Instituut voor Neuropathische Pijn

Cold feet are a well known and often heared complaint in patients suffering from diabetes and neuropathy. In 2009 a team of American neurologists from the University of Harvard looked into the temperature of normal people, patients suffering from diabetes and patients suffering from diabetes and smallfiber neuropathy. During the day not very big differences appeared, but how much different this was during the night!

de temperatuur van de voeten van gezonde mensen, diabetici, diabetici met dunne vezelneuropathie en diabeten met ernstige neuropathie. Tijdens waken, overdag was er geen duidelijk verschil te vinden. Maar s' nachts was het geheel anders.

During sleep, however, multiple metrics revealed significant abnormalities in the diabetic patients. These included reduced mean foot temperature (P < 0.001), reduced maximal temperature (P < 0.001), increased rate of cooling (P < 0.001), as well as increased frequency of variation (P = 0.005), supporting that patients with diabetic polyneuropathy and even those with only diabetes but no diabetic polyneuropathy have impaired nocturnal thermoregulation. 

The conclusion offered some hope for patients for future times:

Nocturnal foot thermoregulation is impaired in patients with diabetes and diabetic polyneuropathy. Because neurons are highly temperature sensitive and because foot warming is part of the normal biology of sleep onset and maintenance, these findings suggest new potentially treatable mechanisms of diabetes-associated nocturnal pain and sleep disturbance.^[1]

Some years ago neurologists suggested that keeping the feet warm migh delay the development of neuropathy.^[2]

From the Centre for the study and treatment of neuropathic pain and neuropathy in Soest, the Nertherlands

This site helps patients and treating physicians, neurologists, anesthesiologists and other pain specialists to find the best and most up to date research findings related to neuropathy and neuropathic pain and the treatment thereof.

In our centre we are specialised in treating patients suffering from neuropathic pain and neuropathy following an Integrated Medicine concept. Part of our activities are within the field of consultation. We assist pharmaceutical companies in R&D strategies related to finding new drugs to treat neuropathic pain and neuropathy.

February 2010, Jan M. Keppel Hesselink, MD, PhD.