Nerve Damage

CDC. “Diabetes and Nerve Damage.” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2020, www.cdc.gov/diabetes/library/features/diabetes-nerve-damage.html.

Diabetic Neuropathy is a very serious way to get nerve damage. This damage can’t be repaired as the high levels of blood sugars may be going on for long periods of time. Nerve damage is also very common among people with diabetes, so it is important to understand the type and how to prevent them from further happening again. 

With diabetic neuropathy, there are four different types of nerve damage: peripheral, focal, proximal, and autonomic nerve damage Peripheral nerve damage is nerve damage that affects limbs like the arms, hands, feet, and legs. This nerve damage is the most common among diabetic patients. The symptoms of this nerve damage would be increased sensitivity or numbness in the limbs. This could lead to amputation of these damaged parts. Focal nerve damage affects the hands, torso, head, or legs. This nerve damage focuses on the single nerves. Symptoms of this type would be lost in vision focus, numbness, eye aches, and weakness in hands. Proximal nerve damage affects the thighs, hips, legs, or buttocks. However, it might also affect the stomach and chest. The symptoms include severe pain in the areas and trouble moving from a sitting position to a standing position. Lastly, autonomic nerve damage affects the bladder, stomach, heart, intestines, eyes, or sex organs. The symptoms for this type are that there would be lots of nausea, decreased sexual response, difficulty adjusting vision from light to dark, and urine leakage/constipation/diarrhea. 

To prevent these types of nerve damages, it is important to understand the way one's body works and to also maintain the body properly. For example it is important to do a lot of physical activity, eat right, and listen to a doctor. A new understanding that I gained from this research is that there were a lot of types of nerve damage. The only nerve damage that I lined diabetics with was the focal nerve damage. It was interesting to see how much maintaining blood sugars is important and how much diabetes can affect the body in various ways. I also learned that it is very common for diabetics to get nerve damage. This means that many people don’t really take care of their blood sugar levels like one is supposed to. This is why I wanted to make a model to show people the effects of hyperglycemia (high blood sugars).

For my original work I wanted to make a model consisting of a pancreas, neurons, and  a limb like the hand or leg. For this research, I wanted to focus on improving the limb part of my model. I wanted to show how nerve damage, caused by high blood sugars, can lead to discoloration of the limb and how that will lead to amputations.  I would use the light from the neuron to also light up a dark light within the limb to show discoloration. I would also explain how nerve damage is irreversible, so it is important that the blood sugars are maintained and monitored properly.