Hereâs my late take on this. But Iâm just a caregiver.
This is a theory that no doctor has verified and one doctor our MD said, if this was the case why would there not be more areas where youâre mom would have burning. Why just the feet? (My response was being mute, I could not explain how it would only affect the feet for the most part in her case.)
Hereâs the premise of my theory or list of reasons, but keep in mind Iâm not a doctor and a neurologist would who know a lot more than I would could easily tear down or perhaps validate a bit my theory. First in my momâs case she developed EM from Risperdal. She was taking it and while taking it her feet became more and more worse over the course of 6 weeks and we refused to take the drug anymore, but ironically it was prescribed twice more by doctors and we rejected those prescriptions as well. She had level 10 pain flares and went to the hospital ER five times for extreme pain in the first year (2002).
Letâs look at some of the side effects of Risperdal and Iâll stop with the important one for my momâs case, or what destroyed the lives of three adults since 2002.
Risperdal Side Effects Center
Risperdal is available as a generic drug. Common side effects of Risperdal include:
- extrapyramidal effects (sudden, often jerky, [involuntary] motions of the head, neck, arms, body, or eyes),
- [dizziness],
- tiredness,
- drowsiness,
- [fatigue]
- [fever]
- feeling hot or cold
And the list goes on an on.
Now when we look at Risperdal on Wikepedia we can see how it affects 7 Seretonin (5HT) receptors that control vascular function or thermal regulation. Itâs an antagonists, which means it locks itâs molecules into âkey holeâ receptors of nerve receptors related to 7 types of 5HT nerve pathways that control thermo-regulation or blood flow and pain and of course other things can be a result. Itâs an antagonist, which means it cuts back on the receptor activity to sense, how each one senses and controls the autonomic nerves and bodies ability to control itself is not clear for a layman reading the wikepedia. But we know that antagonists will stop the use of a receptor, so itâs cutting back on Seretonin signals which control those things. Now I have not heard anyone else, ever say they received EM from Risperdal, but thermal regulation issues is listed as a side effect, so perhaps a rare group of people have had EM from that drug. But thereâs another clue that it may be from the 5HT or Seretonin antagonistic effects of Risperdol. That would be a kind of thin piece of proof Iâd say comes from one study which used .5% Ketamine and 1% Amitriptyline cream to âtreatâ burning foot syndrome. In that study, some who applied the cream on their feet had a âburning sensationâ on their feet, from the Amitriptyline which was a slight burning that happened until the Ketamine action started to happen to reduce pain. In other words in the study, patients said they felt a warming of the feet from the amitriptyline component of a compound cream which was used in a study to treat their EM. A trip to Wikepedia to look at the actions of the Amitriptyline shows 6 of the seven neurotransmitter sites which is affected with âantagonistic side effectsâ is affected by Amitriptyline. This means Amitriptyline, could be thought of as Risperdal-lite perhaps. Almost as bad as Risperdal. Why would I guess that to be the case. Because Risperdal has 7 neurotransmitter sites that it can antagonize but Amitriptyline has only 6. But also one of those sites has an âirreversableâ antagonistic effect. Think of an antagonist as being a key that slips into a lock, and each lock being a different kind of lock for each channel. Risperdal can put keys in 7 kinds of 5HT sites, but Amitriptyline can put keys into only 6 of them. But Risperdal will not only put a key in the receptors of the nerves, it does something akin to super-gluing and breaking off the key into the site of one of the receptors and that antagonistic effect never is removed. Itâs irreversible nerve damage. So in my opinion, based on what Iâve seen and experienced Risperdal is worse and a much greater threat. Now perhaps the Amitriptyline can wear off and nerve sensing can return to normal for many people, but in the case of Risperdal I donât think itâs ever reversible. As my mom still has flares which are basically as bad as when she first had this problem since 2002, we are still waiting for her nerves to be released from the effects of Risperdal. Of course we live in Michigan and in 1996 the wonderful state Republicans and our Republican governor signed a bill into effect saying drug companies cannot be sued for side effects they cause. So unless you can prove that they committed fraud, they are shielded from any persecution. Doctors have the power to prescribe any drug they want for any reason and they can experiment in their practice on their patients. If the drug companies push drugs and use incentives to make them pushed, they profit and the consumer or patient in Michigan becomes a drug test dummy for the drug companies. So if youâre living in the State of Michigan you can sue the drug companies for side effects that ruin your life, but you canât win.
But aside from the little rant about lack of protection in Michigan. The antagonistic effects are limiting the nerves ability to send normal signals. Do those normal signals warm or cool the feet? Difficult for a layman to say and itâs probably not easy for a perhaps even a doctor to tell us. There are two kinds of processes that a chemical can have on a nerve receptor. They can reduce signals or stop them which means they are antagonists. Or they can excite and perhaps enhance a signal which means they are agonists. One could think as a layman, if antagonistic effects are causing my EM, maybe if I took an agonist for the same nerve receptor it would reverse the effect. That sounds like it makes sense at a very simplistic level. If youâre using something that makes your feet warm by causing more agonist reactions, you might be using something that is causing some receptors to warm up as well, or maybe chill them. In any case, the effect would be throwing nerve signals on more frequently. Drugs that are agonists for 5HT are in the class of âspeedâ drugs that makes peoples nerves go crazy and gives them âhighâ feelings and trips. So thereâs not much legally or medically that a doctor would likely want to do to give people âspeedâ to excite and try to reverse the effects of an antagonist on a nerve. With an irreversable antagonistic effect not more keys to stimulate the nerve receptor can be put into the lock because the irreversable side effect of putting the Risperdal key into that lock has stayed there, and that nerve receptor is dead for the rest of your life. So even if an agonist could trigger the reverse effect it will never be plugged into that keyhole, to cause the effect to happen.
Now that Iâve given you some basics of the smoking gun as I can see it, we also know that some people on this board have reported that they had EM symptoms happen or get worse taking Amitriptyline. This is a further piece of possible evidence that the 5HT antagonism will cause burning feet syndrome to happen to some people. Maybe they experience some kind of mutation from the effect and the receptor sites are permanently damaged. Amitriptyline is also something that can cross the brain blood barrier and the peripheral nerves are protected much like the âbrain blood barrierâ and less susceptible to the effect of nerve medication unless it can pass the brain blood barrier. So Amitriptyline and Risperdal being designed as nerve medications for the brain, can perhaps have a greater effect on the nerves in your hands and feet.
Now regarding my thought process on how this is working and why the body flares up more and is more sensitive to heat than a normal human being. First I want to point out that one process I talked with a neurologist about was the numbing of the nerves by injections of numbing agents by a foot doctor, as if he was performing surgery. This being a shot into the Tibial Nerve, but they may use a different nerve bundle on the foot as well. And they might numb the foot and do diagnostic blocks. Which by the way wonât be covered by most insurance for âneuropathyâ but in the case of EM, the foot doctor may be able to classify this different than for general nueropathy kinds of use and get it approved. So we tested and tried having momâs nerves numbed as if she was having a foot operation. This is a short term numbing so she might have a few hours or perhaps up to six hours of pain relieve far better than Opiods can give her. And the thought was âif the diagnosticâ numbing works, we can decide if the foot doctor will do a permanent numbing of the nerves either in part or wholly numb it by injecting alchohol solution into the nerve area to kill the nerve outright, without cutting it. When we asked the neurologist about this âhail maryâ approach of how we might make her feet become like a diabetic foot condition. The Neurologist said that is a very bad idea. He stated that the foot would grow black and require amputation as the side effect of that. He was pretty adamant that it would be a way to cause her to loose her feet. The foot surgeon that suggested this âhail maryâ (5% chance) thought, said it might not work when he suggested it. He said it might make things worse as well. So we didnât do the kill the nerve route, but we have a different foot doctor who does give mom temporary nerve block injections in her feet, about once every two weeks.
The Neurologist told me that if nerves are cut the default autonomic response by the body is to âsend bloodâ to the injury. So if youâre nerves die or are killed off on the way to the foot, youâre body will think an injury occur and the default response is âsend blood to the injuryâ. Hence we get edema and flares from nerves that are missing or lost their function.
So with that in mind, we can see why diabetics can have edema in their feet, their body is trying to cure it by sending blood down there. And it tries to send blood down there and theyâll feel pain and have EM flares at first, when the nerves are working enough to not have the feet become numb. Later as their nerves die more and more from small fiber neuropathy perhaps, they have a numb foot. So they have swelling and horribly bad looking feet, but they donât feel pain, because their feet are numb.
When you put your feet in a cold ice water bath what are you doing? Youâre making youâre foot numb from the cold environment. You are as an early EM suffering person in effect giving youâre foot a temporary case of diabetic loss of feeling and less pain sensations are going to the brain. So to me, getting a nerve block with a shot of lidocaine is the same thing medically as putting youâre feet into an ice bath to freeze out the pain.
The threshhold of pain and heat sensitivity is thrown way off. Why? My theory would be because some of the nerves are gone, they are like broken wires on a volume control of a speaker or radio. And when you turn the volume control on those old style pots that had maybe a hundred resister settings, well now only maybe 10 percent of them are left. So youâre radio goes from a volume of 1 to 10 instantly because there is no granularity of signals. What I think happens to people like my mom, is they have lost many of their nerve signals and the brain doesnât know how to remap the pain volume controls for the fewer signals and fewer nerves that are left. So when a âflare happensâ the person has maybe 1/10th the sensors operating and when you trigger only one of them with perhaps a light touch on the skin for Small Fiber Neuropathy like symptoms, sensitive to light touch, or heat for EM. . . you have one nerve acting like itâs ten nerves and the brain thinks ten nerves are getting warm instead of one and the granularity of the numbers is not remapped properly inside the brain. Thus the temperature scale has lost precision and may interpret lower temperatures as much higher. So 85 degree water may seem temperate to my feet, but would cause a flare to my mom and she wants her feet to be in a range from 60 degrees to perhaps 80 degrees, but no warmer. For her 85 degrees is like 120 to me. This is because she has lost nerve sensations and the brain has either remapped the remaining ones to a scale which is way outside the normal body range that we are used to, or the body will say thereâs an injury Iâm sending blood to heal the foot. Which of course is not injured at all, but the blood flow causes pain, especially with someone with fewer nerve receptors, left. Because of nerve damage.
The further away you are from the brain, the longer the distance, so more nerve damage will affect signals which are further away and if the damage isnât to great along the pathway, it may only affect the far extremes of the body. Thus it affects the feet and hands first. If mom kept taking those pills that caused her EM, the pain would move further and further toward her brain throughout her body as more and more nerves would be damaged and degrade the entire signal network closer.
Some of my theory is based on a belief that signals are being accumulated in mass by numbers of nerve sensors, which is a digital concept from computer processing approaches to the body. The body may not act that way, so my programming background may be coloring my thought process in my theory or thinking.
If the brain cannot be remapped and make up properly for lost nerves and the brain will mess up the remap, youâll have problems. Phantom pain, jolts and fake signals may be triggered as the few remaining signals have more âpain weightâ or sensation weight than they should have. So this would be my theory.
Now if you can âtrain the bodyâ by making nerves hot and tell yourself this is not bad and get the body used to higher temperatures, you can âtrainâ yourself out of the flare state. This it what the âhot pepperâ on the nerves approach is saying. They are saying you can exercise youâre mind and remap it. I donât think that is possible and before I read the entire thread I felt it would not work. And I think CRPS advanced therapy approach videos have said it doesnât work for CRPS type 2 ailments either. So the training idea probably wonât work for most folks. It will probably make it worse. Things like "firing off signals randomly with electric shocks to âtest youâre nervesâ may trigger flares as well. So I would not say TENs is a good idea either, but this based on my limited experience as a caregiver. As usual itâs good to validate any approach and get the opinion of medical experts and take most of our comments with a grain of salt.