What You Should Know About Neuropathic Pain

When you have acute pain from an injury or illness, nociceptive pain is typically to blame. Touching a hot stove or dropping a heavy item on your foot causes your nervous system to send pain signals to your brain as soon as the event happens to protect you. Once the injury or illness has resolved, the nociceptive pain subsides. 

But another type of pain — neuropathic pain — can be chronic and isn’t typically triggered by a single event or injury. Instead, neurological damage causes your nerves to send unprompted pain signals, and many times, the pain worsens over time. 

Living with chronic neuropathic pain can cause a variety of unpleasant symptoms, including:

• Shooting, stabbing, and burning pain 
• Tingling
• Extreme sensitivity to touch 
• Numbness
• Loss of sensation 

Neuropathic pain can be constant, or it can come on suddenly and feel like an electric shock.

Effective treatment of neuropathic pain must include finding the root cause, but there are certainly plenty of other strategies that can help manage your symptoms and keep the pain from worsening.

At RapidRecovery TMS in Wilmington, North Carolina, our team understands the toll that chronic pain can take on your life. So, in this month’s blog, we discuss everything you need to know about neuropathic pain, including possible causes and how we can help you manage it.

What’s behind your neuropathic pain?

To treat or manage neuropathic pain, it’s important to find what’s causing it. Discovering the source of the pain will make any subsequent treatment plan more effective. 

While anything that causes damage to your brain, nerves, or spine can lead to neuropathic pain, some common causes include:

• Carpal tunnel syndrome
• Diabetes
• Nerve disorders, such as multiple sclerosis (MS)
• Herniated discs or spinal nerve compression
• Infections, such as shingles or HIV/AIDS 
• Phantom limb pain after amputation
• Arthritis of the spine

Some commonly used cancer treatments, such as radiation and chemotherapy drugs, can also lead to neuropathic pain.

Diagnosing your neuropathic pain

Since finding the underlying cause is essential, our team performs extensive testing to pinpoint where the pain is coming from. This diagnostic process includes: 

• Physical exams
• Reviewing your symptoms and pain experience 
• Nerve tests
• Imaging tests

Although the goal is to find the source of the nerve damage or illness causing the pain, sometimes it just isn’t clear, and relying on pain management strategies becomes the new goal. 

Managing your neuropathic pain

We offer a variety of pain management strategies at RapidRecovery TMS. What works for someone else may not work for you, so we prioritize making a customized treatment, knowing that how your body works and responds to various options is an individual experience. 

Some treatments we can start with include pain relievers, anti-seizure medications, nerve blocks, and physical therapy. Oftentimes, neuropathic pain can lead to emotional distress as well, so we highly recommend talk therapy sessions and antidepressants if needed. 

Incorporating healthy lifestyle choices, such as eating a nutritious diet and getting enough quality sleep, can keep your pain from worsening. 

Another treatment option for neuropathic pain that we offer is transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) therapy. TMS therapy uses a coil on your head to send electromagnetic pulses to your brain, which blocks pain signals being sent from your damaged nerves.

If neuropathic pain has taken over your life, relief is available at RapidRecovery TMS. Schedule an appointment with us for care by calling or using our online booking feature today.