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Jordan Pysz / ifoundmydoctor.com
Ed receiving treatment for his peripheral neuropathy that has helped him gain relief from his symptoms.
For years, Ed Marano devoted the bulk of his free time to athletics, weight training and physical fitness. That devotion never earned him the college scholarship or the professional contract he once dreamed of, but it provided a payoff, nonetheless.
“It saved my life,” Ed says. “I played high school football, college soccer, got into karate later in life, and worked out and weight-lifted my entire life. If I hadn’t, the heart attack I had a few years ago would have killed me.
“That’s what the doctors told me, because all four of the main arteries to my heart were blocked 100 percent. They said that because I was an athlete all my life, the peripheral vascularity in my heart was sufficient to save me. So, I was pretty fortunate.”
Fortunate indeed because Ed, 76, suffered his heart attack just as he was completing the task of helping his son establish the Marano Animal Hospital in Venice. Ed still works at the hospital on occasion, doing “a lot of nonmedical stuff.”
Beyond that, he devotes most of his free time to watching his granddaughter’s karate and gymnastics competitions.
A few years ago, numbness, tingling and stiffness in his right foot and right big toe made that experience and many others a lot less enjoyable.
“This was in 2018, and the situation got worse and worse as time went on,” Ed explains. “So, I went to the doctor, and he said, I think you have the beginnings of peripheral neuropathy. I was like, What? I’d never heard of peripheral neuropathy before.”
Peripheral neuropathy is a condition that results when the nerves outside the brain and spinal cord are damaged. As with Ed, it can cause numbness, tingling and stiffness as well as weakness, burning and pain in the feet, hands and arms.
The condition can be triggered by an injury, regular exposure to statin drugs and chemotherapy, but it is most often caused by diabetes, which Ed was diagnosed with not long after his heart attack.
“I went from being prediabetic before the heart attack to having flaming diabetes after the heart attack,” Ed confirms. “And with that came this neuropathy, which for me was bad. But it wasn’t as bad as it is for some people.
“Some people get severe stinging, burning and pain, and they just can’t take it. I had mainly numbness and discomfort. On a scale of one to 10, my pain level was probably a five at its worst, and on most days it was a two or three.
“But the numbness caused my balance to be off, so I had trouble walking. If a cop had asked me to do a field sobriety test where they ask you to walk a straight line, I would have failed. And I don’t drink. I just didn’t have the mobility in my foot.”
Ed’s symptoms worsened over several months. Then one day, while visiting his chiropractor, he read a pamphlet he picked up in the office that detailed a comprehensive treatment plan for peripheral neuropathy.
“I’m reading this pamphlet, and it’s explaining how peripheral neuropathy can lead to amputation of toes and feet if it’s not treated,” Ed remembers. “I said to myself, This isn’t happening to me. So, I asked my chiropractor about the treatment.”
Stage Presence
Ed’s chiropractor is Kenneth D. Carle, DC. He is the founder of Renewed Life Wellness Center, which is committed to offering the best in chiropractic care, medical weight-loss solutions, regenerative medicine therapy and treatment for peripheral neuropathy.
Peripheral neuropathy has four stages. Patients in Stages 1, 2 and 3 have various amounts of pain, numbness and burning. As those symptoms grow in severity, many patients may 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 explains. “That’s the stage where people need to have toes amputated and are totally reliant on others to take care of them. Thankfully, Ed was not at that stage.”
Following a thorough examination and evaluation by Dr. Carle, Ed was diagnosed with Stage 1 peripheral neuropathy in his left and right foot, although the condition was far worse in the right foot, where it was on the brink of Stage 2.
Dr. Carle has about a dozen tools that he uses to stop peripheral neuropathy and restore damaged nerves. The severity of each patient’s condition determines which tools he uses, but one is almost universal: the ReBuilder, an FDA-approved device that uses neuro-electrical therapy to repair and regenerate damaged nerves. Dr. Carle also uses red-light therapy, which produces waves of infrared light that is known to stimulate new growth in damaged blood vessels.
The new growth improves the overall function of the blood vessels, which allows for greater blood and oxygen flow in the affected area. The improved blood and oxygen flow promotes healing, which leads to a decrease in pain and an increase in function.
Those devices and another that Dr. Carle recommends called a vibration plate can be used at home. In addition, Dr. Carle recommends a cocktail of nutritional supplements that are 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.
“And when combined with the other treatments, they work. One hundred percent of our patients experience some level of improvement in their symptoms. We don’t get 100 percent improvement in 100 percent of our patients, but most improve between 30 and 75 percent.”
Rapid Recovery
Dr. Carle used all of the medical devices in his tool kit in treating Ed, who says he religiously followed the doctor’s recommendations and was amazed at how quickly his symptoms improved.
“When I started these treatments, I had maybe 10 percent flexion in the toes in my right foot and no flexion at all in the big toe on my right foot,” Ed reports. “Now, I have about 90 percent flexion in all those toes.
“That feelings of pins and needles that I had in my feet is gone, too. There’s still a little stiffness in the right big toe, but it’s a lot better than it was, and I don’t wake up in the middle of the night with cramps in my feet anymore.
“What’s really amazing is how quickly I started to feel a difference after starting these treatments. It wasn’t any more than two weeks after Dr. Carle started me on this program that I began to feel better. That’s like five or six treatments.”
The opportunity to do the treatments at home makes the protocol a convenient remedy for neuropathy, Ed notes, and he says you won’t find a better doctor to evaluate and treat your condition than Dr. Carle.
“He’s phenomenal,” Ed raves. “He’s a true professional, and he’s got an incredible personality and bedside manner. There are a lot of doctors who are good, but talking to them is like talking to sandpaper. They’re gritty. Dr. Carle isn’t like that. He’s great.”
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