My husband developed significant numbness and severe pain in his feet.
At its worst, the pain was affecting him so badly that he was sleeping for much of the day. A nurse thought his symptoms could be peripheral neuropathy and advised him to stop smoking.
He tried to quit because he was in so much pain, although he ultimately continued smoking.
What frustrated me was that there seemed to be very little happening medically to find out what was actually wrong.
He had blood tests and was told that he was not diabetic, making diabetic neuropathy an unlikely explanation for his symptoms. However, he had no nerve-conduction studies or other neurological investigations.
He was eventually referred for an ultrasound scan of his foot.
We started the supplement protocol described below in March 2026.
As of September 2026 – approximately six months later – he is still waiting for that ultrasound scan.
Fortunately, he isn’t still waiting in the same severe pain.
Within about seven days of starting the supplements, his pain was already disappearing.
Shortly afterwards, it was gone.
And it has remained gone.
What Is Peripheral Neuropathy?
Peripheral neuropathy is a term used to describe damage to the peripheral nerves – the network of nerves outside the brain and spinal cord.
These nerves carry messages between the brain, spinal cord and the rest of the body.
The NHS explains that sensory neuropathy can cause symptoms including pins and needles, numbness, reduced ability to feel pain or temperature, burning pain and sharp or shooting pain, particularly in the feet.
That combination of numbness and significant foot pain sounded very similar to what my husband was experiencing.
Peripheral neuropathy can have many different causes.
Diabetes is the most common cause in the UK, but the NHS also lists vitamin B12 deficiency, excessive alcohol consumption, an underactive thyroid, physical nerve damage, certain infections, kidney or liver disease, autoimmune conditions and some medicines among the possible causes.
Sometimes no cause is identified at all.
In my husband’s case, he had already been told following blood testing that he was not diabetic.
That still left the question: what was causing the pain and numbness in his feet?
Looking for Supplements for Peripheral Neuropathy
When somebody you love is spending much of the day sleeping because they are in pain, it is difficult to simply watch and wait.
I started researching.
Eventually I watched one of those extremely long online health presentations where you seem to sit through an hour of information before finally being told about the supposedly revolutionary supplement they want you to buy.
I can’t remember what the product was called now.
What I did remember – because I wrote them down – were the ingredients.
Rather than buying their expensive product, I decided to source the ingredients myself.
What interested me was that several recommendations were quite specific.
It wasn’t simply alpha-lipoic acid. The recommendation was R-fraction alpha-lipoic acid.
It wasn’t simply any Lion’s Mane. The presentation emphasised the fruiting body and discussed Lion’s Mane in connection with Nerve Growth Factor (NGF).
It also recommended benfotiamine, rather than simply ordinary vitamin B1.
I therefore put together my own combination.
The Exact Supplements My Husband Took
My husband took the following each day:
- Aminolab R-Fraction Alpha Lipoic Acid 600 mg – one capsule daily.
- TIME Health Lion’s Mane NGF – one capsule daily. I specifically chose the fruiting-body product.
- MetaSuperfoods Liposomal Benfotiamine and Thiamine B1 – one capsule daily.
- Nature’sPlus Source of Life Liquid Multivitamin & Mineral Supplement – one daily serving, which supplied B6 and B12 amongst other nutrients.
- Niacin 50 mg – one generic nicotinic-acid tablet daily. This was the flushing form of niacin.
That was essentially the entire protocol.
My husband isn’t somebody who normally takes lots of supplements. He needed reminding daily.
He agreed to take them because I had researched them and because he was desperate to get some relief from his feet.
What Happened Within Seven Days?
The change was remarkably quick.
Within approximately seven days, the severe shooting pain in his feet were already going.
Shortly afterwards, he was out of pain.
This was not after months of taking supplements.
The R-fraction ALA came in a packet containing 240 capsules. He didn’t need anything approaching 240 days’ worth before we saw the change.
I don’t think I even needed to buy another bottle of the TIME Lion’s Mane.
He particularly liked the benfotiamine and continued taking that for longer than some of the other supplements.
He no longer regularly takes the whole protocol.
Yet, approximately six months after we started it, the severe foot pain has still not returned.
Meanwhile, he is still waiting for the NHS ultrasound scan.
Nobody can tell us what would have happened had we simply waited. Perhaps his symptoms would eventually have disappeared spontaneously, but I doubt it.
But having seen how much pain he was experiencing at the time, I am extremely glad I tried to find something that might help him.
I believe this combination of supplements cured the foot pain my husband was experiencing.
What I cannot tell you is which particular supplement was responsible, whether several of them worked together, or whether his symptoms were definitely peripheral neuropathy because he never received a confirmed diagnosis.
Why R-Fraction Alpha-Lipoic Acid?
The original presentation was very specific about R-fraction alpha-lipoic acid, so that was what I bought.
My husband took 600 mg daily.
Interestingly, alpha-lipoic acid is not an obscure ingredient when it comes to neuropathy research.
The NHS itself lists alpha-lipoic acid supplements among complementary therapies that some people try for peripheral neuropathy, while also making clear that the evidence is not always certain.
Clinical research has concentrated particularly on diabetic peripheral neuropathy.
A 2026 systematic review and meta-analysis found that ALA supplementation was associated with improvements in several symptoms of diabetic polyneuropathy, including numbness, tingling and burning, with particularly notable results around 600 mg per day.
An earlier randomised trial also found improvement in symptoms including stabbing pain, burning, pins and needles and numbness with oral ALA.
This does not prove that ALA works in the same way for non-diabetic neuropathy, and my husband had already been told he was not diabetic.
But I found it fascinating that the 600 mg daily dose used in research was also the amount he happened to be taking.
The exact Aminolab R-Fraction ALA product I bought originally came from Amazon. It is no longer available there at the time of writing, although I have since found the same product being sold on eBay.
Why I Chose TIME Lion’s Mane NGF
The Lion’s Mane recommendation was also specific.
The fruiting body mattered, as did its relationship with Nerve Growth Factor – NGF.
I had previously bought other supplements from TIME Health, so I looked at their Lion’s Mane range.
Their Lion’s Mane NGF product matched what I was looking for because it uses the fruiting body and is standardised for compounds known as hericenones.
I want to make an important distinction here.
The supplement does not contain human Nerve Growth Factor.
Rather, compounds found in Lion’s Mane have been investigated for their potential effects on pathways associated with NGF and nerve growth.
There is interesting laboratory and animal research investigating Lion’s Mane and nerve regeneration.
That is why I have wondered whether it could have contributed to my husband’s improvement.
However, we cannot say that Lion’s Mane regrew his nerves.
We have no nerve tests from before and after the protocol, and human evidence is still much more limited than laboratory and animal evidence.
What I can say is that I deliberately chose a fruiting-body Lion’s Mane product associated with NGF research, rather than buying a random mushroom capsule.
Why Benfotiamine?
Benfotiamine is a fat-soluble derivative of vitamin B1.
Again, this ingredient wasn’t chosen randomly.
I had encountered benfotiamine repeatedly while researching peripheral neuropathy, and Dr Eric Berg has also discussed benfotiamine and alpha-lipoic acid in connection with nerve symptoms.
Interestingly, the NHS treatment information for peripheral neuropathy also mentions benfotiamine supplements as one of the complementary treatments some people try.
The evidence is mixed.
Some earlier studies generated interest in benfotiamine, but a 2026 randomised placebo-controlled study in people with diabetic polyneuropathy found that 12 months of benfotiamine did not significantly improve the various nerve measurements and clinical outcomes investigated.
That is important to mention.
I don’t want to select only research that agrees with what I already believe.
My husband’s experience was also very different: he was not diabetic, he was taking several supplements simultaneously, and the change in his pain happened within days rather than after a year.
We therefore cannot use his experience to prove that benfotiamine was responsible.
But it remains one of the ingredients I found particularly interesting.
B12 and Peripheral Neuropathy
Vitamin B12 also deserves attention because B12 deficiency can itself cause peripheral neuropathy.
The NHS specifically lists low vitamin B12 among the recognised causes.
My husband’s B12 was a methylated version and came from the Nature’sPlus Source of Life liquid multivitamin.
Unfortunately, because he never had a comprehensive investigation into the cause of his nerve symptoms, I don’t know whether he was deficient before starting it.
That means B12 correction remains another possible explanation that we simply cannot rule in or out.
An Important Warning About Vitamin B6
This is something I discovered afterwards and definitely want readers to know.
The Nature’sPlus liquid contained 25 mg of vitamin B6 per full serving.
Vitamin B6 is essential, but taking excessive supplemental B6 can itself cause peripheral neuropathy.
Current NHS advice says adults should not take more than 10 mg of vitamin B6 per day in supplements unless advised by a doctor.
The NHS says taking 200 mg or more daily can cause loss of feeling in the arms and legs, while the effects of prolonged intake between 10 mg and 200 mg are less clear.
That means I would not tell someone to duplicate my husband’s B6 intake for months.
He appears to have taken the complete combination for a relatively short period and subsequently stopped taking most of it.
If I were putting this protocol together today, knowing what I know now, I would pay much closer attention to the total B6 coming from all the products combined.
What About the Niacin Flush?
My husband also took 50 mg of nicotinic-acid niacin – vitamin B3.
This was the form that causes a niacin flush.
If you’ve ever experienced one, you’ll probably remember it.
The skin can become hot and red and may tingle or itch.
The US National Institutes of Health notes that flushing commonly occurs from around 30–50 mg or more of nicotinic acid.
His liquid multivitamin also contained niacin, so his total daily intake was actually higher than the separate 50 mg tablet alone.
Again, this is why I am documenting what he took rather than instructing everybody else to copy the same quantities.
Did the Supplements Work Together?
This is the question I would love to be able to answer.
We introduced several things simultaneously.
So was it:
R-fraction ALA?
Benfotiamine?
Lion’s Mane?
B12?
The combination?
Or was something else happening altogether?
We simply don’t know.
From a scientific perspective, changing six things at once makes it impossible to establish which was responsible.
From the perspective of a wife watching her husband in severe pain, however, my priority at that moment wasn’t conducting an experiment.
It was helping him.
And within around a week of starting that combination, his pain was going.
Peripheral Neuropathy Isn’t Always Caused by Diabetes
This is another reason I wanted to write this article.
Searching for neuropathy information online can make it seem as though peripheral neuropathy automatically means diabetes.
It doesn’t.
Diabetes is the most common cause in the UK, but the NHS lists numerous other causes, including B12 deficiency, thyroid problems, nerve injury, alcohol, autoimmune conditions, infections and certain medicines.
There are also cases where no identifiable cause is ever found.
My husband had undergone blood tests and had been told that he was not diabetic.
Yet he still had numb, painful feet severe enough to substantially affect his daily life.
Six months later, we still don’t have a medical explanation for what caused it.
Why I’m Sharing Our Experience
I am sharing this because I know how desperate people can become when they are living with severe pain.
This isn’t an article claiming that I have discovered a universally proven cure for peripheral neuropathy.
My husband never even received a confirmed diagnosis.
It is an account of something that actually happened in our household.
He had significant numbness and severe pain in his feet.
A nurse thought it could be peripheral neuropathy.
Blood tests showed he was not diabetic.
He was referred for an ultrasound but, six months after we started the supplements, he is still waiting for it.
I researched supplements for peripheral neuropathy and put together a combination containing 600 mg R-fraction ALA, fruiting-body Lion’s Mane, benfotiamine, B vitamins and flushing niacin.
Within around seven days, his severe pain was disappearing.
Shortly afterwards, it was gone.
Months later, it remains gone even though he no longer regularly takes the complete protocol and unfortunately still smokes.
For that reason, I believe the supplements cured the foot pain he was experiencing.
I cannot prove which ingredient caused the change.
I cannot prove that damaged nerves regenerated.
And I cannot promise that somebody else taking the same supplements would experience the same result.
But I don’t believe that means our experience isn’t worth sharing.
If anything changes – or if my husband eventually receives his ultrasound or further investigations – I will update this article.
Important: This article describes our personal experience and is not medical advice. Persistent numbness, tingling, burning or unexplained foot pain should be medically investigated because peripheral neuropathy has many possible causes. Supplements can cause side effects and interact with medicines. In particular, excessive supplemental vitamin B6 can itself cause peripheral neuropathy.