Boost

Hi Jeannae

Thank you.

The calendar is a great idea!

Going to have it in hand at my next appt.

Had a backslide, steroids back up.to 35 

Blood sugar 190 4 hrs after protein meal, so maybe that was accountable for feeling so ill last night.

I tested on a lark due to some. numbness in my toes, had a glucometer 

from a crazy diet I was was on years ago.

So doc wants me to test for awhile, and wanting to get me down from theses high dises asap, but I am going to go slow as to avoid a relapse again

Lessons learned, spoons!

So calendar will be very important.

Be well

Gina

Very likely - but it isn't approved for use in the UK and so cannot be prescribed by an NHS GP. Possibly a private GP would - where you would pay the consultation and the cost of the substance. But you can buy it without a prescription anyway.

This is from a forum so there is no real medical backing to the discussion although the original does have a load of appropriate links.

"I suffer terribly with burning pains in my toes & fingers & I have sought comfort from my GP on many occasions but I only get prescribed the usual non effective medications. I.e Amitryptiline, Duloxetine & Gabapentin, all of which are totally ineffective & have horrible side effects.

I have been self-medicating now for several months with ALA (600mg, twice a day) & this is the only medicine that brings any form of relief. The problem is I source this product on Amazon, & I find that the quality (& hence effectivity), varies between suppliers, & also because of stock issues, difficulty in maintaining continuity of supply. I realise that the R isomer of ALA is more effective, but it is far more expensive than the racemic blend & more difficult to obtain. 

I have tried to convince my GP to prescribe it for me, even showing him research from no less an august authority than the Linus Pauling Institute, but he refuses to co-operate, to the extent I now feel relations between us have broken down. He still insists on prescribing the anti psychotic drugs as mentioned above, which I refuse to take. He also refuses to prescribe capsaicin cream, which is far more effective than anything he has prescribed.

So fellow sufferers my questions are:-

1) Why, when ALA is the first line treatment for Peripheral Neuropathy in Germany (and other European countries), do British UK doctors refuse to prescribe it? They seem locked in a time warp & only interested in treating the symptoms & not the root cause of the problem.

2) Who can I contact to try & get ALA recognised as an effective form of treatment for PN?  ....

Response: "Unless you can persuade him to give you a private script he can't prescribe it till it has been reviewed by NICE, if you can afford to buy it yourself go for it but you are being unfair to your GP as he has to follow protocols."

Same here in the US.  If it isn't taught in the allopathic medical school they don't know and frequently cite (from their training) that there is little research or double blind studies to support using alternative medicine.  My experience with alternative or integrative medicine is that there are many unpatentable substances that work wonders including ALA.  There is one manufacturer in US that makes an ALA with an enteric coating that really is easy on the gut.  They had to remove the wording enteric coated but the formula is the same. The pills are yellow and pink.  

As for me, I shy away from the psychotropics (although they do have a place in treatment) and deal with neuropathic pain with ALA because it is such a well studied antioxidant as well

 

That isn't the point I'm making: you can have many things if you pay for them. But within state funded medicine, for free/minimal copay at point of receipt you can only have what the insurer has discussed and approved. That is exactly the same in the USA. Within the UK, if it were a prescription only medicine you would have to go to a GP privately and get a prescription and then pay for the medication. In this case, it isn't classed as a medication anyway so you can purchase it.

Will do, thanks Also will look at food sources

Hadnt heard of it!  Could be helpful as really cant decrease from higher doses yet

Gina

This thread interested me so as usual consulted Dr Google and found an interesting bit of trivia which may have some relevance to this conversation:

In the cells of the body, alpha-lipoic acid is changed into dihydrolipoic acid. Alpha-lipoic acid is not the same as alpha linolenic acid, which is an omega-3 fatty acid that may help heart health. There is confusion between alpha-lipoic acid and alpa linolenic acid because both are sometimes abbreviated ALA.