Peripheral Neuropathy

What is Peripheral Neuropathy?

Peripheral Neuropathy is what physicians call it when a person is suffering from damage to their peripheral nervous system. The peripheral nervous system includes all of the nerves that branch away from the central nervous system. These nerves take messages from the central nervous system (brain and spinal cord) and pass them on to the far away parts of your body (toes, fingers and everything in between). These nerves also carry messages to the central nervous system from those far away parts of your body.

For example, these nerves are responsible for your brain knowing when your fingers or toes are getting too cold and that you need to get inside and warm up. But those same unpleasant feelings that let you know something is wrong can start occuring even when nothing is wrong. Damage to these nerves can cause pain and discomfort in a variety of forms for you. The burning sensation that you feel when you touch something too hot, can become an all the time kind of feeling. The stinging pain that you get from frostbite can be something you feel all the time. This is because something has damaged the nerves in your peripheral nervous system and they start sending out the wrong signals. This is when your physician will pull out the term peripheral neuropathy.