The Steel Guitar Forum

I've recently developed neuropathy in my feet which causes me problems feeling my pedal foot. Does anyone else have this problem and what if anything have you done to minimize this issue. It wont stop me but it does have its problems. Must be from stomping those drums for 45 yrs !!

I have peripheral neuropathy, caused by chemo, in my feet and to a lesser extent in my fingers. I don't have any problems with the fingers but I do with my feet. At times I can't really feel the pedals and just go on instinct - most of the time it works, occasionally I don't get a pedal down fully. Other times I can feel the pedals like I used to.

I've had this for 6 years so I've learned to live with it and play steel with it. I had colon cancer and had two "resections" (12" the first time and 8" the second time) and 6 months of chemo. I take Neurontin but I don't know that it really does a lot other than help with pain at times. The Oncologist told me it would go away in 6 months to a year but mine didn't and it appears about 1/3 of chemo patients that have it are permanently affected.

The lead guitar player in our band, Cal Akers, is from East Moline. Not too far west of you.

Stretch ? I couldn't hurt could it? I mean if you don't stretch too much?

My Oncologist put me on Vitamin B6 to help with effects of Chemo on my feet amd hands. I seldom have
the jolts of pain.

I have been diabetic for thirteen years and neuropathy has been an issue for the past four years now. Having a guitar that you don't have to fight and you can operate comfortably and your pedals are adjusted in a position where you can get on and off the pedals in the best way you can. Also, shorter travel on the pedals helps me. A smooth pedal action is good, you just don't want your action to be too stiff but also if it's too easy you start hitting things you don't want to hit because you wouldn't be able to rest your feet enough on the pedals without changing the pitch of a string you don't want cause it's too easy. You will just have to tinker with it to see what you can do with what feeling you have in your feet. Good luck to you.

I have been diabetic for thirteen years and neuropathy has been an issue for the past four years now. Having a guitar that you don't have to fight and you can operate comfortably and your pedals are adjusted in a position where you can get on and off the pedals in the best way you can. Also, shorter travel on the pedals helps me. A smooth pedal action is good, you just don't want your action to be too stiff but also if it's too easy you start hitting things you don't want to hit because you wouldn't be able to rest your feet enough on the pedals without changing the pitch of a string you don't want cause it's too easy. You will just have to tinker with it to see what you can do with what feeling you have in your feet. Good luck to you.

Vitamin B6 and several other things I've tried have not really helped. The Neurontin (generic is Gabapentin) has been the best (and cheapest as its covered by insurance).

I take it three times a day (300 mg capsules).

yep... feet and hands. Nerve damage complicated by Cryoglobulinemic vasculitis in my case.
Hit me in December '07... nerve endings have repaired themselves to about 80-90%. feet are numb to the extent that it feels like I'm walking on layers of soggy cardboard
Strangely enough they are also super sensitive... (walking over a cable etc. in the studio with bare feet is moderately painful.

Playing PSG; I need to "peek" at them regularly to see they haven't slipped off the pedals

It's a challenge.

I have peripheral neuropathy, caused by chemo, in my feet and to a lesser extent in my fingers.

Guys! how frustrating is it ! Mine has disappeared from my fingers thank God but remains in my feet and toes but is decreasing. I think the only cure (if there is one) is time and waiting for your body to cope with it. They say nerves repair at 1" per year but toes are a long way from the brain!
Another of the 'joys' of "Playing in the Key of C ".

I have neuropathy also. I have been dealing with it for 2 yrs. now. Doc told me in 50 per cent of the cases they don't know what causes it. Anyway it hasn't affected my playing. but it sure has caused me misery if i have to stand on my feet very long. I would like to go back to work but i don't think i could stand it and no company is going to hire a 64 yr old cripple. I can't stand to walk on gravel. I gotta find me some thicker sole shoes.

I too suffer from this in my feet. I am not diabetic. I have not been to a neurologist, but from what I've read, I might be wasting my time. My GP doctor doesn't have a clue.
Right now I'm trying a vitamin regimen. So far no help.

Yes, I too have the frustrations of dead feet. Can stub your toe hard or drop a rock on 'em and hardly know it,... then for some strange reason my big toe feels like its on fire,... burns like Heck !!!

Anyway, here is what I did after my foot kept slipping off the side of the A pedal. At 76 I don't pack up and haul it on gigs, it stays set up most of the time, so this works for me.

I bolted a small tin bracket to the left side of my A pedal, (Emmons set-up). (Its "L" shaped and screws to the bottom of the pedal and sticks up as a place to rest the left edge of my boot). As long as I occasionally slide my foot left against the bracket, I'm okay. I can still rock and swivel to the right for B and C.

But then the next problem was: while rocking on and off, the foot slowly slides backwards off the pedals. So I took a soup can, cut it in half, vertically and trimmed it a bit and tied a string from it to the pedal board and cut the string the exact length of my cowboy boot plus a bit. Then I was able to slip my heal into the can, and place the left edge of my boot against the tin-pedal-bracket and it pretty well stays in place and I just peek once in a while to ensure I'm still there.

If I had to pack up and haul my rig, it just means unscrewing the tin-side-bracket from the bottom of the A pedal and fitting the soup can and string in there someplace too.

I've experimented with the heal piece a few times. I used a piece of 1/4" plywood about 6" wide by a foot long and tied that to the pedal board with a tin strap. Then made a leather heal cup and glued it to the board the length of my boot from the pedal rod but had to adjust the pedals to fit above the board which was a niusance so scrapped the board and went to variations of the soup can and leather heal cup.

I guess it all sounds confusing but its really a simple idea and works for me. Frustration drove me to it as pills and time didn't work.

Gosh I'm sorry to have rambled on so, but I didn't see anyone else use mechanical help on this problem so felt I should offer mine. Hope someone can benefit from this or, perhaps some "better" ideas will come from this?! I'm surprised no one else has mentioned "mechanical" help, as you guys and gals are always amazing me with your ideas,..but then again,.. "I" thought "I" was the "only" PSG'ist with dead feet!! GOOD LUCK!

CHEERS!
. . Mike

I had a great Doc. years ago. He did not sell me snake oil. He told me no more pedals, not for weeks but Years ,and my foot would heal. Just try it out now and then and dont force it. He was right. Today I can push pedals all day long if I want to. With no pain at all.

Thank You Doc!

I also had an accident a few years ago. I broke several bones and wrist on my left hand. I had metal plate installed. After one year of steel guitar exercises and pain I am back 101%. And very thankful.

Thank You Doc!

I'm Type 2, but not bad enough to even take meds. I watch my diet. Darn High Fructose Corn Syrup!
I have numbness in both feet. Worse on the right. Chinese-born lady friend taught me an old Chinese med trick, that seems to help quite a bit. She called it "Hitting The Lines."
Make a fist, and start tapping, not too hard, but firmly. Start at your knee, Just to the outside of the bone. Work your way down to your ankle. You'll feel the "electricity" when you learn just where the nerves run. Repeat as many times as you can stand to. DON'T HIT HARD. But firmly for sure. Then do the top of your foot from the ankle down to where your toes start. All over the top of your foot, until you again find the nerves.
I do this as many times a day as I can. When on the computer or watching TV. Takes a while for it to work. Not an instant thing. But it does work well for me.

As a diabetic for 18 yrs and now on insulin I could write a book on neuropothy and its pain. I now take take Neurontin 800 mg 4 times a day. It will help pain tremendously but the numbness does not leave. Iwear boots with Dr Sholl's gell insoles. Not those real expensive ones. Nextt to this pray the Lord wiill allow you to steel for a long time. God Bless. BL

I now take take Neurontin 800 mg 4 times a day.

Wow! I thought I was the record-setter, at 3 X 800... Mine is the result of some cervical discs slipping around and pinching the nerves and abrading the spinal cord - the initial pain was beyond belief, only other "spinies" know what you're talking about. Women with children often turn up their noses about pain - "Well, you've never had a baby!" But - they go on having them, and I've met a few female spinies and they say there's no comparison. Like a full-body bad tooth, only there ain't no tooth to pull and there ain't no dentist to pull it - just think happy thoughts! yay....

There are several different, discrete types of nerves - the ones that tell you where your foot is are in the "proprioceptive" system. There are also the red alert "get your foot out of the alligator" sudden pain nerves, then there are the heat and pressure nerves (which also do the slow, throbby pain thing). If you don't know where your bits are, that's proprioceptive; if they don't signal pressure, that's another thing. The red alert high-pain alarm nerves can easily overwhelm any other message, which is a pain in the (add body part).

In my case, besides feeling like my left foot is wearing a deep=fat fryer instead of a sock, I also don't usually know where it is. I have to take a few slow steps till I sort out what it's giving me at the moment. The most promising steps towards a true cure that actually regenerates nerves (or the sheaths of myelin) lies in stem cells, but you have to be a millionaire and/or live overseas to have any hope of it getting some such treatment personally. That little lurch towards theocracy we took in 2000 chased many of our best scientists and research doctors overseas - if you're a young, ambitious doctor who wants to find success (and fortune!) in stem-cell research, you can't blame them for wanting to do their best work, hence moving to Japan or the UK or Singapore's new billion-dollar stem cell facility.

Tony Iommi, guitarist for Black Sabbath, wrote in his autobiography "Iron Man" that he has been to a specialty "hand clinic" in Germany that treated his multiple hand problems with stem cells, with a great deal of success. It was recommended to him by Eddie Van Halen, and apparently a large number of professional guitarists have been going there. Very successful professional guitarists - I'm pretty sure Medicare ain't picking up that bill...

It also sounds like snake-oily placebo effect to me - I actually do try to follow the research in that field and there's an awful lot of these "stem-cell cure" places popping up, way ahead of repeated, controlled, clinical successes. But I'd happily take any placebos that worked too! That whole glucosamine and chondroitin thing turned out to be a complete washout, but it made some people happy for a while (and some others rich....)

I feel for you my friends,,, It sucks getting old, lets face it.. When we were 25, we thought thats exactly how we would feel forever.. remember?

I don't have the chronic physical pain you guys have, but I would gladly trade my "thorn in the flesh" for any of yours right now... We must deal with
physical or mental pain , or both, as we age -
all of us..

I wish all of you well, and hope you can all play long and hard for many many years to come .

God bless...

bob

I too am diabetic, and have peripheral neuropathy on my feet. I take a combination of Gabapentin, which is only available by prescription, and alpha lipoic acid, which is an over the counter supplement. The combination eliminates the pain completely. I have still lost some feeling, but at least it doesn't hurt anymore.

I, too. have numbness in my feet from neuropathy. I am like Jack Shoner. It started after my chemo 5 years ago with numbness in my feet. I asked the doctor about it, he said it might or not might go away. I will just have to suck it up and hope someday the nerves will come back to life. Beats dieing.

Try the "Tapping." It works for me.

Carl, what I read on the Internet about 1/3 of the people with neuropathy caused by chemo (its the Platinum in one of the chemo drugs) have permanent damage. Considering my Oncologist stated "it will go away in 6 months to a year" I consider I'm in the 1/3 group since its been 6 years since I completed chemo "folfox treatment".

BTW, I'm from Mechanicsburg in central Pa.

Jack,

I guess I'm in the 1/3 group too. Like I said it's been 5 yrs. My Doc said there is a shock treatment but he said it was very pain full, (so I did not do it.) By the way Mechanicsburg is not too far away. I'm 4 miles outside of State College, PA. Hey, maybe we'll still get lucky and it goes away.

I would add - get yourself checked out, to the limits of what your insurance can stand. There's something called "double crush syndrome" and it's as painful as it sounds - you can also be doing some kinds of further damage, thinking that the pain from one thing is coming from somewhere else. I basically played myself into carpal tunnel problems, thinking that the pain was from damaged nerves in my spine. When I say "checked out" I mean a full workup on nerve transmission in your legs and arms, where they can isolate each section by where they touch the little probes. If your elbow-to-hand transmission is diminished, the damage has to be in the forearm/wrist area, not the spine or thoracic outlet or others. And they need that full workup in order to establish a baseline.

And while I know that "bad news is a bummer" and "what difference does it make?" but in the lazy-susan style of modern medicine - where your primary doctor has a half-dozen patients lined up in rooms up the hall (real doctors hate this too, it's driven by outside factors) - the more you know, and the more succinct you can be about communication with your primary doc, the easier you make his job and the better he can do it. There are, still, any number of people who schedule doctor's appointments because he's the only one who will still listen to them complain anymore.

well i'm afraid it has stopped my steel playing,i've had this problem for about 10 years,spent many nights after gigs with verry sore feet and leggs from over pushing on peddles because i couldn't feel them ,i did it for a long time but i fineley had to quit playing my steel. thank god my hands stiil work,so i'm haveing a good time playing guitar. i'm 67 years old and i've been playing for about 50 years so i'm just glad i still can play my music,by the way i do have a nice mullin guitar for ,i'll be posting it soon. jimmy

I'm also a type 2 ,taking the usual meds and have been told that it(neuropathy) will never fully go away. The only thing that helps is to control my blood sugar numbers and lose weight. My feet swell at times making it very difficult to play accurately at times. Lately the only thing that helps is eating less, taking my meds regularly and getting my blood sugar numbers under control! The better my numbers are the less pain I experience.