Red-Light Therapy and Neuropathy: Illuminating a Path to Healing

JORDAN PYSZ / iFoundMyDoctor.com
Dawn says she went from feeling “lost” to like “a million bucks” after just seven weeks of Dr. Carle’s advanced treatment protocol for peripheral neuropathy.

Among the many ornaments Dawn Demperio hung on her Christmas tree last year was one with the New York Yankees’ iconic “NY” logo. Nearby, dangled a Yankees stocking.

“I do that every year,” Dawn says of the Yankees-themed holiday decorations. “I also have a Yankees cup, a Yankees blanket, all kinds of Yankees things like that. My entire family is into the Yankees. We’re huge fans, and we never miss a game.”

Rooting for the storied Major League Baseball franchise is a tradition handed down through at least two generations of her family, which hails from Syracuse, New York, but moved to Sarasota following Dawn’s retirement from a career in nursing several years ago.

“We go to spring training games here in Sarasota and Tampa. We also go to Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg to watch the Yankees whenever they play against the Tampa Bay Rays,” Dawn says. “The rest of the games we watch on TV.”

When she’s not watching the Yankees, Dawn likes to walk or ride her bicycle, but a few years ago, she was forced to abandon those activities as well as a few others because of peripheral neuropathy.

A condition that develops when the nerves outside the brain and spinal cord become damaged, peripheral neuropathy can cause numbness, tingling and stiffness as well as weakness, burning and pain in the feet, hands and arms.

Peripheral neuropathy can be triggered by an injury, regular exposure to statin drugs and chemotherapy, but it is most often caused by diabetes. Dawn, 62, was recently diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes, and she believes that or a cholesterol drug she takes brought it on.

“Either way, it started a few years ago when I noticed that my feet started hurting and my balance was off,” Dawn details. “After it started to get a little worse, I went to a facility here in Sarasota for an evaluation and therapy, but that didn’t help me at all.”

Dawn next sought help at another treatment facility and then from a foot-and-ankle specialist, who prescribed physical therapy for nearly a year with little success.

“By then, I was at my wit’s end because I had pain and tightness in my feet and this burning on the tops and the bottoms of my feet,” Dawn laments. “I was also getting these really bad charley horse cramps that made it hard for me to sleep at night.

“The other thing was the bottoms of my feet felt so thick that if I tried to walk it felt like I was walking on golf balls. I know that sounds weird, but that’s how it felt, and it made it so hard for me to walk that I actually lost my balance and fell a few times.

“It was a very frustrating thing because no matter where I went, I wasn’t getting any results. Then my husband saw a commercial on TV for Dr. Carle. At first, I was a bit hesitant to go see him, but my husband encouraged me to do so, and I’m so grateful that he did.”
-Dawn

Condition’s Four Stages

Kenneth D. Carle, DC, is the founder of Renewed Life Wellness Center, a practice committed to offering the best in chiropractic care, medical weight-loss solutions, regenerative medicine therapy and treatment for peripheral neuropathy, which has four stages.

In Stages 1, 2 and 3, patients suffer from various amounts of pain, numbness and burning. As those symptoms grow in severity, patients can lose their balance, which can lead to a loss of independence and the need for walking assistance with a cane, walker or motorized chair.

“In Stage 4, patients are too far gone, and some cannot be treated,” Dr. Carle notes. “That’s the stage when people need to have toes amputated and are totally reliant on others to take care of them. Thankfully, Dawn was not at that stage.”

Through his examination of Dawn, Dr. Carle discovered that she had Stage 3 peripheral neuropathy in both feet. That was the bad news. The good news is that Dr. Carle has about a dozen tools to treat peripheral neuropathy and restore damaged nerves.

The severity of each patient’s condition determines which tools are used, but one, the ReBuilder, is used almost universally. An FDA-approved device, the ReBuilder uses neuroelectric therapy to repair and regenerate damaged nerves.

Dr. Carle also treats neuropathy with red-light therapy, in which waves of infrared light stimulate growth in damaged blood vessels. This improves the vessels’ overall function, which leads to greater blood and oxygen flow in the targeted area. The flow promotes healing, a decrease in pain and an increase in function.

Those devices and another that Dr. Carle recommends called a vibration plate can all be used by the patient at home. In addition, Dr. Carle typically recommends a cocktail of nutritional supplements designed to further advance the healing of the damaged nerves.

“One of the supplements is a pill,” Dr. Carle says. “The other is a powder you mix with water. Both are vasodilators that increase the production of nitric oxide, which increases the diameter of the blood vessels and helps with blood flow.

“When combined with the other treatments, they work. One hundred percent of our patients experience some level of improvement in their symptoms. We rarely get 100 percent improvement in our patients, but most improve between 30 and 75 percent.”

Miracle in Waiting

Dr. Carle used all the devices in his tool kit to treat Dawn, who joined the practice’s neuropathy program last October. In the months since she started receiving treatment, Dawn says her foot pain and discomfort have slowly dissipated.

“When I first went to see Dr. Carle, I felt lost,” Dawn laments. “I was ready to give up because I didn’t know what else I could do. I had no hope. But in seeing Dr. Carle, it was like a light switch went on. It was like I was suddenly living in a whole new world.

“The impact wasn’t immediate, but I remember that it was after seven or eight weeks of treatment that I said to my husband, You’re going to think I’m crazy, but I feel like running. He said, What? And a minute later, I was running. I’d put my sneakers and foot orthotics on, and I was running around in little circles right there in the living room of our home.

“My husband couldn’t believe it, but I felt like a million bucks. I felt so good. I just felt like I was alive again.”

Dawn says she also felt grateful to have a doctor with a treatment protocol that delivered her from misery after she thought there was nothing that could be done.

“I don’t know what it was, but from the very moment I walked in to see Dr. Carle I felt like this was where I should have been from the beginning,” she says. “I felt like I had been blessed because it was like Dr. Carle woke my feet up again.

“I just can’t say enough great things about Dr. Carle and his entire staff. (Technician) Anita has been my therapist from the start, and she’s just the best. She’s so patient and kind, and she made me feel more positive about my situation as I made progress.

“She is an asset to that company, and I would absolutely recommend Dr. Carle and his staff at Renewed Life Wellness Center to anybody who has a problem with neuropathy because just as it was with me, there’s a miracle waiting for you there.”