Neuropathy and balance

[MrPixels]

Hi all, does anyone have any experience of neuropathy in your feet affecting your balance causing a fall?

 

[Davetherave99]

My experience of nuerothopy is a burning sensation in my skin on my legs and feet but no effects of loosing balance and falling. Is that a known disadvantage?

 

[MrPixels]

Not sure, hence my question. I get a feeling of numbness, but so far no pain, or pins & needles.

 

[Proud to be erratic]

Not sure, hence my question. I get a feeling of numbness, but so far no pain, or pins & needles.

I get numbness, but no burning sensation. I walk like a drunkard; a lot of the time I can't "feel" any irregularity in the ground beneath me. So my brain doesn't seem to get the message that a surface is uneven, unless I walk constantly looking down; I try to not stoop, but I practice I am walking increasingly bent over because so few footpaths or other paved surfaces are actually flat.

At home, I can't detect much difference between tiles, wooden flooring and any form of carpeting or mats, bathroom towels etc. Of course I know what type of surface exists in each zone, but find if fascinating as well as frustrating that this occurs.

Totally contradicting this, sometimes I just get pain from walking on the very unforgiving kitchen tiles. It's not burning - but just makes my bare feet really "sensitive" when almost all the rest of a day I'm not feeling anything at all. I just routinely have slippers on in the house because it's simpler; safer for me, and by-passes the unpredictable nature of not being sure if somewhere I the house will cause pain.

My feet are constantly cold, even in bed after a full night's sleep. I'm aware they feel cold to me as well as to my wife. But there is a general constant numbness. My neuropathy was started by a low level of frostbite from skiing just over 20 years ago and that was suddenly made worse during my chemotherapy in mid 2020. Various experts have suggested it is NOT caused by my diabetes but because this D and my constant glycaemic variability now makes me vulnerable to further loss of sensation at the extremities, I try to be cautious, of course.

 

[Deb_l]

My experience of nuerothopy is a burning sensation in my skin on my legs and feet but no effects of loosing balance and falling. Is that a known disadvantage?

I’m pretty much the same, although I have never been formally diagnosed as my GP didn’t think it could possibly be neuropathy.