Nerve pain

What is Nerve pain

Nerve pain is pain that is caused by damage or disease that affects the nervous system of the body. It is also known as neuropathic pain or neuralgia. This pain type is a pain that comes from problems with signals from the nerves. It is different to the common type of pain that is due to an injury.

What Causes this Pain? 

Neuropathic pain is caused by a problem with your nerves themselves, which sends pain messages to the brain. 

What are the Symptoms? 

Nerve pain tends to feel quite different to injury pain. Because its a new type of pain to most people that can worry them. People report the pain as burning, stabbing, shooting, or like an electric shock.  Other problems can cause these types of pain so the feeling isn’t enough to give us a diagnosis

What Causes Nerve Pain? 

There are many causes of nerve pain. Some of the causes are: 

• Shingles can leave behind a painful syndrome 
• Trigeminal neuralgia. 
• Multiple sclerosis. 
• Poorly managed diabetes. 
• Phantom limb pain following an amputation. 
• Cancer. 
• Chemotherapy. 
• Alcoholism. 
• Other nerve disorders. 

Pain from Nerves & other Pain 

You can suffer both pain from a nerve and from another source at the same time. Both pain types can be caused by the same condition or by the same accident. 

Treatment 

Neural pain is less likely than other pains to be helped by traditional painkillers such as paracetamol, anti-inflammatories and codeine.  Nervy pain is often eased by low doses of anti-depressant or anti-epileptic medicines. These would need to be prescribed by a doctor

How can Pure Physio help with your pain?

Give us a call on 09 4481277 to sort an appointment or click here to book online. Alternatively you can see our on site acupuncturist by going to https://www.meridianhealth.co.nz/book-online

About the Author: John Willenbruch has been a physiotherapist for over 20 years. He qualified from University of Hertfordshire in 1999. He rapidly found a passion for, and specialised in, the treatment of musculoskeletal injuries (sprains, strains, spinal pain etc.) He then did 4 years post graduate education at University of Brighton before emigrating to New Zealand. He can be contacted at Pure Physio by clicking here.