Diabetes Health Center

Good control of diabetes over time is the key to treating diabetic neuropathy. There is no cure for neuropathy, but keeping your blood sugar within a target range can reduce symptoms and prevent them from getting worse.

To help control your diabetes, eat food that is good for you and exercise. Controlling diabetes means maintaining blood sugar levels (A1c) within the target range. This will do more than anything else to help prevent diabetic neuropathy from getting worse.

For more information on good diabetes control, see the topics Type 1 Diabetes: Living With the Disease or Type 2 Diabetes: Living With the Disease.

Initial treatment

Treatment for diabetic neuropathy depends on your symptoms and the type of neuropathy that you have. In general, treatment focuses on reducing current symptoms and preventing the condition from getting worse by keeping your blood sugar level (A1c) within a narrow target range. You can keep your blood sugar levels within the target range by taking your insulin or oral diabetes medicine as prescribed, checking your blood sugar levels, following your diet for diabetes, exercising, and seeing your doctor regularly. For more information, see the topics Type 1 Diabetes: Living With the Disease or Type 2 Diabetes: Living With the Disease.

Also, it is important to properly care for your feet when you have diabetic neuropathy. Diabetic neuropathy may cause a loss of feeling in your feet. It is possible for a sore or other foot problem to go unnoticed. Without proper foot care, an untreated foot sore can lead to a serious infection or possibly amputation. For more information, see:

Diabetes: Taking Care of Your Feet.

It is also wise to maintain healthy habits such as seeing your doctor regularly, controlling your blood pressure, eating a balanced diet, exercising regularly, not smoking, and limiting or avoiding alcohol. Additional treatment depends on the specific type of diabetic neuropathy that you have along with your current symptoms.

Many people with peripheral neuropathy have mild to severe pain in specific parts of their bodies. Talk with your doctor about treatment that can reduce your pain and improve your physical functioning, mood, and mental well-being. These treatments may include:

• Medicines such as pain relievers or creams to relieve pain. Prescription medicines often used to reduce pain from diabetic neuropathy may include medicines that are more commonly used to treat depression, such as tricyclic antidepressants and the antidepressant duloxetine hydrochloride, and medicines that control seizures, such as pregabalin and gabapentin. These medicines may be tried to reduce your pain even though you do not have depression or seizures.
• Complementary therapies such as acupuncture. Acupuncture has not been well studied as a treatment for diabetic neuropathy. But some studies show that it may help with pain.³
• Physical therapy such as exercises, stretching, and massage. If you are told to use heat or ice, be careful. Neuropathy can make it hard for you to feel changes in temperature.
• Transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation (TENS), which is a type of therapy that reduces pain by applying brief pulses of electricity to nerve endings in the skin.⁴