People often use reversal to mean complete disappearance of symptoms. Clinically, improvement needs to happen on many different levels. There is a difference between symptom relief, functional improvement, and actual nerve recovery. Let's start by describing the different levels of recovery and what they mean.
The first level of recovery is stopping the progression of nerve damage. It isn't always a satisfying outcome, but it is indeed a huge success when it comes to progressive neuropathy. Sometimes, this can be achieved simply by controlling blood glucose levels, or by discontinuing a medication that was causing the neuropathy.
And then there is symptom relief. This would simply mean that the pain, burning, or numbness is relieved. However, this does not always mean that the nerve itself is in the process of repair and is structurally regenerating. Symptom control is a major improvement in quality of life, and improves sleep, stress, mobility, and quality of life.
Functional improvement typically achieves symptomatic improvement, but by definition, it means that the nerves themselves are healing at the cellular level. Sometimes nerves are repaired functionally, but there can still be some numbness. This can be explained by how nerves actually heal in terms of functional biology.
