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I know I'm not crazy and I know I'm not making this up. I have constant pain in parts of my body that have no signs of injury, damage, or inflammation. I did have a car accident several years ago that started all this. Does anyone know how to turn off the system without drugs or surgery? That's what I'm after.
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For the last 25 years, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) have contributed a great deal of money to research on the topic of pain. Trying to find out why pain starts, why it spreads, and why it doesn't stop in some people has been a challenge. The most likely reason is something called central sensitization.
As much as 100 years ago, physicians realized that something gets turned on in the central nervous system that contributes to the start and spread of pain that doesn't get turned off. The injury or local trauma has long since healed but the patient continues to experience daily, ongoing, and often very disabling pain.
That is the crux of central sensitization. Nerve cells called neurons in the spinal cord transmitting pain information from body part to brain don't just pass the information along -- they remain excited about the information. It's too much (intensity) for too long (duration).
At the same time, the person's threshold (level at which a response occurs) lowers so there's a faster response to less input. Not only that but other nearby tissues get in on the act. They aren't injured or damaged but they set up the same pain-inducing racket in the nervous system. That phenomenon is called field-expansion.
All that is the scientific explanation for what you have described as your experience over the last two years. Most research is geared toward finding drugs (medications) to stop pain (or at least the perception of pain).
But you are in luck because there are many people now who are also interested in finding non-pharmaceutical (non-drug) approaches to chronic pain. Exercise tops the list because it has been shown to release endorphins (natural morphine).
And now that we understand the pain mechanisms better, there's much more focus on acupuncture as a successful treatment method. An even less invasive approach might include any of the energy healing medicines such as Reiki, BodyTalk, Myofascial Release, Therapeutic Touch, Healing Hands, and so on.
Find out what your community offers and give some of these alternative approaches a try. Talk with your doctor about newer medications available. It may be possible to combine a short-term pharmaceutical treatment with some of these other healing pathways to achieve the pain control you are looking for.
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