Jo’s Cafe

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - The antioxidant alpha-lipoic acid (ALA) in pill form improves diffuse nerve pain or “polyneuropathy” in patients with diabetes, researchers report in the journal Diabetes Care.

A recent pooled analysis showed that daily intravenous treatment with ALA could reduce pain and numbness in diabetic patients, the authors explain, but little work has been done to investigate the use of oral ALA.

Dr. Dan Ziegler from Heinrich Heine University, Duesseldorf, Germany and colleagues compared three doses of oral ALA to placebo in 166 patients with symptomatic diabetic polyneuropathy.

Mean total symptom scores and stabbing/lancinating and burning pain subscores were significantly reduced after 5 weeks in all active treatment arms compared with the placebo arm, the authors report.

I have been taking ALA since just after I was diagnosed and read about it from a German diabetes website.  Has it helped?  Some. I did have reduced feeling in my heels, which is why I started researching on the net for something, and after taking ALA for some time now, I do have noticable improvement around the numb areas.  It could be taking ALA combined with getting my sugar levels under control too.  But what could it hurt right?