Pain most often results from inflammation related to tissue damage or other physical trauma. However, for many people in the United States, chronic pain relates to an underlying neuropathic cause instead. Neuropathic pain arises from dysfunction in your nervous system, either in your peripheral nerves or in your central nervous system, and can be challenging to treat.
If you’re living with a neuropathic pain condition like diabetes, peripheral neuropathy, or a spinal cord injury, your burning, shooting, or electrical pain may not improve with the common treatments usually recommended for pain relief. How can you overcome your symptoms?
Dr. Bryant S. Edwards and the team at Iconic Infusions, PLLC of Fayetteville, North Carolina, specialize in intravenous (IV) ketamine therapy for chronic pain. Ketamine, which can reset activity in your brain, may help to end your chronic neuropathic pain. Here’s what you need to know about this promising treatment option.
Unlike other types of pain, chronic neuropathic pain isn’t directly associated with a trauma or injury, although it may be caused by a traumatic event. But, instead of recovering after healing, your nerves remain activated, sending pain signals to your brain that don’t relate to any specific tissue damage. This misfiring becomes cyclical, as your brain gets “stuck in a loop” of registering pain.
This explains why your pain symptoms can be so difficult to treat successfully. There’s nothing to heal, apart from the unnecessary hypersensitivity of your nervous system. Your therapy needs to involve the transformation of your brain in order to achieve effective pain relief.
The dissociative anesthetic ketamine blocks the N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) receptors in your central nervous system. These receptors are activated by peripheral nerve damage, resulting in sensitization and hyperexcitability to pain. When ketamine therapy blocks this activation, your entire nervous system resets, potentially resolving your pain problem.
Ketamine treatment for pain also provides anti-inflammatory benefits and activates opioidergic receptors in your brain that trigger pain relief. Ketamine therapy is additionally used to treat depression and lift low mood, co-occurring problems that often go hand-in-hand with chronic pain.
Ketamine therapy can break you out of the ongoing cycle of chronic neuropathic pain, even if other treatment options have failed to work for you. An estimated 80% of neuropathic pain patients find relief with ketamine treatment.
Just one treatment session can relieve your pain instantly, with relief lasting for several hours. With repeated infusion sessions, you can relieve your neuropathic pain for weeks or even months at a time. Typically, Dr. Edwards recommends a series of ketamine treatments spaced out over the course of a few weeks, with booster treatments as needed.
Ketamine treatment pairs well with other pain management approaches, such as physical therapy or pain psychology, offering you comprehensive relief and improved functionality. Dr. Edwards discusses your chronic pain care with you, ensuring that you understand your treatment options and have realistic expectations for results.
No matter what types of pain relief treatment you’ve tried in the past without sufficient success, it’s still worth exploring this promising therapy. Ketamine frequently works for patients for whom all other treatments have previously failed.
If you’re living with a treatment-resistant neuropathic condition such as diabetic neuropathy, neuralgia, phantom limb pain, or complex regional pain syndrome (CRPS), ketamine therapy could be the best pain relief option for you. To learn more, contact Dr. Edwards at Iconic Infusions, PLLC online or over the phone today to schedule a consultation.
