The high blood sugar and inflammation associated with diabetes can damage many organs in the body. Diabetic nerve pain is a common complication of this condition. It can be quite difficult to treat, so we get excited when we learn that someone has had success. This reader found that an active compound found in the curry spice turmeric worked well.
Curcumin Eased Diabetic Nerve Pain:
Q. I have type 2 diabetes and have had fairly severe neuropathy pain in both feet for seven years. A friend told me he is taking curcumin for arthritis so I decided to try it.
To my amazement and joy, when I put my feet on the floor two weeks after starting the turmeric, I found the neuropathic pain was gone-totally unexpected! Four weeks have passed and I still have no pain.
Curcumin May Help Prevent Nerve Damage from Diabetes:
A. Curcumin, an important component of the yellow curry spice turmeric, has anti-inflammatory activity (Journal of Medicinal Food, Aug. 1, 2016). This may explain why it helped your diabetic nerve pain.
It also seems to slow or prevent the progression of prediabetes to type 2 diabetes (Diabetes Care, July, 2012). Research in rats suggests that curcumin can help protect nerves from the damage of diabetes (Applied Physiology, Nutrition and Metabolism, Oct., 2015).
More Information on Diabetes and on Curcumin:
We are sending you our Guide to Managing Diabetes for more information on other nondrug approaches that can help control this condition. You might also be interested in learning more about turmeric and curcumin. We wrote about it here. We also discussed its health benefits, including its promise for treating cancer, in an interview with Ajay Goel, PhD, of the Center for Epigenetics, Cancer Prevention and Cancer Genomics at the Baylor Research Institute. You can listen here.
Possible Side Effects of Curcumin:
Many people don’t experience any adverse effects of curcumin. But some folks develop an allergic reaction that may present as a rash or itchy hives. If that happens, the curcumin should be discontinued.
In addition, people taking warfarin (Coumadin, Jantoven) should be very wary of taking curcumin. We have received many reports from people who found their INR rising after starting on turmeric or curcumin. The INR or International Normalized Ratio is a measure of how likely blood is to clot. When the INR is high, a person could bleed dangerously.
