Well the good news is that nerves outside of the brain regenerate much more easily than nerves inside. The thing about damaged nerves though is that when they're healing you'll basically experience what you're currently experience-very little noticeable improvement.
Think of your nerves like an electrical wire-if you cut it in half, the thing won't work until the two disconnected ends are completely back together. So basically until the damaged portions of your nerves have finished healing and fixed the bad connection you won't really feel like you're healing even though you probably are.
If I were you I'd probably take some Acetyl-L-Carnitine, which has been shown to help nerve regeneration in several kinds of nerve damage, but most of the research has been from diabetes (mostly because diabetes is a major cause of nerve problems). This sometimes comes formulated with added alpha lipoic acid which is also helpful in controlling damage to nerves from free radicals generated by the inflammatory process (research has shown it can be helpful for nerve damage in diabetes).
Since most of the damage in diabetes is due to an inflammatory type process it may be likely that this is the best combination to use in your situation as well.
There does appear to be at least one study where they basically tested acetyl-l-carnitine on facial nerve paralysis and it did help-which makes perfect sense given it's role in speeding up nerve regeneration.
http://grande.nal.us...p;therow=610500I will warn you though again, that since nerve healing is one of those processes where it's often an "all or nothing" deal with whether the signals are getting through correctly or not, that even though taking these will likely speed up how long it takes for you to heal, your subjective feelings of whether it's healing or not may not change very much. Personally I would stick to these two things (Acetyl-L-Carnitine and Alpha Lipoic Acid) and not add much other stuff since sometimes things you figure might help can have unexpected consequences. In all honesty sometimes I see people suggesting things for a particular effect without thinking too much about side effects from long-term usage of some of these things-there's a LOT of stuff that I've considered regularly taking but eventually ruled out as just too much of a question mark for long term safety.
If you want other suggestions for stuff that actually has good evidence of having helped, I'd try to find a neurologist who currently also works at an academic institution and is involved in research about this kind of stuff-they tend to know more about unconventional solutions that have actually been shown to work. A neurologist who isn't as involved in current research would be somewhat less likely to tell you to try stuff like this.
The only other stuff I can think of off the top of my head that may help you heal up in general would probably be getting your blood levels of Vitamin D measured to see if you're low (you probably are) and if so then supplementing with 2000-4000 IUs/day until your levels are back up (alternately some doctors will just tell you to take a larger amount once a week) since it's associated with helping to control inflammation and very recently shown to help prevent some kind of neuronal damage that can cause schizophrenia. It is possible to OD on vitamin D (although not very common) so it is prudent to have your blood levels checked on occasion to see how they are. I would probably also take a fish oil pill daily so long as you're not having any surgery or dental work done (it can cause you to bleed more than usual), since it has been shown to help with nerve damage as well by controlling the involved inflammation.
You'll notice that a lot of what I'm recommending works largely by controlling the inflammation in and around your nerves-this is because the problem isn't that your nerves don't want to or are incapable of healing, it's that inflammatory processes basically undo a good chunk of any attempt to heal and continue to do damage so controlling nerve-level inflammation is good. This does *not* mean that you should start popping random anti-inflammatories! You want stuff that'll be more helpful at the nerve level that won't cause side effects that may negate benefits.
Best of luck. And to be honest while all this stuff will probably help speed up your healing time the good news is that you'll probably eventually heal even if you didn't take any of this stuff-so hang in there.
Edited by tekd, 14 February 2010 - 05:55 AM.
