5 Things You Can Do Today to Heal Neuropathy At Home

[0:00] I think the mindset that your body wants to heal, you can get better. People have lost hope because when we talk about pain, the symptoms of neuropathy, which can be painful, we know that pain can turn into depression. Searching for that hope, I want you to keep hope, keep asking questions. When you come in, we're going to take an approach, a different approach, to try and figure out if there's something missing to your story that we can better help for you. Health and wellness is confusing. There's a new trend every week.

Everyone's got an opinion, and half the time, you can't tell what's legit and what's just good marketing. And we get it. We're in it too. Welcome to Dialed In Health. I'm Melissa Goodwin. Every episode, we bring in the people who actually do this work, providers, practitioners, the experts who seek clients and patients every day. We ask the questions you'd ask if you were sitting across from them so you can find the right people, make better decisions, and feel confident about what's out there. Whether it's peptides, gut health, water quality, ADHD, biohacking, or something you've never heard of, we're covering it.

So let's get into it. Let's get Dialed In.

[1:08] Welcome to Dialed In Health. Today, you are in for a treat. This has been one of the most watched videos we've had on our show to date. So I'm really excited to have with us again today, he's a chiropractic physician focused on-- he does a lot of different kinds of work at Stenzel Chiropractic, but this episode is really going to be focused again on peripheral neuropathy. So that first episode, over 56,000 views already. Pretty amazing. A lot of people-- so obviously, there's a lot of people out there that I think honestly have probably lost hope and just felt like they couldn't get any answers.

So grateful to have you here. Yeah, that was fun. It was pretty shocking too. I always kind of thought it was probably a boring topic for people, but we gave a lot of information. Hopefully, we can answer some questions in a more simplified way. So we'll just see what happens. Yeah, I think there was almost 200 comments. And what was interesting is I would be going around town or talking with people in different places, and they would all say, I saw that peripheral neuropathy one that you did. And I was like, really?

Yeah. And they're like, well, my mom has it, or my aunt has this. Or it's always someone who's going to be able to help. Because it seems to be such a common thing that happens as-- not everybody is older that has it, but it's very common as you age. Right. I agree. And I just think people are just constantly, when you have a disease that is so-- just impacting your life so much, people are just looking for more and more information. And if I can try to simplify that more and more to help you understand, I think that's going to go a long way for everybody.

Well, it feels like people have just lost hope. You go to your typical, your traditional medicine doctor, and it's sort of like, well, take this pill, and I hope-- good luck. Right, right. So they're really looking for answers, looking for ways that they can maybe remedy this or potentially reverse it, right? Right. And even some of the things that we give here and that I hope we can talk about today is, like I said, I want to co-manage. So maybe it'll help your medication work a little bit better if we can get a few things right in your body.

So yeah, I'm excited. OK, good. Well, I'm glad to have you here again. So tell us a little bit, for those that don't know what peripheral-- peripheral neuropathy, it's a mouthful. Tell us what it is, what it means. Yeah, so there are two major nervous systems in your body, the central nervous system, which consists of your brain and spinal cord, and then the peripheral nerves, which is anything outside of the central nervous system. Peripheral neuropathy is literally just the damage to your peripheral nerves. OK, so when people walk into your office, what have they-- first of all, what are they saying?

What are the symptoms that they're feeling? Sure, so generally the symptoms-- there's two kinds of symptoms, kind of positive symptoms and then also negative symptoms. A lot of times, though, when they're starting to see symptoms that are affecting their walking, their day-to-day life, they're having a tough time going out for a walk with their friends again, they're falling more at home, and just they are not able to sleep at night because they keep feeling these sensations. And it doesn't even have to be symptoms that you can feel, but even numbing-like sensations as well.

OK, so they might be-- you might be tripping because you can't feel it. Is that what happens? Correct, so as the damage continues and there becomes more of a disconnect between your tissue, your nerves, and your brain, the disconnect then-- the wiring isn't there. Your brain can't tell your body how to balance or correct itself. Your nerves can't fire your muscle correctly to catch yourself if you sway a different way, and you might not even notice it, and that's how you eventually get to swaying and eventually falling. So I think about it and tell me if I'm wrong.

When your arm falls asleep, right, and then it starts to come back and you feel like it almost feels like needles in your fingers as you get the feeling back, is that what-- is that what it feels like when you have peripheral neuropathy all the time? It certainly can feel similar to that, yes. That broad general, sometimes it's other areas of your arm compared to others, but yes, that can be a very similar like sensation for early neuropathy like sensations. So early you start to feel that-- is it pain, burning, needles?

Pins, needles, it can be burning, yes. Any-- it could be temperature changes. You may be more reactive to cold or hot sensations. Sometimes that's why some people like being down south for the winter more often. A lot of things can be due to vascular. We can get into what may cause those, but yes, the early sensations of pins and needles, which I think are a good thing that you're still having them because there's not the disconnect between the tissue, peripheral nerves, and then the spinal cord and brain. Okay, so when people come into your office, what have they probably tried already?

Yeah, so a lot of times they have seen their neurologist, which is very good. That is a very common area or a very common person to see, and they're usually given some sort of medication. The ones that I see in my office that is by far the most common would be something like gabapentin. Gabapentin, I think gabapentin is given because it generally helps do something a little bit more immediately to help dampen those uncomfortable symptoms. Okay, gabapentin is given for a lot of things. It is. So I think I even got it for my dog.

Someone gave, I was like, what am I giving this because he's kind of onry? Yes, yes. So what's the, we can maybe get into the gabapentin a little bit later, but what are there any other common drugs or things that they've been given or tried? Typically, I don't see a whole lot. NSAIDs, so like ibuprofen, over-the-counter type of remedies. A lot of people are buying things online. I know we talked about red light therapy. A lot of people try to do that. Those are only effective to a certain extent, and we can talk about that a little bit later as well.

So on the first episode, we talked about a number of things. What do you think people got wrong about that episode that you'd like to clear up? Some things maybe in the comments that you were like, well, that's not really what I meant or maybe they didn't quite grasp that. Yeah, sure. I'm sure I misspoke a few times, but I was definitely nervous. There's no question about that. So another thing I think that got wrong is I think I probably didn't speak clearly for them. It was probably hard to understand almost some of the bigger words I was trying to convey because I can see the whole process in my mind.

I'm very visual, and I'm trying to explain what I see in my mind, and that sometimes is hard for me to convey, and I'm trying to do a better job of that, and I hope I can do a better job of that today. Well, it was good information. I do think, we'll dig into a little bit today. It might be your Minnesota accent. That could be. The O's. The O's are a real thing. I just went to Arkansas, and it's apparent down there too.

[8:23] All right. So if somebody came into your office, what's the one thing that you wish they knew before they came to see you? One thing that I wish they knew is I think the mindset that your body wants to heal. You can get better. A lot of people have lost hope because when we talk about pain, the symptoms of neuropathy, which can be painful, we know that pain can turn into depression. And so searching for that hope, I want you to keep hope. Keep asking questions. When you come in, we're going to take an approach, a different approach, to try and figure out if there's something that we can better help for you.

Let's maybe start with for someone who hasn't come to see you yet, but they've got neuropathy. What are some things that they should be doing every single day? It's the number one thing you would say. Like you should, if you feel like you have neuropathy or if you've been diagnosed, you should be doing this every day. So yes, if it's before I have seen you, what could you be doing every day? There's two things that stand out right off the bat, and they are hard to do, especially when I say exercise.

Well, how am I supposed to go out exercise when I'm losing my balance? Well, there are different things that you can do, arm exercises. We just want to get that heart rate up. That's going to help with blood sugars. It's going to help with inflammation. It also is going to be a really good mental health medicine, natural health. The next thing that you can immediately do is try to start looking in the cupboards and let's try to figure out what we can do to change the look of our cupboards so we can get the foods better for you so you can start healing from home.

Okay, anything else that you would recommend outside of movement? Movement is something almost every single person I have on this show says to you. It's so hard when you're not feeling well. Right. One thing that we can do every day is e-stem therapy. So as we talked about in the previous episode, we have these six items for nerves to live, grow, and thrive. Stimulation was one of them. E-stem, whether it's a TENS unit, you can get a lot of these over the counter on Amazon, wherever. They do a really good job of stimulating those receptors that help not only turn off your perception of pain, but the ones that are damaged.

By stimulating them, you're also going to better give yourself a chance of turning off negative symptoms. They stimulate the nerves that help turn off your perception of pain. Okay, so we've got movement. Check your food. Make sure your eating is probably as close to nature as you can. Correct, correct. And TENS units. TENS units, yep. The next thing that you can do is what's called PEMF therapy, pulsed electromagnetic frequency therapy. What that does is that does a really good job of getting the blood to the tissue. It also does a good job of healing from the inside out.

And so by getting the blood to the tissue better, it gets that food. Another one of those items and the six items needed for a nerve to grow, is the blood flow helps get the food, the oxygen to the tissue a lot better. It's also unique because it does have a tendency of healing from the inside out rather than from the outside in. One other thing that would be helpful as well is we'll talk about red light therapy or low level light therapy. It's very important though in order for that to be successful, you have to have a level of energy that's released as well as you need to hit all layers of tissue superficial, deep, that you need certain wavelengths as well.

Some are red light, that's what we can see, but there's also some infrared that we can't see that would be helpful for you. And those are all things you can get right online. Okay, so movement, the right kinds of foods, the TENS units, the

[12:40] PEMF, and then red light therapy. Okay, so those are all things you can do at home. And there is a lot of different red light. 99, you can get stuff for $1,000. How do you know which one you need to get? So there are ones that I have found that meet those requirements. So yeah, so for like red light therapy, for instance, some of the frequencies, especially the research does suggest is that for superficial levels, so on the very surface, so let's say you have maybe like a virus or something, we're looking at somewhere in the 400 range for wavelength.

Let's say the, just below the skin, getting the superficial, the outside tissue muscles, we're looking between 600 and 700 nanometers for wavelength. And then to get light to penetrate all the way down to the bone, we need somewhere between 800 and 900 nanometers. So if you're going to buy something online or use something, you want to make sure it gets down to that, that tissue that goes all the way to the bone. If we're dealing with peripheral neuropathy, this is happening in every cell of our body. So that would be the benefit of it.

Now, as for energy, there is some research, which I can get to a little bit later that suggests, especially people with neuropathy, like symptoms or pains, 70 milliwatts is what was suggested. Now, in my practice, I think you need 120 to 150 milliwatts per centimeter squared to really make a, and that is something that you would do every day. And you're likely doing that for once a day, for probably 20 minutes. Okay. So someone's coming to see you, let's say, what does a normal week look like if they're coming to your, are they coming to see you every day?

So most people don't have strong enough red light therapy. So yes, they're in our office. We really get to know who you are if you come through our, our system. So we use the red light therapy full body. They are coming in four to five times a week for that. Then we also do some in-house work with shockwave therapy, which is highly, highly important for repairing nerves. That in the first couple months is going to be at least two times a week as well. So your, your visit with me, I mean, we're looking at an hour in my office twice a week and then 20 minutes if you're not doing the shockwave therapy for 20 minutes at a time, at least.

So how long until people start to see results after doing that red light therapy? Yeah. So in our, in our system, we're looking at the results every week, especially the ones that they subjectively told us about. Because we want to try to measure your improvement from a subjective or how you're feeling

[15:38] way. So every week, usually when I look back at our records, we start noticing a symptom change after about two weeks. Okay. And usually that is because we're getting the mitochondrial health better. They're sleeping better and they're starting to notice more energy, which is really good. That means that your body is likely starting to create the energy required to not only feel better, but there's enough available for the healing to start. Okay. And you have all kinds of,

[16:07] you've got all kinds of materials and things you've developed for your clients. You have a book, you've got recipes, you've got this protocol. And so when someone's, you know, signing on to work with you to help reverse their neuropathy, what does that timeline look like? I guess get in contact with somebody. I want to meet with them to let them know what our process looks like. Because I don't, if you are not compliant with what we have to offer, you're just not going to get the results and you're going to despise me probably.

And it doesn't make me look good because you didn't get the results that I want you to have. So the first initial consultation is we're just trying, A, I just want to hear your story. I want to definitely validate what you're feeling because a lot of times people are like, yeah, they're blowing me off like I'm faking it. Right. I just want to hear your story. And then within your story, I'm going to also decide if I think I can help you. Because I'm just going to be straightforward on if I think I can help you.

If I think I can help you, then what I want to do is I want to show the process, simplify the science for you to help under help you understand what we're doing and why we think it's going to work. So what is your actual evidence that this process, these things that you're doing is working? Do you have any public publications or any outcome data that you can share? Yeah, so I did bring with me, I'm glad you asked. There isn't an FDA approved process for this. So obviously has to be, I'll call it an entrepreneurial coming together of evidence to try to make this work.

And this, this evidence that I've put together, I mean, I've been working on this for five, seven years. And I just put together not only the concepts that we talk about, but we also about the interventions that we do. And so it's the gathering of the evidence was done first. And then we had to figure out how to do it. And as we worked with patients, we saw success after success after success. And now we're kind of getting ready to talk about it. I would say we learned a lot from our very first patient that we have, I would say, I did not understand the mitochondrial effects enough.

And that's probably why they didn't improve very well. But other than that, if people stay compliant, we haven't had one person that hasn't improved to some extent. While we were getting ready here today and setting up, you'd said something interesting to me that kind of caught my attention. You said, so you're, you are a chiropractic physician, your traditional training didn't train you for this. Correct. And one of the things you mentioned, you've been kind of self taught and driven because you wanted to help your patients. What propelled you to want to dig into this to this extent?

Yeah, write a book, build a protocol, you know, start helping patients over and over again. Yeah. So what that was, it all started when my grandpa had had dementia, we just did not know much at all. And so as I was researching everything I could for dementia, it actually kind of took me down this, this road of neuropathy, because that was something that was, we had a little bit more information. And we also knew that nerves could grow back and peripheral nerves, where the central nervous system is just way more complicated.

And so that's kind of what got me started on this, how I came up with those six items took a really long time to develop. The tissue health is where I was really excelled at, I was being so involved in sports related injuries. I mean, we knew how to manipulate tissue.

[19:58] And then I took a different class. And then I really started understanding how the tissue manipulation is actually affecting the nervous system. And then how those tracks can you can also affect kind of the central nervous system as well. And so I kind of started with the dementia direction, but then it migrated back to the neuropathy. And then I just knew so many people that affected as well. And so then I'm like, well, maybe I can help some people there then. Well, what's interesting is there's, and this is not necessarily a shade on neurologists, you're saying you shouldn't see a neurologist, but many times people leave with no plan.

It is literally just take this pill and you know, right, sorry, you have neuropathy now, right. So when a patient tells you there's no cure, you know, what would you say to that patient? If a patient is told that the only thing I can really box it up is like this. Doctors of neurology, doctors of medicine have a box of tools. Doctors of chiropractic, they have a box of tools. Generally, you associate chiropractors as a chiropractic adjustment, hence the name chiropractic. Doctors of medicine in neurology still are doctors of medicine and their tools are medicine.

If they're only working with those tools, then yes, I would agree with them because their tools are not affecting those six items that the research suggests that a nerve needs to live, grow and thrive. If my tools are only this one thing that don't check any of the boxes for a nerve to live, grow and thrive, then yes, I would agree. Your nerves, you're going to have to learn how to live about live with that. The excitement is, is I just like to try to figure out things that are not necessarily traditional.

This is what I came up with. These are my new tools that I didn't necessarily learn in school and we're having success with that. So what would you say to that patient who says, I was told that there's no hope for me, you know, and they've been to a doctor. I'm sure you've seen this come through your door. What do you tell them? I would just say,

[22:14] I think it would be a mistake for us to based off my degree because I understand doctors of chiropractic in general do not, they're not seen as high up on the credibility list, you know, with past things. And I totally understand that. I can see how somebody would say that. I also share great respect for neurologists as well. They clearly are intelligent people. There's no question about that. But I also believe that we need to keep conversations to make things better for patients. And I don't want you to discontinue just because of my degree.

I still am capable to read. I'm still capable of being able to read research. And I feel like I've been given to be able to put what I've read together to try to come up with unique and credible ways and research based ways to put together protocols. And that's really what I enjoy doing. Yeah. So is there anyone that your protocol would not work for? Yeah. So anybody who has a central nervous system, injury, we might be able to help change a little things, but it'll be very temporary. Anything that harms the brain or spinal cord, this absolutely is not going to work for you.

Anybody who is actively having cancer, if they have cancer, we would not want to work with you. Our process is proliferative in cells. And we don't want to give the food and ingredients for cancer until that is under control with our oncologist. And they've gone through treatment. Okay. So, you know, in terms of metabolic neuropathies, for those that don't know what that means, that's like diabetes, what else is metabolic neuropathy? It's very, it is a broad term. The reason I use that broad term is it can be used for it.

So, to give you an example, metabolic is essentially there is some sort of chemical change within the body that causes nerve pain. So that could be somebody who has an autoimmune disease. Well, autoimmune diseases in general cause digestive issues. Also, if we were to talk about thyroid, because thyroid is quite common within a metabolic. So those are very difficult diseases to manage. And so what happens is we get digestive issues. Thyroid issues can also lead to some central nervous system issues as well. For movement, it can affect the frontal lobe.

This is where we would have a neurologist to be involved, as well as, you know, an endocrinologist as well, as we go through the different interventions to help you. It could be a liver issue, you know, we talk about liver issues that are caused by alcoholism. It could be from blood pressure medications and statins can cause a decrease in coq10. Well, that's mitochondrial issues, which could lead to neuropathies as well. It could be viral. It could be maybe you have a vascular issue. Well, that's another thing. If you have vascular, the food's not getting there, that could be considered metabolic as well.

Okay, so all of those things, metabolic, neuropathy, that all falls under the purview of things that you can help treat. For, yes, and everybody will have varying degrees of how fast that they can improve as well because of the complexity of the disease. So I'm going to read a few statements and I'm curious, you can tell me if they're true or false. We've talked about a few of them already, but neuropathy cannot be reversed. You just have to learn to live with it. I saw this on one of the comments in the last episode, so tell me what you think about that statement.

If it is metabolic neuropathy, a metabolic neuropathy, I would say that is mostly false. Okay, gabapentin treats neuropathy. Depends on how you define treating. Okay, gabapentin will help dampen the symptoms in some cases, but it is not treating the root cause. Okay, if numbness, what is the root cause? That could be, so for example, the root cause could be a B12 deficiency. You know, if you're deficient in B12, it doesn't matter how much gabapentin you have, gabapentin isn't going to create your B12 for you. So something like that. Got it.

If numbness replaced the pain, that's progress. So a lot of times if it's true peripheral neuropathy, if we are going, getting into numbness, numbness in my opinion is when we're starting to see the disconnect of the nerves talking to your tissue and spinal cord. I would say you're progressing in an inappropriate way and something definitely needs to be done for intervention. If it's not diabetes, none of this applies. That would be definitely false. Okay. There's several, like there's several different reasons for metabolic style neuropathies. Diabetes is one of them. If we can, if it's not a central nervous system issue and we can figure out where the shortfall in those six items that we've talked about, if we can find the shortfall and get that working better, it can definitely be reversed and it does apply to you.

So there's so many people, especially as you get older that get in that pre-diabetic stage. And then they might have a little bit interrupting and it goes back and it goes forth. It comes and it goes. What stage do they need to come and start talking to you? Sure. And I just want to preface that sometimes the symptoms can come and go even after we feel we've hit all of your goals. Okay. A lot of times that is associated with autoimmune diseases or, and the reason for that is the symptoms seem to be patchy, which makes it more difficult to find the problem when we're dealing with autoimmune diseases.

Okay. Metformin, totally safe. com and then the other one that I had written down, but I forgot, there is definitely a side effect to every medication. So it all depends on how you define the safe. It is highly utilized in medicine. So it is probably generally safe. So yeah, that's all I can say about metformin. com. com and yes, and then the mount used. Yeah. There's nothing I can do at home.

[29:12] Well, we just went over things that you can do at home. There's absolutely things you can do at home and you should be doing at home. As I like to tell my patients, you have neuropathy every day, so you need to treat it every day. If you've had it for years, it's too late. Nope, that is false. I usually the people that I see have had it for several years. I think the longest has been 20 years and we've been able to help. So wow, that's amazing. So what is the myth that you hear all the time that you would, that you always have to correct patients about?

What do they say to you? That's a good question. They don't really have a myth. Okay. Because their myth was probably previously that chiropractors can't do anything, but that's because they think chiropractors only adjust. Okay. So that's maybe what's unique about our practice, is we are not just in that adjusting. We do a lot of rehab within our practice. So we've got all the for them to heal. And so that's probably the biggest myth is like, Oh, chiropractors, what do they know? They can't do anything for me. They just adjust.

And like, if I were only to adjust, yes, I would agree. I cannot help you then. Okay. So if someone is on, let's say they've seen their neurologist, they're on gabapentin, who's who should come off of it? Who should not? And in what does that look like? Sure. So I never tell somebody to go off a medication. It's always their choice. Okay. Now what I have seen with people who have been on gabapentin, some people do go off cold turkey, and that is a big mistake. You need to talk to your medical doctor on weaning off if you're choosing to do that.

And you also need to make sure that is right for you. Okay. So in the previous episode, you said metformin can cause neuropathy. So many people are on metformin. What should they do with their metformin? Should they stop that? As always get as many opinions as possible. And then what I would say, let's start going after your inflammation and any D plus levels. If you want alternative ideas to that, you know, metformin isn't always used just for diabetes, it is for other things as well. So I don't want, just like that, always talk to as many people as possible, read as much as you can.

If somebody says something like that, what is their alternative solution? Okay, because that might not be right for you. Okay. And that's why I also like working with the medical doctors as well. So on my form, when you fill it out, hey, can we share information with your medical doctor? Who is it? We get their information so we can make that happen. We want to make sure the whole process is safe. So a lot of the comments that you had were not necessarily people that had diabetes, but there was comments about thyroid issues, B12 issues, chemo, compressed discs, alcohol.

Yeah. Does that change the way that you approach the peripheral neuropathy in those instances? Yeah, so all of those things have, there's some reason for that shortfall and they're not wrong when they say it causes it. But what that does do is my job then is to explore what's causing that shortfall. And then I can easily apply on my six items what that occurs. So a lot of times, especially like compression neuropathy. So compression neuropathy, I have differing opinions on that. A lot of times that is more of a radiculopathy rather than a neuropathy.

That's called there. It is literally an obstruction that's causing a neurological change. Now, my approach would not be the metabolic protocol. It would be what we do on a daily basis for a lot of our chiral. We're doing a lot of muscle work. We're doing rehab. We're getting things to move so we can get some freedom of that nerve. Let's say it's a B12. What is the B12 shortfall for? Is it because you're not, do you have SIBO or do you have something that's not allowing you to,

[33:36] is it something that's not allowing you to digest your B vitamins in general? Do you drink a lot of alcohol? How long have you been taking some of your medications? Because those can lead to B12 shortfalls. So as a healthcare provider, and that's why I also like to talk to medical doctors that you've seen for a long period of time, we can figure out where that shortfall is and then we apply it to those six things that we work on to get you back as quickly as possible. So if someone is starting chemo, let's say they have cancer, what would you tell them to do before maybe their first infusion?

Absolutely. What I would probably do is

[34:16] I don't typically, I am pretty hands off. I don't want that process to be inhibited at all because I don't know enough about it. I just know that our process and some of the research as we push NAD plus suggests that NAD plus could actually help increase the metabolism of cancer. So I want to hands off of that. Now as for preparation, some of the diet changes, dietary changes right off the bat, I think could be beneficial. So you're really looking on, let's start trying to, you're going to be tired, let's just try to push and start making the habit of getting our exercise right or start changing our diet a little bit.

That would be the first initial thing before I would go hands on, which may be helpful to help keep the ingredients so you don't get neuropathy post chemo as well. What is the thing that you see people doing? They spend money on it and it does absolutely nothing. Yeah, sure. I would say a lot of the red light that you buy from Amazon, they're just not good products. I would also say a lot of people read one thing, "Oh, this could help," like a supplement. Yeah, you may have one supplement that might be helping, but it's not big enough or broad enough or you're not getting enough to really make a change.

Also, there was a study out there that some of your big box stores that have some of the ingredients, they don't even have in the pill what they claim is on the bottle as well. So the quality of ingredients is very important because there is no regulation in the supplement world. The red light thing is interesting because even at the sporting goods stores, they have all kinds of red light options and even some of them have saunas that you can buy, the red light rooms, mats. Most of those don't work.

Hopefully those guidelines that I gave you before, you can at least look at that before you click the buy. But if there's something under 50 bucks, it's probably not helping. Okay, good to know. You're just going to maybe get, maybe it will glow a little longer. I don't know. On the supplement side, how do you know if it's a good supplement? Sure, so we go with a couple different brands that are third-party tested. So they take a third party to ensure the ingredients that they claim are in there and they get audited on that quite often.

Okay, you talked a lot about NAD+. There's all kinds of stuff around NAD+. And I see so much conflicting information. You can go to an IV clinic and get an injection. You can buy NAD+, you can buy NMN, you can buy all these precursors. It's super confusing. So tell me about NAD+. What do you need to know about it? Sure, so NAD plus is an end product of actually B3. The problem is we can't typically get enough B3 in our diet because B3 gets turned into multiple things, lots of different things.

So then a strategy then is like, okay, how do I increase my NAD+. And we also need to understand that it's the NAD plus within the cell, not outside of it. The stuff that I'm interested is on the inside of the cell. Well, NAD plus on its own cannot cross the cell barrier. Okay, well, now we're stuck there. What do I do then? We take a precursor. So if it were we got it from our food, it would go to B3, and then it would get switched into a different ingredient, NMN or NR.

Okay, those can cross the cell barrier. Okay, once they cross the cell barrier, then it will get converted into NAD+. That's where the magic happens. That's where the health changes can happen. That's where the DNA positive changes can occur. That's where the breakdown of your glucose to help reduce the blood glucose works better. That's where the mitochondria can start functioning better because we have enough of that. So is it a waste of money to buy NAD plus in a bottle? If it's NAD plus on its own, unfortunately, you just as well flush the dollars down the toilet.

Oh, wow. Okay, that's good to know. I mean, so your practice, you do a lot of work with people coming in to see you, right? So if they're within 50 miles or whatever many miles they're willing to drive within Mankato, you know, and they're curious, how do they connect with you? Yep, so they usually have seen one of our videos or they give us a call. And we set up, I do do in-person free consultations. That's kind of how I will determine if I can help them. We're not talking on advice or anything.

They're kind of just telling me their story. And I'm just, we'll let them know. And we talk about my, I talk about my process and the science behind it. Once we do that, then and they want to move forward, we will then set up an exam. We have a full very in-depth form that they fill out. I want to learn everything I can about their health history, their current symptoms, past injuries, have they had cancer, anything, any autoimmune. Then we also do some blood testing. Once I present them, or once I get all the information from there, then we get into the physical side of things.

Well, there are typical nerves that are involved with nerve damage. And so the typical ones are light touch, vibration, temperature, and then also what we call monofilament, which is kind of like a sharp poke. We test for all four of those things. And then I try to ask them, you know, where we compare both sides, above, below, and then we try to measure that. So what they're feeling is their experience. That's subjective. And I try to measure that subjective experience within the exam. Okay. And then they're coming back to see you to do all the treatments we talked about earlier, the red light, all the things.

Once I collect all the labs, I get all my measurements, I get to read through their forms. I can, I usually can get a diagnosis. I make my checklists. So we have just tons of labs here, checklists to help me efficiently make decisions. If I feel like I need more labs for them, then we will do that. But I make sure I have all my labs, all the data where I feel good, then I will give you your specific protocol. Within my protocols, I like to measure things every about three months, besides the NAD plus levels.

That's once a month. We want to get those up as quickly as we can. But we retest every three months. So not only you can see after grinding out seeing me every day with your interventions, I want you to see that you are progressing in a positive way. If you're not, then I have to explore elsewhere as well. I might have to go to some other labs that are common if I were to miss something. So what was interesting in the last episode we did, you had a lot of calls from across the globe, right?

How many countries? Seven, eight? I think we're close to 12 now. Wow. So for those folks and anyone that may be not in Minnesota, maybe confused by your accent, how do you help those folks at remote? Yeah. So one thing we did is when we noticed these people all around the world, we did have a neuropathy community. So obviously I can't see them in person. We have tried to convert some of the exam things that we do for people in person, and we're trying to see if we can help them out virtually so long as they reach out to us and our country allows for it, of course.

And if we, you know, there is a big difference in, you know, how the economies work. So if it doesn't work out for them, then we offer them our neuropathy community. So, or we also offer, hey, we will, we can teach your provider how to do this within our neuropathy program that we teach providers as well. So tell me a little bit about that. Not only have you written a book, you have a community you do in-person consults and virtual consults. You've also, you're also interested in teaching other providers to do what you do.

So tell me about that course, what that is. Absolutely. So I try to get as specific as possible for what they need to know with all of these items that I've talked with you guys to get them up and running in their practice as quickly as possible to help these patients get from neuropathy. We go over the neuroanatomy. We go through mitochondrial health. We talk about how nerves work, how pain works. We talk about how each of the equipment that we use in our office, how that works. We give you checklists if you're, if you're having difficulty

[43:50] determining what type of neuropathy you might be dealing with. We also created a community lab of people who have not, or who have finished a course where they can ask questions because we as providers need to constantly be challenging each other. And I'm hoping with everybody having this base of knowledge, we can keep challenging to get better and better on our protocols. So is there anyone that is watching this that should definitely call you tomorrow?

[44:23] Well, if you are struggling at night sleeping because of your symptoms and your extremities and you don't know where to go, you can give me a call. If you are not sure, boy, is this numbness in my feet? Is that early signs of neuropathy? You can give us a call. That's who I would really benefit. The earlier you catch it, the quicker your results. Right. And there's a lot of people my age have parents that are getting older or younger than me too, you know, that pass this along to ones that they know.

So for those caregivers, children, adult children, they can connect with you too, I would imagine, or somehow connect there. That actually is quite common. " And I just like, "Yeah, let's have a conversation, come in for a free consult. Let's talk and see if I can even help you. " So where do people find you? Yeah, a couple of different places. com. We're working on a project called the Neuropathy Project. Hopefully we can get that going for both professionals and potential people looking for information on neuropathy. com. com. If none of those sound fun and you don't want to interact with anybody, you can also find my book on Amazon.

Also called Healing the Hidden Nerves. So hopefully that's easy to find all of those. And we will make sure to link all of those. If you're watching on YouTube, make sure to click on the description below. We'll have a link to the Stenzel Chiropractic Clinic in Mankato. We'll have a link to the Neuropathy Project as well as Healing the Hidden Nerves, the school community and the book on Amazon. So lots of different ways that you can connect with Dr. Jordan Stenzel and his team and make sure to, yeah, at the very least, check out the book and the community.

So thank you. So you're a very busy guy. You've got a lot of ideas. Yes, too many. That's probably why my wife calls me crazy sometimes. It's the crazy ones that do all the amazing stuff, right? Yeah, well, there we go. " That's right. Yeah, something like that. I think that's about right. Well, thanks again for being on the show. I definitely appreciate it. I know lots of people out there appreciate it too. So thank you again. Yeah, it's fun. Thanks for having me. Hey, that's our show. If someone you were listening to this, if you thought, "Hey, my sister needs to hear this," or, "I should send this to my mom," or, "My buddy would get a lot out of this," please share it with them.

Just hit the share button and send it their way. You never know what one conversation, one episode, or one piece of information can do for someone who's been looking for answers. And if you haven't subscribed yet, please do it now. It takes two seconds. It's free, and it means you won't miss an episode. We've got incredible stuff coming up, and I don't want you to miss any of it. And if you're a health provider and you want to be on the show, we'd love to hear from you. There's a link in the show notes to get in touch.

We're always looking for people doing interesting work who want to share what they know. And one last thing, I get asked all the time about the products and brands I actually use. So I've put together a list of sponsors and favorite products that have worked for me and my family. If you're curious, that link is in the show notes too. Thank you for being here, and I really mean that. I'm Melissa Goodwin. The line is open. See you next time.