THE EFFECT OF LIFESTYLE INTERVENTIONS ON DIABETIC NEUROPATHY

Diabetic peripheral neuropathy likely affects up to one-third of adults with
diabetes. All diabetic patients are likely to develop peripheral neuropathy if they live sufficiently long.
Drug therapy has limited potential for controlling the associated pain. Alternative methods of
treatment have thus far demonstrated limited success, so the aim of study was evaluating the effect of
lifestyle interventions on diabetic neuropathy severity among diabetic outpatients that suffering
diabetic neuropathy.
Material & Methods: This clinical trial was performed as time series on 76 patients with diabetic
neuropathy, in Urmia in the year of 2013. After matching the study variables, the patients were
divided equally and with random allocation to two experiment and control groups. The lifestyle
interventions were performed for the experiment group beginning 4 educative sessions on diabetes
self- care that emphasizes strategies for glucose monitoring, dietary and exercise habits, foot care,
medication taking and coping. Each session was lasted for1.5 hours.Then, these patients were
followed for 12 weeks. During these 12 weeks, they were given counseling on lifestyle interventions.
Diabetic neuropathy symptom severity in both groups was measured by using Toronto Clinical
Neuropathy Score at the beginning of study and then at the end of counseling for 12 weeks. The data
were analyzed by SPSS 16.0 software using t-test .
Results: There wasn’t any difference between the mean of diabetic neuropathy symptom severity in
both study groups before the intervention, but comparing the mean of diabetic neuropathy symptom
severity after intervention, there was a significant difference (p<0.001) among the two groups of the
study.
Conclusions: These findings indicate that lifestyle interventions including diet and exercise
counselling for diabetic neuropathy patients result in decreasing neuropathic symptom severity, and
reducing pain.