Nerve Pain Symptoms Can Be Perplexing

More than four million people in the U.S. have what is called neuropathic pain or nerve pain. This is a puzzling and frustrating condition that can make even the simplest act, such as walking or putting on socks, agonizing.

When the nervous system is working properly, nerves connect your brain and body, sending a message that you are touching something. But, like wires that short circuit, nerves can become injured and stop working the way they should.

If the nerve isn’t working properly, it may begin sending the wrong signals to the brain, such as sending the sensation of burning or electrical shocks when nothing has actually happened.

How Nerve Pain Occurs

Nerves can be become damaged from an injury to the spine or from a medical illness like diabetes, shingles, a stroke, HIV infection or cancer and its treatments. Nerve pain often causes discomfort to the hands, legs or feet.

Nerve pain is often hard to diagnose. While muscle pain makes you feel sore and achy, it generally is caused by an injury and usually stops when the injury is healed. Nerve pain is different. In identifying nerve pain, you will notice that the pain is not triggered by an event or trauma and is a constant and/or recurring pain that doesn’t seem to go away. Common pain medicines like aspirin do not stop the pain.

Nerve Pain Feels Like …

Many people with nerve pain don’t describe this feeling as “painful.” Instead, they may describe it as being pricked with pins and needles or shocked by electricity. Symptoms are often worse at night and are described as:

• Pins and needles
• An electric shock-like feeling
• A stabbing pain, like a spike being driving into your hand or foot
• Walking on broken glass
• Burning pain
• Tingling
• Numbness

Other symptoms common to neuropathic pain are:

• Allodynia – a pain caused by some thing that is generally non-painful, such as light touch
• Hyperesthesias – an exaggerated response to touch, such as to bed sheets
• Hyperalgesia – an exaggerated painful response to something that is normally painful
• Hyperathy – pain that persists even after the cause of pain has been removed
• Paresthesias and dysesthesias – abnormal and unpleasant sensations that are described as tingling and pins and needles

When nerve pain is not properly managed, it can end up controlling the way you live, because even the simplest actions—like wearing clothes or walking to the market—can be agonizing. As a result, people who have nerve pain may have difficulty working, sleeping, concentrating, socializing and enjoying daily life.

Although nerve pain can be incapacitating and disabling, there are ways people can effectively manage it and continue to live productive lives. These can include:

• Talking to a doctor about nerve pain and about how best to manage it
• Asking about medicines that are developed specifically to treat nerve pain
• Learning how to relax and set realistic goals
• Identifying a moderate exercise program that can be done safely

Editor’s note: This article was reprinted with permission from the American Chronic Pain Association’s (ACPA) summer 2006 newsletter, the Chronicle. For more information about nerve pain and the ACPA visit www.ittakesnerve.com.