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For years, Patricia Hodgin went through life unable to run, walk long distances or even stand still for extended periods of time.

Doctors attributed her unusual condition to an old knee injury, misdiagnosing the real culprit—peripheral neuropathy, an oft-misunderstood degenerative nerve disease that causes numbness, pain and imbalance for one in eight people. In Baton Rouge alone that’s 40,000 sufferers.

There is no known cause for peripheral neuropathy, and no cure. The standard treatment is pain medication.

Like many sufferers, Hodgin, 54, tried a variety of exercises such as swimming seeking relief. It wasn’t until September 2006, when she enrolled in an unorthodox program through LSU, that she found it.

Li Li, a professor in the LSU Department of Kinesiology, began a program treating sufferers with tai chi, the ancient Chinese practice of breathing, form and meditation.

“This has been the only thing that has worked for me,” Hodgin says. “Before I couldn’t walk very far and I certainly couldn’t stand here and talk to you.”

Leading the weekly tai chi sessions is Yajun Zhuang, or Thomas as his “students” call him. In China he trained top athletes for the Olympics. He has studied the tai chi philosophy and has written three books on the subject. When he came to America three years ago he knew little to no English, but has found a way to communicate and reach out to participants in the program.

Since Li created the program in May 2004, hundreds of participants have reported greater range of motion thanks to the weekly tai chi classes.

“Most people just think of tai chi as something to do to relax, but it’s so much more than that,” Hodgin says. “It’s really about your general well-being, about feeling better about yourself. I plan on staying in the program as long as I can.”

Today, the program is maxed out with 75 participants, with another 200 on the waiting list.

Although Li is no closer to finding the cause of peripheral neuropathy, he has found an effective treatment method and helped hundreds of participants in the program’s short two-year history.

“Many patients start the program unable to stand up for more than five minutes at a time,” said Ashley Berthelot, a research editor with LSU Public Affairs. “After as little as six weeks, most of them can stand unassisted for long periods of time. It has been a fantastic experience for those involved, many of whom were told to expect to be in wheelchairs by this point.”

Most sufferers diagnosed with peripheral neuropathy lose cutaneous sensation on the bottom of their feet, which is vital to maintaining their balance. Li describes tai chi as the training of dynamic balance and says continued practice increases awareness of the body’s position and orientation, helping sufferers take control of their balance and prevent falls. Through tai chi most participants have regained sensation under their feet and are back to doing things they used to take for granted, like being able to stand in the shower and wash their hair.

With so many participants reaping the benefit of this study, it is Li’s hope that the program continues to grow and help sufferers of the disease. But funding has been an issue in the past, threatening to shut it down completely. Li’s research team is looking at grant opportunities to expand the program to include more slots. A 4-year, $300,000 donation from the Reilly Family Foundation is already helping in this effort.

Since there currently is no treatment, the only thing doctors can prescribe is painkillers, Li says. The painkillers manage the pain and have nothing to do with treating peripheral neuropathy.

“We’ve seen the light. What we do here really helps them,” says Li. “We have the evidence: their pain is reduced, their sensation is recovered, their balance has improved, they are walking better.”

All of those signs show that Li’s research team is really getting to the bottom of the disease itself, not just treating the symptoms, he says. They hope to take this research a step further and find what is actually causing the changes.