Diabetic Neuropathy

There are rarely, if ever, very useful fixed protocols. The entire treatment has to be tailored to the individual according to their Chinese Medicine diagnosis first and foremost, then factoring in a host of individual factors (their overall health, other medicines, their lifestyle, etc, etc), then factoring in what season it is, what the weather is like, and on and on. For general information on this, I suggest you read “treating the cause vs. the symptoms” and “acupuncture treatment prognosis guidelines”.

So first you are treating the person, not the neuropathy (which besides being from “diabetes” can technically come from numerous potential underlying causes - i.e. the part we care about and technically direct treatment towards). Along those lines, you treat the neuropathy by limiting the “cause” - that is you work towards resolution of their diabetes.

Our diabetes treatment section has a number of potentially related diagnostic patterns in Chinese Medicine terms that you would use to target your treatment. And our acupuncture protocols for diabetes sub-section has some of the more common patterns along with potential points that would, of course, be tailored to the patient.

As far as the neuropathy aspect, you then would direct some aspect of the treatment towards what is generally called “local” treatment or targeted towards that specific problem. These would generally be points that draw circulation into the affected areas but would have to tempered with the individual (i.e. if they are overall deficient, you cannot use too moving points - if they are excess heat, you would use more clearing points - if they are yin deficient, you would use more nourishing points with less movement, etc.).