Managing Your Diabetic Nerve Pain
Now that your doctor has prescribed Cymbalta for your diabetic nerve pain, you may have questions such as: How quickly can I experience some improvement in my pain with Cymbalta? or What are the side effects? Learn more about what to expect from Cymbalta.
Diabetes tends to damage nerves in the feet and legs and, less often, the hands and arms. Damaged nerves can cause nonpainful symptoms or painful symptoms. Although Cymbalta won't undo or stop nerve damage, it can help manage diabetic nerve pain.
What to expect from Cymbalta
Sometimes damaged nerves create pain messages with no cause at all. Diabetic nerve pain can affect people with type 1 or type 2 diabetes. No one yet knows exactly what causes diabetic nerve pain. Having high blood sugar (glucose) levels over time is likely to be involved. Diabetic nerve pain is more common in older people and in people who have had diabetes for a long time.
Although the exact way that Cymbalta works in people is unknown, it is believed to be related to an increase in the activity of serotonin and norepinephrine, which are two naturally occurring substances in the brain and spinal cord.
