Pain is usually felt when nerve endings sense that something is wrong with your body and send pain signals to the brain. Neuropathic pain is pain caused by damage to, or dysfunction of the nervous system. The pain can be due to problems in the central nervous system (the brain and spinal cord) or the peripheral nervous system (the nerves to the rest of your body, arms, legs and torso).
Neuropathic pain is usually described as shooting, stabbing, burning, or electric shocks, and is often worse at night. The pain can be constant or intermittent, and can be accompanied by numbness or a sensation of pins and needles.
People who have neuropathic pain are often extremely sensitive to painful stimuli; sometimes they can even have a pain response to a stimulus, which doesn’t normally cause pain eg. Light touch. They can also have increased sensitivity to touch or cold sensations.
With most pain it is often easily fixed once the cause is known, neuropathic pain does not always have a known cause. Some of the common known causes can be trauma, multiple sclerosis, nerve compression, stroke, infections such as shingles, and diabetes.
Your health care professional will be able to diagnose your pain by questioning you about your pain, and performing a physical examination, which includes testing the nerves in the affected area. If neuropathic pain is suspected you may go on to have further testing to try to find the cause.
If you do have neuropathic pain the good news is there are many treatment options that you can discuss with your health professional.