Diabetic neuropathy is a painful condition. Anyone with diabetes will tell you much of the same. The pain in your nerve endings, thunder bolting from your feet to your upper thighs, tells a story, and not a pleasant one. Unfortunately, you can’t exactly turn back the clock once you have the condition. So, how do you deal with it? The answer lies in a possibly unusual place: meditation. While meditation isn’t a panacea for every issue related to diabetes, it can be a powerful tool in your toolkit. Learn more about how meditation can help improve diabetic neuropathy below.
What Is Diabetic Neuropathy?
Diabetic neuropathy is a condition caused by high blood sugar. If your blood sugar is too high for excessive lengths of time, this eventually leads to nerve damage and the constriction of blood vessels. This constriction can cause you to experience shooting pain in your feet, ankles, and legs, along with tingling and poor circulation. While you can’t reverse diabetic neuropathy, you can treat it and slow its progression. This treatment plan is where meditation comes in.
How Does Meditation Combat Neuropathy?
Meditation slows neuropathy by lowering blood pressure, which helps keep blood sugar manageable. Meditation can be passive—when you sit down, legs crossed, and focus on the breath—and active. Active meditation could involve yoga, tai chi, and qi gong. Active yoga helps neuropathy because the gentle movements of yoga, qi gong, and tai chi can help improve leg circulation while offering a full-body workout. Make sure you choose the right diabetic-friendly shoes when attempting exercises! Passive, sitting meditation can lower stress, which helps decrease pain and offers a form of progressive muscle relaxation perfect for people with diabetic neuropathy. This is how meditation can help improve diabetic neuropathy.
How Do You Meditate?
While it is best to learn active meditation, like those mentioned above, from a professional qualified to teach, passive meditation is far easier to do on your own or in a group setting. While we may not be able to get into the nuances of Downward Facing Dog, a simple mindfulness meditation instruction is easy enough to execute. The first thing we’re going to learn is how to detach from any pain you might be feeling:
- Sit on the floor with pillows or a chair with a firm back to support you.
- Deeply breathe in through the nostrils for four counts. Hold your breath. Breathe out through the mouth for four counts and hold your breath again.
- Focus on extending your belly, not the top of your lungs, when you breathe. Put your hand on your diaphragm to encourage this if you need to.
- Do this for one to five minutes to start, and if you feel so inclined, gradually work up to an hour or two.
You’ll notice an immediate improvement. Meditation is a great natural technique you can use to improve your diabetic neuropathy.
