Everywhere you go, you see food and drink loaded with sugar. Candy, soda, processed foods, fruit juices, baked goods, and so on are all packed with extra sugar to capitalize on that sweet taste Americans love. By this time, everyone knows that eating a sugar-loaded diet is bad for you. Most people assume, however, this is because it makes you gain weight. Most people don’t realize the role sugar plays in damaging your nervous tissue, potentially leading to diabetes and neuropathy in your feet.

As lower limb nerve decompression specialists, our team at Parker Foot & Ankle has always been interested in anything that can damage your nerves and lead to foot pain. More and more, nerve experts are seeing a connection between the foods people consume and damage to nervous tissue. This is highlighted in books like Sugar Crush by Dr. Richard Jacoby (set to release on April 14) which shows just how a diet high in sugar and processed carbohydrates increases body inflammation, impairs blood flow, and can cripple your nerves. One of the most obvious ways this happens is through diabetes.

Diabetes is one of the most devastating diseases that impacts the nerves in your feet. Elevated sugar levels damage your circulation and nervous tissue, leading to neuropathy pain and increasing your risk for serious conditions like foot ulcers. Diabetes isn’t inevitable, though, and changing your diet and lifestyle can help prevent the non-autoimmune form of the disease, saving your feet from pain.

What’s more impressive, though, is that reducing your sugar and starchy carbs now, while appropriately increasing your healthy fats, can help reverse damage you’re feeling in your feet—especially if you catch the problem early. A healthier diet allows your nerves to heal and your feet to regain some normal function. In the long run, this can even prevent amputations from diabetes.

So if you already have tingling or burning feet, there’s still hope for your lower limbs! Investigate diet and lifestyle changes that cut down your sugar and starchy carb intake and replaces it with healthy fats and plant-based foods. Our team at Parker Foot & Ankle will be happy to work with you to establish a healthy plan for both your feet and your lifestyle. Just call (281) 497-2850 to make an appointment at our Houston, TX, office so you can calm your nerves again.