Alpha-Lipoic Acid: Real for Diabetic Neuropathy, Oversold for Everything Else

Summary

Alpha-lipoic acid (ALA) earns its keep in exactly one place, and the marketing sells it for everything else: it has a genuine, guideline-discussed benefit for the symptoms of diabetic peripheral neuropathy (burning, pain, numbness, paraesthesia) at 600 mg/day, so it is not snake oil, but that benefit is modest, clusters in short three-to-five-week trials, and rests on an evidence base dominated by one researcher and one manufacturer, while the higher-quality independent synthesis finds little-to-no durable benefit, and the mass-market claims (weight loss, anti-aging, "general antioxidant", "re