If Alpha-Lipoic Acid Did Nothing for Your Numb Feet, You Probably Got the Wrong Half

That's what happened to my buddy — he swore off "ALA" after a cheap bottle did nothing. Turns out half of it was the dead, inactive form. Here's what I found when I did my own research instead of taking the label's word for it.

By Wade Coleman, 64 — as told to The Plain Review  ·  ★★★★½  ·  6 min read

If you saw the little video where I'm standing on my porch holding up a pouch, telling you my feet don't go numb and my fingers don't tingle anymore — and telling you to do your own research — well, this is that research. Written down. So you can check it instead of taking my word for it.

Here's how it started. I wasn't even looking for myself. A buddy of mine has bad neuropathy — the burning, the numbness, the whole deal — and I got to digging around online to see if there was anything real out there for him. That's how I landed on alpha-lipoic acid. He's on it now. I'm not going to tell you his results yet, because it hasn't been long and I don't speak for other people.

But somewhere in all that reading, I figured I'd try it myself. I've had my own nerve trouble for years — feet going numb, fingertips tingling enough that I'd fumble my coffee cup. And I'll tell you what: after a few weeks, that quieted way down. Works for me. Maybe it'll work for you, maybe it won't — I don't know your body. What I can do is hand you everything I dug up, so you can do your own research the way I did mine.

Don't take anybody's word for it — including mine. Look it up.

First thing I wanted to know: does it actually do anything?

Turns out, in a diabetic, high blood sugar does two things to the nerves in your feet and hands at the same time: it floods them with free radicals and chokes off the tiny blood vessels that feed them. So the nerve gets burned from the inside and starved of oxygen. That's the order I'd felt it in myself — tingling first, then the numbness creeping in.

Here's the part that got me. The usual pill they hand out — gabapentin — doesn't touch any of that. It just quiets the pain signal. Like pulling the battery out of a screaming smoke alarm. Room goes quiet, but the fire's still burning in the wall.

Gabapentin works on the alarm. This goes after the fire.

The thing that made me mad: half of the cheap stuff is a blank

Now, my buddy had tried some "ALA" off the internet a while back and swore it did nothing. I almost stopped right there. Then I found the thing nobody puts on the front of the bottle.

Alpha-lipoic acid comes in two mirror-image forms: R and S. Only the R-form is the one your body actually uses — it's the one that occurs in nature. The S-form is just a cheap synthetic byproduct. Most "ALA" on the shelf is a 50/50 blend, which means half of every capsule is the dead half you can barely absorb.

Think of a key ring with two keys: one's cut to open the lock, the other's a smooth blank. If you tried alpha-lipoic acid and felt nothing, odds are you didn't get a fake — you got the blank. You didn't fail ALA. You took the wrong half. That's when I decided I'd only bother with the pure R-form.

Why nothing most folks try ever works

Once the R-vs-S thing clicked, a lot of dead ends made sense. Near as I can tell, almost everything a person with burning feet tries fails for one of three reasons:

Miss on any one of those and you'll swear up and down that nothing works. My buddy had managed to miss on all three at once.

Where it comes from — and who's actually checked it

Two more things I found that you can go check for yourself:

One: this isn't some fringe thing. Alpha-lipoic acid has been prescribed for diabetic nerve trouble in Germany since the 1960s and covered by their insurance. A big trial back in 2006 landed on the sweet-spot dose — 600 mg a day. Reason your doctor never brought it up is boring, not some conspiracy: it's a natural molecule nobody can patent, so there's no sales rep pushing it, and the prescription pad just defaults to the patented drugs.

Two: and this is the one that sold me — the pure R-form I settled on is third-party tested. Every batch goes to an independent lab for purity and potency. I don't have to trust the company's word for what's in the pouch; an outfit with no skin in the sale checks it. You can ask any brand for that. The cheap stuff almost never has it.

What I take: Noverly, and what's in it

The one that checked every box for me is called Noverly. Here's why it's the one I take:

• 100% pure R-form — the active half only. No dead S-form padding the count.
• 600 mg per serving — the dose from the German research, not the 150–300 mg most pills hide.
• Made with coconut oil so more of it actually absorbs.
• Third-party tested every batch — independent proof, not "just trust me."

I take it before bed. It crosses the blood-nerve barrier and goes to work on the oxidative stress overnight, while I'm asleep.

Don't just take my word — take theirs too

Like I said, I'm one fella on a porch — so I went and read a pile of reviews from folks my age with the same burning feet and the same years of "nothing can be done." The pattern was the same as mine, and it built up slow:

★★★★★

Diane R., 67

"My feet aren't going numb the way they were. I stopped sleeping with a fan pointed at them — first time in years."

★★★★★

Yolanda S., 63

"The tingling in my fingers used to wake me up. I did my own digging, tried the pure R-form, and I'm not sold — I'm just glad."

The only honest way to know is to try it yourself

Here's where I land. You can read every bit of what I read. You can make sure it's the pure R-form and ask for the third-party test. But the only way to know if it works for you is to actually take it — and the smart way to do that is where the risk isn't on you.

So that's my research. Don't take my word for it — I already told you I'm no internet doctor. But if your feet burn at night and your fingers won't quit tingling, maybe give yours the same shot I gave mine. Try it, see if it works for you, and either way — come back and leave a comment, yes or no. As always, stay healthy, my friends.