Your visceral organs include your heart and lungs, your bladder and reproductive organs and the organs in your digestive system. Visceral hypersensitivity (VH) can make the normal functioning of one or several of these organs feel uncomfortable. Many people with visceral hypersensitivity are also diagnosed with functional disorders, especially gastrointestinal ones.
Treatment and management
It won’t hurt or feel like it’s burning you, but the feeling of warmth will be very difficult — if not impossible — to ignore or tune out. Hyperesthesia is a malfunctioning of your sense of touch, making sensations more intense than expected. It doesn’t necessarily involve pain, but the sensations can become overwhelming or distracting.
What You Need to Know About Hyperesthesia
- Hyperesthesia is a malfunctioning of your sense of touch, making sensations more intense than expected.
- Having hyperalgesia means you experience pain that’s far more severe than expected.
- Briarwood Detox Center offers detox treatment for alcohol, opioid, methamphetamine, prescription drugs, and much more.
- But at Briarwood Detox Center in Austin, TX, we offer detox programs that help you manage both issues with care and attention.
- Although retrospective publications suggest a benefit for opioid tapering before surgery 56,57, large prospective studies are still needed.
- Thus, while differentiating these diseases is essential, processes that improve descending modulation or produce analgesia without using opioids are most beneficial, regardless of the diagnosis.
The most common types of hyperesthesia are allodynia, which involves experiencing pain from a stimulus that does not typically cause pain, and hyperalgesia, an extreme response to a painful stimulus. Although additional research is needed, guidelines for tapering including a conceptual model, have been generated 108. These guidelines emphasize the importance of a combination of careful physician-patient communication and patient development of coping skills.
- This timeline highlights another critical difference between tolerance/withdrawal and OIH, as OIH potentially has much longer-lasting effects.
- In cases of central sensitization, once this extra activity is triggered, it may last for quite a while.
- There are many valuable opportunities for improvement of screening, prevention and treatment in OIH.
- In addition, opioid-sensitive neurons in the rostral ventral medulla play an essential role in the facilitation of hyperalgesia and the development of chronic pain by exciting dorsal horn neurons 24,25.
- That can happen in the nerves themselves, your brain or your spinal cord.
What Is Phantom Limb Pain?
If you’re experiencing an episode of hyperesthesia, lie down in a dark room that’s as free from stimuli as possible. However, the review largely used studies that tested the effects of flavonoids in a lab and on animals, rather than in humans. The review also focused only on peripheral neuropathy, but other types like central neuropathy might work differently. A 2020 review suggests a diet with plenty of flavonoids might help people reduce the effects of neuropathy. Flavonoids are compounds in plants that provide antioxidants, which help counter the harmful effects of damaging free radical molecules around your body.
When should I worry about hyperesthesia or get it treated by a healthcare provider?
It may affect any of the senses but often involves touch, pain, and temperature sensations. If a vitamin B12 deficiency is causing the hyperesthesia, a physician might prescribe B12 supplements. After treating the underlying condition or removing the triggering stimulus, hyperalgesia: causes, symptoms, treatment, and more most people will find that the symptoms of hyperesthesia resolve. Hyperalgesia develops when immune-system cells interact with the peripheral nervous system, releasing pain-producing chemicals.
Analgesic strategies can include passive range or motion, moist heat or ice therapy. Further, relaxation, behavioral instruction and other psychological support strategies may have utility for analgesia and should be considered to prevent OIH 105–107. In the pre-operative period, opioid education, chronic opioid cessation or tapering and risk assessment are imperative (Figure 2).
In other words, with hyperalgesia, there is increased pain response to a painful stimulus. A neurologist (a physician who specializes in disorders of your brain, spinal cord and peripheral nerves) should be able to localize the area of dysfunction and perform tests to find the root of the problem. They may get blood work, electrophysiologic studies (electromyography EMG and nerve conduction studies), neuroimaging studies (magnetic resonance imaging MRI), neuromuscular ultrasound and more. The content herein is provided for informational purposes and does not replace the need to apply professional clinical judgement when diagnosing or treating any medical condition. A licensed medical practitioner should be consulted for diagnosis and treatment of any and all medical conditions.
Causes and risk factors
Neuropathic pain is a common underlying cause of hyperesthesia, but many diseases or lesions of the nervous system can lead to this type of pain. Often, the heightening of an individual sense is referred to by a separate name. For example, increased sensitivity to touch is called tactile sensitivity, and increased sensitivity to sound is called auditory sensitivity. Hyperesthesia refers to increased sensitivity of any of your senses, such as sight, sound, touch, and smell. Pharmacological treatments can be used to treat both central and peripheral causes of hyperesthesia.
The condition is thought to be the result of an allergy or inflammatory response. The pain-producing chemicals enhance the responsiveness of the nerve receptors, leading to increased pain. Myalgic encephalomyelitis (M.E.) – A disease often marked by neurological symptoms, but fatigue is sometimes a symptom as well.
What Is Neck Pain?
In summary, it must be appreciated that some analgesic effects of opioids are due to the descending inhibition of the spinal cord, but many alternative circuits likely contribute as well. Opioid-induced hyperalgesia (OIH) occurs when opioids paradoxically enhance the pain they are prescribed to ameliorate. To address a lack of perioperative awareness, we present an educational review of clinically relevant aspects of the disorder. Although the mechanisms of OIH are thought to primarily involve medullary descending pathways, it is likely multifactorial with several relevant therapeutic targets. We provide a suggested clinical definition and directions for clinical differentiation of OIH from other diagnoses, as this may be confusing but is germane to appropriate management.
Instead, healthcare providers typically prescribe the same medications they would for psychological mood disorders such as anxiety and depression, only in much lower doses. Any comorbidities, such as mood disorders or sleep disturbances, should be addressed promptly. Patients typically require close follow-up to monitor response to therapy and continued evaluation of the underlying cause. If psychological symptoms are lowering your pain threshold, these medications will help raise that threshold. Treating the pain itself can help reduce stress hormones and put your body and brain in a better place to benefit from mind/body therapies. Our review provides a clinical definition and pathway for differentiation from other diagnoses.