What Parts of the Body Can Neuropathy Affect?

Neuropathy occurs when a nerve injury causes numbness, weakness, or pain in your body. Also called peripheral neuropathy, neuropathy is not just one health problem that affects one place in the body. It comprises various symptoms and health problems that damage the peripheral nerves.

Peripheral nerves are the nerves outside your spinal cord and brain. Their work is to carry messages from the brain and spinal cord to parts of the body that lie outside them.

 

Types of Peripheral Nerves

The peripheral nervous system comprises three types of nerves, namely:

 

Sensory Nerves

Sensory nerves carry information from your eyes, ears, nose, mouth, and hands to your brain through the spinal cord. In other words, they relay information from your environment to your brain. This information is mainly from your five senses (hearing, sight, touch, smell, and taste).

For instance, what you touch, too hot, too cold, or just the right temperature, is triggered by your environment. Your nerves convert these triggers into chemical signals and send them to the brain. When your body senses something from within or outside it, sensory nerves become active. They monitor your body and indicate its status.

Autonomic Nerves

Autonomic nerves control various body functions that take place involuntarily. They regulate breathing, heart rate, blood circulation, digestion, pupillary response, emotional responses, body temperature, bowel movements, electrolyte balance, and other functions.

Autonomic nerves work by receiving messages from various body parts and the environment and stir action. For example, if you are in a dangerous situation and need to escape, your autonomic nerves will rally your body to respond. Once the threat goes, the nerves dampen these reactions, returning your heart rate, breathing, and blood flow to normal.

When the autonomic nerves become out of tune, you can experience autonomic disorders, such as paralysis and atrophy.

Motor Nerves

Motor nerves communicate messages from the brain and spinal cord to the muscles. They make your body respond by moving your muscles. You can move your muscles voluntarily, such as when stretching to pick an object. You can also move them involuntarily, like when you remove your hand from a burning surface.

Motor nerves send messages from your brain to your muscles, organs, and glands to produce the necessary response. These nerves will also allow you to breathe, eat, swallow, talk, and walk. Without them, you would be unable to finish many of your daily tasks.

Effects of Neuropathy

If infection, disease, medications, injury, or long-term alcohol use damage peripheral nerves, several parts of your body can be affected. These include the face, arms, chest, abdomen, legs, and pelvis.

 

The damage may show up in the following ways:

 

• Numbness and tingling feelings in the hands and feet

• Penetrating, electric-like, or burning pain

• Loss of muscle control and coordination

• Inability to move around flexibly (paralysis)

• Inability to control your urinary bladder

• Digestive problems, including bloating, constipation, nausea, and vomiting

• Sweating too much or not enough with regard to the temperature or degree of physical work

• Problems with sexual functions
  
   

During a neurologic test, your doctor will assess your symptoms and identify their cause. Treatment will help control your symptoms and prevent further nerve injury.

For more information on the effects of neuropathy on the body, contact Pleasant Life Health Center at our office in Charleston, South Carolina. Call (843) 428-7900 to book an appointment today.