, of course, these explanations:

http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/94118-overview

Cervical Radiculopathy: Symptoms, Causes, and Treatment

JimJamJones 07-10-2016 09:11 AM

@ MrsD - So you still feel 475 is low for b12 then? thats interesting! i am just taking the "Jarrow Formulas" Methylcobalmin - 5000mg tablets at the moment, no Methyfolate. Do they need to be taken together to work best? What does Methlyfolate bring to the table exactly?

Should i see no benefit from my current regime in a few weeks i think i will enquire about the MTHFR test, i did ask before but the neuro felt there should be a family history of it which I dont have. There are no neuro symptoms in my family at all. Ialso managed to get my doc to do a blood test for celiac which i should know about this week.

I am interested to read a bit more about the histamine connection though, ever since i was stung by a jellyfish in the Cook Islands around 10 years ago i have had spontaneous weekly eruptions of urticaria for which i take Loratadine. Ive never connected the two things before but I wonder if the loratadine is just covering up the most prominent symptoms and underneath it all it could actually be linked to the SFPN...

thanks also for the congeners info, it would be interesting to see whether i have the same worsening of symptoms after just drinking filtered vodka then, although that test will have to wait :D


@Glenntaj - thanks for the additional radiculopathy info, i see what you were getting at now, there certainly does seem to be some chance it could be linked to a radiculopathy based on the links you gave. You mentioned that you have something like this, do you notice any link to alcohol worsening your symptoms?

My pain actually begins in all my fingertips and then grows to affect the nerves down the sides of my fingers, my forearm and my elbow, where it stops, it has never gone past that area but affects both arms equally. If it was a radiculopathy of this type, would this be a common set of symptoms? I would have thought that something like this would have either improved or worsened over time though...


@DavidHC - i just read through your history, sounds like it came on quite quickly. Did you suspect alcohol was the cause from the beginning? i see you have found a clear connection to foods which is something i havent seen personally so far. Was it immediately obvious that your diet was so indicative of worsening symptoms, could you always see you had a reaction to particular foods the same day/ day after?

Doing a search of "aldehydes and nerve pain" i found this article, which links nerve pain an out of control fungal infection, which i thought was quite interesting...
*************


All times are GMT -5. The time now is 03:11 AM.

Powered by vBulletin • Copyright ©2000 - 2024, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.

vBulletin Optimisation provided by vB Optimise v2.7.1 (Lite) - vBulletin Mods & Addons Copyright © 2024 DragonByte Technologies Ltd.