Nerve Pain

Nerve pain might affect any part of your body and is often excruciating. If you’re affected by nerve pain, talk to Ravi Panjabi, MD, at Advanced Pain Management in Castro Valley, California. Dr. Panjabi and his team determine your condition’s cause and use cutting-edge treatments to reduce it. Call Advanced Pain Management for compassionate nerve pain care or request an appointment online today.

What is nerve pain?

Nerve pain develops from an injury or malfunction in your peripheral nerves. These nerves spread from your spinal cord to all parts of your body, sending signals back to your central nervous system (brain and spinal cord). 

The signals your nerves send provide your sense of touch, so you know if something’s hot, cold, rough, smooth, etc. Nerves also transmit pain signals to alert you to potential harm. Pain is unpleasant, so you take notice of it, remove yourself from danger, and attend to the problem.

These actions protect you from injuries and are important for preserving life, but sometimes things go wrong. The result is neuropathy (nerve pain), which also causes numbness and unpleasant sensations such as:

• Prickling
• Tingling
• Burning
• Pins and needles
• Increased touch sensitivity

You might feel pain at the slightest touch (allodynia) or develop hyperalgesia, where you feel intense pain after a mild injury.

What causes nerve pain?

Nerve pain or peripheral neuropathy is a symptom of many diseases, including:

• Diabetic peripheral neuropathy
• Postherpetic neuralgia (shingles)
• Rheumatoid arthritis
• Celiac disease
• Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease
• Fibromyalgia
• Guillain-Barré syndrome
• Hormonal disorders
• Kidney failure
• Lupus
• HIV-associated peripheral sensory nerve pain

Nerve pain can also arise from pinching or compression. For example, a trapped nerve in your back could cause sciatica (lumbar radiculopathy). Or you could experience upper extremity pain from a compressed nerve in your wrist (carpal tunnel syndrome).

In some cases, the nerve is dysfunctional rather than damaged. Trigeminal neuralgia, which results in severe facial pain, and intercostal neuralgia, which causes rib cage pain, are common examples.

Other things that can lead to nerve pain include cancer treatment (chemotherapy-induced peripheral neuropathy), poisons, nutrient deficiencies, and alcoholism. Sometimes, nerve pain’s cause is unclear (idiopathic).

What treatments ease nerve pain?

The Advanced Pain Management team offers a range of non-surgical treatments that help people manage nerve pain successfully. These treatments include:

• Anti-seizure medication
• Low-dose tricyclic antidepressants
• Prescription pain medicines
• Physical therapy
• Pain management counseling
• Lifestyle changes
• Steroid injections
• Nerve block injections
• Trigger point injections
• Bone marrow aspirate concentrate (BMAC) injections
• Platelet-rich plasma (PRP) therapy
• Stem cell/exosome injections
• Radiofrequency rhizotomy (ablation)
• Spinal cord stimulation
• Intrathecal pain pump implantation

After a thorough evaluation, your provider incorporates the selected treatments into your personalized care plan. They monitor your progress and make changes where necessary to ensure you maintain pain control.

Call Advanced Pain Management today or schedule a consultation online for expert nerve pain care.