What to read after Pain Toolkit (Neuropathic) UK & Canada August 2020?

  This Pain Toolkit ....is for people who live with Neuropathic persistent, long-term pain.

Living with Neuropathic Pain by Keith Meldrum 

Persistent or long-term neuropathic pain presents challenges that are different from other forms of persistent pain (known as nociceptive and nociplastic pain).

The most important distinction is that with neuropathic pain there is underlying damage to a person’s nervous system.  Neuropathic pain is defined as “pain caused by a lesion or disease of the somatosensory nervous system”. The somatosensory nervous system is a network of neurons that help people recognize objects, discriminate textures, generate sensory-motor feedback, and exchange social cues.

What this means from the perspective of day to day life is that neuropathic pain is always present. It may modulate in intensity throughout the day, but the pain remains. Neuropathic pain is often best described as burning, shooting, stabbing, tingling, numbness, pins and needles, and hot and cold. Some common effects of neuropathic pain include allodynia and/or hyperalgesia. Allodynia is pain that is evoked by a stimulus that is usually not painful, such as a feather or clothing against someone’s skin. Hyperalgesia is an increased response to pain that already exists.

These feelings are constant, daily, inescapable, and underscore the reason why it is important to understand the complexity of persistent neuropathic pain and how to best consider, implement, and modify effective pain self-management techniques.

The principles of self-management are important but need to be considered in the context of neuropathic pain.