My sincere sympathies on your many health problems my friend. All I know
about diabetes and neuropathy I've learned here, on the web and from books.

Your blood sugar readings of 100 and lower are excellent. I have read
that tight control of blood glucose can improve neuropathies. There are
many folks here who can advise you better than I can.

Have you tried doing a Google search using several terms at once such
as: Agent Orange diabetic neuropathy.

I'm sure you'll get some  more replies with better info than I can give.

BTW...is it possible to get looked at by a doctor outside  the VA system?

God bless you my friend. Merry Christmas.

Sorry to hear it. This is accepted by the VA as a well known problem. How
Much they know about it, I don't know.

I certainly hope you can find some help for this situation. These do not
sound like trivial complications of diabetes, as if there could be such a
thing which as far as I can tell there are Not.

There is no cure for bad government.

And there is no cure for diabetes.

Someone may have some suggesions for your neuropothies, there are certainly
persons here who have experience with problems of this kind.

I hear from your post that your bg is under control. I think that is
helpful. I wish you well. This could certainly have happened to me, and I am
glad that it didn't. I also have T2 diabetes, but I have diabetes on both
sides of my family and am in native american and mexican american risk
groups, so when I got this disease it was not much of a surprise. Except
that it was. And so far, I have no neuropothies of any kind. I'm very glad
of that.

Any of us might have gone to the war and had these kind of issues.Thank you
for your service.

Please seek better council from your doctors and diabetes educators and from
specialists in your disease. You need better information about your
condition than you are getting. This, asd, is a good place to ask questions
and find support for diabetes problems, but your primary support is your
health team, which much be made to understand that your needs are not
trivial and must be met. You have to be the leader in treating your disease.
That means that you must assume responscibility for all aspects of your
situation and not flinch from troubling the medical professionals who should
help you in every way. They must give you the answers to your concerns.

Keep up communication with the group, asd, and tell the technical details of
your medical reports whenever you feel comfortable doing so with the rest of
the world.  Some of the people here are very informed about the backwaters
and byways of this disease. Not me. But I have learned a few things I
didn't know by reading this group and am better off for it.

regards,
rudy
bantista@thuntek.net

Hey,

 I have the usual laundry list for Vietnam/Desert Storm vets, Diabetes,
neuropathy, gout, tinitus, Upper and lower GI problems and a partridge in
a pear tree.  I don't have any pain so I count my blessings - such as
they are.

 Because I'm retired military I use tricare instead of VA. My doctor
says most of my problems could be helped or at least slowed by taking
care of the diabetes and changing my diet. So far he's been right. I
don't even know most of the time that I'm supposed to be sick.

Hang in there, hope all goes well and Merry Christmas.

Here's a link to some VA related links

http://www1.va.gov/health/diabetes/default.htm

You've gotten excellent advice about the neuropathy, ALA, etc and about
 testing to make sure you are keeping your post-meal spikes as low sa
possible. I want to reiterate that as you improve your blood sugars and
the nerves heal they can tingle and hurt. This can be a sign they are
getting better, so hang in there and keep those blood sugars down, as
tough as it is.

My own experience has been that tinnitus is far worse, in terms of
crazy-making, than any nerve pain (of which I have had far too much from
other reasons.) I don't know the exact mechanism by which Agent Orange
tinnitus works, but I have spent many years with tinnitus and have found
the following helpful.

1. No aspirin or any NSAID for pain, ever. Tylenol does not make
tinnitus worse.

2. Eliminate foods, sunscreens,and deodorants containing
salicylates--this includes anything with "cylate" in the name and Aloe.
Salicylates make my tinnitus much, much worse. There is one brand of
deodorant that has none, Almay, available in many drug stores. It took a
while after switching to it, but I noticed a definite improvement.

There are lists of foods containing salicylates on the web and you'll
find they include peppers and a many other vegetables. Note your own
response to these foods and eliminate those that seem to make things worse.

3. Read the prescribing information (available online) for any drug you
are taking and if it says "Tinnitus" anywhere in the list of side
effects, demand your doctor give you an alternative. A shocking number o
common drugs make existing tinnitus much worse, including a lot of
common antibiotics. Often if you ask a doctor, "Will this make my
tinnitus worse" they'll assure you it won't and THEY'LL BE WRONG.

4. White noise is your friend. Loud fans save your sanity. I use a
little "white noise" generator by my computer, and a big air-purifier
with a very noisy fan in the bedroom. They help most of the time except
when things really ramp up.

Re the cardiac neuropathy, I can't get a lot of information from doctors
on this, but lowering blood sugar as far as possible seems to be the
best approach.  Dr. Richard Bernstein in his book "Dr. Bernstein's
Diabetes Solution" says that his patients are able to improve  autonomic
neuropathy (which is what cardiac neuropathy is) with extremely tight
blood sugar control. He's been proven right on so many other things that
were written off as cranky ten years ago, that I'll give him credit on
this one, too.