Central Sensitization - please share your stories

Hi Rachel,

I am still struggling with pain and urgency in my bladder. I found a holistic doctor that deals with central sensitization here in Chattanooga. I’ve decided to try that first to see what they have to say. Thanks for asking.

Hi Sandy -

Thanks for getting back to me. I'm sorry to hear you are still struggling. Great news though that you found someone. My fingers are crossed that the holistic doctor will provide a forward moving plan for management. How soon can you get in for an appointment?

Rachel,
I have an appointment July 15. Hoping this will be helpful. Thanks for checking in on me.

Sandy

You got it! I'm rooting for you and will look forward to an update. Good luck, Sandy.

This is a great article on CSS by pain science writer, Paul Ingraham. https://www.painscience.com/articles/sensitization.php#:~:text=12%20It's%20called%20%E2%80%9Ccentral,touch%20and%20pressure%20as%20well.

You might finz anything by pain psychologist, Rachel Zoffness, helpful. She recently published The Pain Management Workbook Amazon's look inside feature had a good sized portion of it available to read.

I found John Glanvill's series of videos about anxiety and depression on Patreon extremelt helpful. His subscription was about $4/month US dollars.

I'm wondering if you might have trigger points referring pain to your bladder.

This is a great article @debkl, thank you for sharing. You strike me as being quite knowledgeable. May I ask if it's from your own personal experiences? Do you have central sensitization?

I'd like to share the article in other groups. Do you mind? It's a great complementary piece to Dr. Sletten's video on central sensitization. I think having the same information presented through different language and layouts is beneficial to folks gathering info. Thanks again!

You're welcome, Rachel.

I was "diagnosed" with it years ago when my migraines went chronic. I never believed my head pain and other symptoms were migraine, stumbled across PainScience.com when it was called SaveYourself, and started reading everything I could, starting with central sensitization. Paul Ingraham's articles are heavily cited, so I went down many Google Scholar and PubMed rabbit holes, corroborating what I read with what I learned working in healthcare. PainScience is my go-to and I always find an article there and then read all the reference material.

My migraine disorder resolved by treating them as cervicogenic headache. I can see now how easy it can be to diagnose a patient with CS when they don't get well, depression and anxiety set in, which is a catch 22, which makes pain worse.

More recently, I was diagnosed with everything from GERD to anxiety to MS to fibromyalgia to inclusion body myositis. What I've found is that doctors can't even agree on the definition of pain and they often also fail to look for a musculoskeletal source for problems that seem organic, even when tests are negative. Again, central sensitization came up, but it wasn't...just another misdiagnosis. Trigger points were a feature in both of my pain problems, affecting my ab and back muscles and diaphragm. Costochondritis, intercostal neuritis, and xiphoidalgia were the real culprits.

Wow, well then yes, you certainly do have experience in addition to a healthcare background. I went down many of the same rabbit holes researching reputable sites, ruling out, ultimately coming to my own conclusion of central sensitization. I agree with Paul Ingraham that medical practioners and their supporting cast need to be educated about central sensitization. Fortunately, patients like you and I advocate for ourselves (and maybe drive ourselves crazy in the process), but not all patients have the ability or desire to do so and rely on trained professionals to have their backs.

Thankfully your headaches have been resolved. I'm glad the later of your diagnoses have been concurred. Hopefully you have an action plan going forward. Otherwise, Mayo's Pain Rehab Center does a phenomenal job educating and providing tools for living with chronic symptoms. They treat the whole person which is invaluable and helped me tremendously.

I'm happy to see the biopsychosocial model to address chronic pain and illness is finally going mainstream.

Thank you for the article on Central Sensitization. I’ve just been told that’s what causes my bladder pain. It’s so odd, one day it’s unbearable and one day it can be more tolerable. Very hard to understand. Thank you for the info.
Sandy