I thought it might be good to spend a little time talking about some of the lifestyle changes that I have made while trying to figure out ways to reduce the pain that I am dealing with. Over the last year, I have tried a few, and not all were successful. It could be that they just didn’t help with my specific type of neuropathy, so I am going to try documenting them all for reference.
Diet Changes
Making changes to my diet seemed like an easy win, but it turns out that as soon as you start looking into what you should add, remove, or change in your diet, everyone has a different opinion. The problem that I ran into was trying to figure out if the changes actually helped, if I gave them enough time to help, or if I was even following the advice correctly.
Fewer Carbs
The first big thing to talk about is that I somehow ended up with pre-diabetes at the same time as everything else that is going on. I don’t think I have ever had signs of it, and my A1C was always fine in the past. For whatever reason, I started showing signs at the same time that my pain got really bad. I can tell you that when you are in chronic pain, having to make changes to your diet is pretty rough. Life is already filled with challenges at that point, so I didn’t need another one.
Once I realized I had the issue, it was really just a matter of keeping track of how many carbs I was eating. The good news is that my wife has Type 2 diabetes, so we already tracked a lot of our meals anyway. The other thing that really helped is that I was able to get a prescription for a continuous glucose monitor (CGM). Thanks to the CGM, I was able to quickly tell which meals were problematic and adjust for future meals. I have been almost completely in the “green” area on the chart for the last month or two, and I feel like I have it mostly figured out. I also started on Metformin, which helps give me a bit of a safety net and stops my blood glucose levels from climbing too fast.
Smaller Meals
On top of needing to track my carbs, I learned that eating smaller meals also helps. I can’t point to one exact side effect of eating the smaller meals, but it seems to generally help with how I am feeling. I think it helps me keep my energy up, and by forcing myself to eat smaller meals, it means it is easier to avoid overeating. I didn’t realize it at first, but the depression that I had took away my ability to feel full. Back when things were getting really dark, my weight was skyrocketing, and it wasn’t at the top of my list with everything going on. It only took me about two weeks to realize that it was making my pain worse. I have been trying a lot harder since then to portion out my meals, even when I am at a restaurant.
More Fruits and Veggies
In researching what I could do to reduce the neuropathy, almost everything I looked at talked about increasing your fruit and vegetable intake to reduce your inflammation. Eating more fruit is easy, but eating more veggies is a bit harder. I have tried to order more salads and switch to eating edamame for snacks. I also started picking up the little mixed fresh veggie packs from the grocery store because those are an easy way to eat more of them without having to worry about fitting them into a meal. It seems to help me feel better, and it also just helps to have that kind of thing around so I don’t reach for snacks that would be worse for me.
Gluten Free
I used to think the whole gluten-free thing was just a trend unless you had celiac disease. Cutting out something that most of the world eats every day didn’t make sense to me. However, when I learned that gluten is commonly avoided in low-inflammation diets, I decided I could at least try it. It also ended up working out because, at the same time, my wife found out she is gluten-sensitive. I figured, sure, I can try it to support her. It only took about 4 days or so, and I started feeling better. Random stomach aches became a thing of the past… until I accidentally had a little bit of gluten again without thinking about it. And boy, was I in for a surprise!
I have since learned that going gluten-free is the quickest way to learn if you have any gluten sensitivity because otherwise, your body is just dealing with it every day and gets pretty good at that. Now I can tell if too many crumbs somehow find their way into my dish or if a sauce uses flour to thicken it.
The craziest part about all this is that I was diagnosed with Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) about 20 years ago, and it never came up that I should try cutting out bread. At the time, the doctor did the tests for celiac and I didn’t test positive, so that was the end of that. I think we have come a lot farther now because multiple doctors have brought it up as something they would recommend. I guess I got ahead of this one by giving it a shot. It honestly isn’t too bad, but I do miss donuts.
More Exercise
Right away, I knew that I needed to be exercising more, but this was also the hardest lifestyle change to make. I have never been someone who did a workout just because it was fun. I don’t mind doing things if it was part of another activity like going for a hike or kayaking, but just going to a gym never made that much sense to me.
On top of that, it is incredibly difficult to do a workout when your body isn’t on board with it. Between the pain and the issues with motor control, even just going for a walk was a new challenge for me. To give you an idea of what it feels like, my feet like to send me the wrong signals thanks to the neuropathy. This means that it can feel like I am walking barefoot on pavement on a hot summer day. And walking inside isn’t any better because it is just the pressure on my feet and it doesn’t matter what I am walking on. Just thinking about it is making my feet and legs burn right now. Our bodies are strange, and it really is wild how my mind will try to fill in the blanks of what is happening. More than once, I have had to check my feet for blisters or have my wife feel them to see if they feel physically hot. I have learned over time that I still need to push myself to do some kind of exercise, but it has been a very slow process to even convince my body that it isn’t killing me to do so.
So that is all the bad stuff, but the good news is that I am making progress. In fact, I am already past just simple walking, and I go for a jog once a week! It isn’t easy, and I usually hurt more for a bit, but overall I can tell that it is really making a big difference. Not just in the pain, but it also is helping my mental state. I am so excited to be able to jog, which is something I haven’t really done since back in high school. As of this writing, I try to walk/jog for about 20-30 minutes. My plan is to keep pushing it because I want to go to a charity walk/run in November. It is only a 5k, but it is going to be huge to do it just for the self-esteem boost.
More Sleep
This is starting to sound like what your doctor tells you every time you talk to them, doesn’t it? Sorry to say, but they say it for a reason, and the next big change I had to make was getting more sleep. I used to think I didn’t need much sleep, and staying up late gaming wouldn’t be a big deal. With the nerve pain, I quickly realized that any disruptions to my sleep had a high chance of causing a flare. I need to write a whole post about what the flares are like, but generally, it means my pain level would greatly increase for 1-6 days. And the increase isn’t just a little bit; it is a major increase. The other thing I learned quickly is that there isn’t a perfect med that you can take to cut down your nerve pain whenever you need to. In fact, most of the nerve pain meds take a week or more to do anything!
I don’t have any big secrets to share for this one. I honestly had a really hard time trying to figure out how to sleep more when my pain levels were creeping up. My doctor ended up having to give me a couple of different meds to help me go to sleep and stay asleep through the pain. I recently tried going off them, and it caused a mega flare, so it looks like it will be a while until I don’t need them, if I ever do get to stop taking them. I hope to eventually get away from them because it sucks to have to take a med then go straight to bed because it’s time for bed (according to the meds). It also means you can’t sleep in or get up early, so it isn’t really convenient.
Wrap Up
Alright, I hear you! All I did was eat better, exercise, and sleep more. And yep, those are the big lifestyle changes that I made. It might sound cliché, but really, these changes had bigger impacts than most of the meds. I wish there was some magic solution that I could recommend, but I don’t think there is. And none of these things are something you can just snap your fingers and they become easy to start and keep doing. If you are reading this and fighting with something similar, just know you are not alone and do your best to hang in there. The big catch with the first step is it is up to you to take it, but I know that you can do it!