The 3 Vitamin Deficiencies in Sciatica and Carpal Tunnel Syndrome

let's talk about the three common nutritional deficiencies in sciatica as well as carpal tunnel syndrome now satica can really be a pain in the butt literally you have this pain that goes right on the back of the leg and it can really affect someone if they're sitting or driving and carpal tunnel syndrome can be a big issue and sometimes people go for surgery when in fact they probably didn't need to do that so today I'm going to discuss three common nutritional deficiencies okay and they involve the B vitamins B1 b6 and b12 so we're going to discuss um a little bit on how to differentiate if your problem is more of a B6 deficiency or a B12 deficiency or a B1 but these three vitamins are intimately involved in the nervous system and especially sciatic nerve and carpal tunnel syndrome which is pain or numbness in your wrist so I want to just Dive Right In let's first start with vitamin B6 it's called pyridoxine now there's different forms of B6 pyridoxine is the inactive form it has to convert to another form to be active the active form is called paradoxyl 5 phosphate or p5p this happens in the liver but you have to realize how important B6 is in a lot of problems including the nervous system because it is involved in over a 160 different enzymes okay that's our enzyme Pathways so you can have all sorts of problems but today we're going to focus more on the nerve problems that can occur now B6 helps to make myelin sheath okay that's one thing it does myelin sheath is the coating around the nerve and when you lose that coding the nerve stops working you start having symptoms like burning numbness tingling pain because that nerve keeps everything going keeps the nerves flowing and so the protein that builds myelin which is a type of fat insulation is dependent on B6 as well as B6 helps produce neurotransmitters those nerve Communications that travel through the nervous system which is a little different than hormones hormones travel through the blood as far as B6 is concerned the two big ones are serotonin and dopamine B6 is especially important in protecting the nerve Integrity specifically the sensory nerves okay more than the motor nerves so there's two types of nerves one that controls the muscle movement and there's also the sensory nerve that has everything to do with pain and different Sensations like it can produce burning pain or numbness or which is a lack of pain anything that you can feel is more of a sensory nerve and one big one is sciatica and another one is carpal tunnel syndrome so I remember in practice I had a machine that measured how fast the sensory nerves traveled through your arms it's called conduction nerve velocity testing and we would check these sensory nerves and unfortunately back then I had no clue about B6 and other vitamin and how they can greatly affect the nerves so B6 helps increase the conduction of the nerves the velocity of nerves how fast the nerves transmit nerve signals B6 is also involved in the metabolism of the nervous system as well and B6 can also affect the nerves of the eyes and if you're deficient you can get myopathy which is nearsightedness which is difficulty in seeing far away B6 deficiencies are also involved in seizures okay so if you know anyone who has seizures you should definitely recommend B6 and or have them watch this video now there's a paradox with B6 okay that I'm going to talk about it's a mystery because in some cases when people start taking large quantities of vitamin B6 they end up expressing symptoms of ab6 deficiency so that's a little bit of an odd thing but I'm going to explain exactly why that occurs apparently these two forms of the vitamin the inactive and the active can compete with each other so let's say for example you start taking a lot of of the precursor to B6 which is the paradoxine you could end up blocking the active form okay creating a deficiency of B6 creating sensory nerve problems now just think about this the rdas the requirements for B6 are very small it's like 1.4 to 2.1 milligrams okay well if you ever buy vitamin B6 in a tablet form it comes in like 50 milligrams or 100 milligrams or sometimes 250 milligrams and this could be like 2 000 times more than the rdas and most the time people don't know the difference between these two types of B6 and they end up taking a lot of the inactive form and then they end up with the B6 toxicity they actually start experiencing neurological problems and they did not connect the dots so straight off the bat if you have a B6 deficiency I'm going to recommend taking the active form not the inactive form of B6 now the other thing you should know is that in about 36 percent of all supplements sold you'll see B6 as the inactive version so you could be unknowingly getting a lot of this B6 and actually creating B6 deficiencies without your knowledge so how does one become deficient in B6 well by taking the wrong form of B6 in large amounts lets you have some inflammation in your gut or some type of problem with Celiac or Crohn's that could be a problem or maybe you had your gallbladder up as we age it becomes more difficult to absorb B6 certain medications uh block vitamin B6 alcohol will do it birth control pills will cause a deficiency even your genetics there are genetic variations that can be picked up on a gene test that can cause a weakness within your system in converting the inactive to the active as well as just the absorption of B6 so in that case you would want to take larger amounts of the active form of B6 to correct this problem so you may not be able to get B6 from just your diet in general depending on what you eat because foods that are very high in B6 are usually animal protein foods fish Meats things like that and of course if you were a vegan or vegetarian you're more susceptible to becoming B6 deficient also the form of B6 in plants is not as bioavailable now if you're a smoker if you're a diabetic you could be deficient in B6 if you drink a lot of coffee let's say you drink over four cups of coffee a day you can be deficient in B6 the next most important vitamin involved with nerve problems is B12 I've done lots of videos on this topic it's very very Insidious because it can sneak up on you and by the time you know you have a B12 deficiency potentially it could be too late because it can create some serious damage but when you think about B12 you want to think about myelin okay myelin sheath that's that coding I just mentioned that surrounds the nerve and allows the nerve impulses to travel without B12 you can't make myelin so B12 has everything to do with nerve regeneration with myelin production and with nerve growth factors okay so B12 is very very important and I would not recommend taking the synthetic version called cyanocobolamine I would recommend taking the methylcobolamine which is the natural form now virtually the same reasons why you are deficient in B6 could be the same reasons why you're deficient in B12 like drinking too much alcohol being a diabetic having malabsorption birth control pills definitely genetics which is very very common but there's some other things as well like for example not having enough stomach acid how would you know if you don't have enough stomach acid well you get acid reflux you'd get GERD you may have gastritis but I think the two main reasons why people are deficient in B12 is either they don't eat animal products they don't eat red meat they don't have liver they mainly do plant based foods or grains and the other reason is genetics I've been diving into DNA recently and and boy B12 deficiency is a common problem with so many people and it's such a simple problem to solve if you understand that methylcobalamine is the form that you want to take but another B12 deficiency is when someone takes a lot of folic acid that can create a hidden B12 deficiency I did a whole video on that and then we have B1 I've done videos on this too a B1 deficiency usually shows up as peripheral neuropathy and it's usually involved with diabetes or pre-diabetes or someone who has really bad insulin resistance problems because B1 is all about helping you metabolize carbohydrates and sugar so the more carbs or more sugar you eat the more B1 you're going to need to metabolize that and so that person usually ends up with a B1 deficiency and they start having neurological problems in the bottom of the feet but they also can have them in the hands they can also have these problems in other syndromes like sciatica so that would be a little bit of a differentiating factor do you have a history of eating a lot of carbs do you have pre-diabetes then definitely include B1 but other things can create a B1 deficiency too like too much coffee too much tea but B1 is involved with supplying blood flow to the nervous system and without that B1 you basically starve off the nervous system the blood supply and oxygen that it needs and you can have all sorts of issues the type of B1 that I would recommend would be benfotamine which is a fat soluble version of B1 and that will penetrate the nerves about 25 percent stronger and it's great for helping with the myelin sheath B1 also is a powerful antioxidant and it can counter the complications from diabetes not just in the nerves that go to your muscles but the nerves that go to your eyes and also other tissues in the heart in the kidney so anyway I wanted to bring up your awareness on three really important vitamins involved in sciatica pain that can greatly help you if you start taking them you can take all three or just narrow down the one that indicates more to you but this information is something that I don't have in some other videos so I wanted to include it but there are other causes of sciatic pain as well and one is that you lost the normal curve of the lower back and if you have not seen that video okay with a simple solution I put it up right here check it out

Channel: Dr. Eric Berg DC

Views: 5,102,054

Keywords: sciatica, carpal tunnel syndrome, vitamin deficiencies in sciatica and carpal tunnel syndrome, vitamin deficiencies, what causes sciatica, sciatica pain relief, sciatica pain, low back pain, sciatic nerve pain, sciatic pain, sciatic nerve, sciatica relief, wrist pain, vitamin b1, vitamin b12, vitamin b6, vitamin b1 deficiency, vitamin b12 deficiency, vitamin b6 deficiency, deficiency, vitamin b deficiency symptoms, dr berg on sciatica, dr eric berg, eric berg, dr berg, berg

Id: S-nrK7wcnvc

Length: 11min 30sec (690 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 17 2023