Nerve pain, also known as neuropathy pain, has grown to epidemic proportions, according to The Neuropathy Association. Currently, 15 to 18 million people in the United States suffer from diabetic peripheral neuropathy (DPN). Previous estimates of neuropathy placed the total population at 20 million, but experts now consider that number far too low given the growing ranks of DPN patients.
“We are all gravely underestimating the millions of people struggling and suffering with neuropathies,” argued Neuropathy Association President Tina Tockarshewsky. “It’s time to… finally address it as the public health emergency it is.”
Are you suffering from neuropathy?
Neuropathy leads to chronic pain, which in turn can contribute to mood disorders and various other deleterious effects to an individual’s personal and professional lives.
How can you tell if your pain is neuropathic? Neuropathies develop when there’s deterioration within the nervous system. The deterioration can be sustained either in the central or peripheral nervous system.
The central nervous system is the spinal cord and brain, and the peripheral system is composed of the various nerves that extend throughout the body.
The chronic pain experienced by neuropathy patients may not be in response to specific damage within the body, instead indicating that the nervous system is performing incorrectly.
Neuropathy symptoms include intense, sometimes penetrative pain and numbness. It often radiates throughout the extremities. Those experiencing the health disorder also sometimes have extreme sensitivity to low-pressure touch or other typically harmless stimuli.
Reducing stress to minimize neuropathy symptoms
You may not realize how much your stress influences your neuropathy pain. Get a better sense of the way that stress and discomfort are linked with a diary of symptoms. In this way, you can point yourself away from the immediate experience of excruciation to the aspects of your behavior or environment that are triggering attacks.
“Identifying stress triggers or emotional triggers that affect the pain will give the patient the opportunity for better pain relief through avoiding or eliminating these stress triggers,” explained William W. Deardorff, PhD, on Spine-health.
When you see how your mood can influence how your body feels, it can provide more of a sense of control over chronic pain. Once you better understand triggers, you can formulate a series of steps so that they can be avoided.
Taking action
Are you experiencing neuropathy pain? We can combat it with our four-part AMC Neuropathy Protocol – consisting of our Peripheral Nerve Block, H-Wave Therapy, and Cold Laser Therapy.