How Neuropathy Turns Lethal

The occurrence of neuropathy has been rising rapidly in recent decades. However, it’s often overlooked as a disease in itself and just considered an annoying consequence of diabetes.

A new study by the American Board of Family Medicine changes this by revealing two major facts:

1) The risk of developing neuropathy increases with age, regardless of whether people have type 2 diabetes. For most people, the root cause is never found.

2) It’s a major killer, which can increase your risk of dying by a terrifying 322%.

Patients between the ages of 64 and 102 were enrolled in a large study called the Oklahoma Longitudinal Assessment of Health Outcomes of Mature Adults in central Oklahoma in 1999. The study’s main objective was to identify the prevalence, causes, and effects of neuropathy.

The study has yielded a huge amount of information that the authors of this new study decided to use. They wanted to establish whether elderly people with and without neuropathy lived equally long.

If they didn’t, the researchers wanted to know why not.

They identified neuropathy in patients by checking for sensory loss in both legs through a physical examination. They recorded deaths from the participants’ contacts and online death registers.

With all this information available to them, the scientists made the following discoveries.

1. The likelihood of neuropathy increased with age, from 26% for those between 64 and 74 years old to 36% for those between 75 and 84 years old, and 54% for those 85 years old or older.

2. Neuropathy was more likely for those with a body mass index above 30 kg/m2, a history of military service, diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, poorer self-rated health, slower timed walks, or worse balance scores.

3. From the beginning of the study until their deaths, the average survival time for those with neuropathy was 10.8 years, compared with 13.9 years for those without neuropathy.

4. The likelihood of early death increased by 47% for those with neuropathy.

5. Compared with the youngest age group—those between 64 and 74 years old, the odds of early death increased by 90% for those between 75 and 84 years old and by 322% for those 85 years old or older.

6. There was a link between neuropathy and poor balance.

These results show that in relatively healthy older people, neuropathy is very common and strongly linked to dying earlier. One possible reason might be balance issues, but the researchers didn’t have enough data to know if poor balance led to harmful falls or a general decline in health.

The scientists excluded diabetes as a contributing factor in early death, linking early death mostly to the consequences of neuropathy rather than to its causes.

Fortunately, it’s quite easy to reverse neuropathy naturally. Thousands of readers have done just that using the simple lifestyle changes explained here…