What is menstrual pain and what can be done about it?

Menstrual pain is generally localized pain in nature. If it isn't, a more severe condition is probably indicated. If severe menstrual pain develops, a multidisciplinary approach that involves a pain specialist, and a primary care physician, and other health-care providers may provide the best means to relieve the pain and distress associated with your condition.

MOST studies of treatment for menstrual pain indicate that total relief of pain symptoms is rarely achieved and most patients report significant side effects can occur from the analgesic or antidepressant medications studied.

So What Can and Should You Do for menstrual pain?

Understand What is Pain...

Pain is a universal experience. The degree to which you feel pain and how you react to it, however, are the results of your own biological, psychological and cultural makeup. Past encounters with painful injury or illness also can influence your sensitivity to pain and pain treatment as well.

Pain comes in many forms: sharp, jabbing, throbbing, burning, stinging, tingling, nagging, dull and aching. Pain also varies from mild to severe pain. Severe pain grabs your attention more quickly and generally produces a greater physical and emotional response than mild pain. Severe pain can also incapacitate you, making it difficult or impossible to sit, stand, or move.

Chronic pain hangs on after the injury is healed. Pain is generally described as chronic when it lasts 6 months or longer. This is reflected in the word itself. Chronic comes from the Greek word for "time."

As with acute pain, chronic pain spans the full range of sensations and intensity. It can feel tingling, jolting, burning, dull or sharp. The pain may remain constant, or it can come and go, like a migraine headache that develops without warning.

Unlike acute pain, however, with chronic pain you may not know the reason for the pain. All you know is what you body is telling you and that is that the pain remains and is becoming even more intense.

Chronic pain can also occur without any indication of injury. Years ago, people who complained of pain that had no apparent cause were thought to be imagining the misery or trying to get attention. Doctors now know that’s not true. Chronic pain is real!!!


Understand All about Nerves

Frequently, the cause of severe menstrual pain is not well understood. Sometimes there may be no evidence of disease or damage to your body tissues that doctors can directly link to your menstrual pain.

Occasionally, menstrual pain may stem from an infection or something that has damaged a nerve. This type of nerve pain is called neuropathic (noor-o-PATH-ik) meaning a damaged nerve is causing the pain.

Once damaged, the nerve may send pain messages that are unwarranted. For example, you may get quick stabs of pain before, during and more importantly after you period has ended.

Little is known about why injured nerves sometimes misfire and send painful messages. However, one reason is that when a nerve cell is destroyed, the severed end of the surviving fiber can sprout a tangle of unorganized nerve fibers (neuroma). This bundle of nerve tissue then starts sending spontaneous pain signals. These fibers also refuse to follow normal checks and balances that control the rest of your nervous system functioning to keep pain at bay.

The thinking used to be that pain transmission pathways in the peripheral nerves, spinal cord and brain were hardwired circuits that simply communicated pain signals from injured or diseased parts of the body to message centers in the brain. But based on recent scientific research, there is new knowledge of how pain transmission actually works and how the conscious experience of pain is created in the brain.

Sensitization

Although the neurobiology of sensitization is complex, the basic idea behind it is straightforward. When pain signals are transmitted from injured or diseased tissues, these signals can then activate (sensitize) pain circuits in the peripheral nervous system, spinal cord and brain.

The process of sensitization can be compared to the volume control on your stereo, amplifying and sometimes distorting the pain message. The result is a painful condition that is severe and out of proportion to the disease or original injury. Sensitization may affect all regions of your nervous system that process pain messages, including the sensing, feeling and thinking centers of your brain. When this occurs, chronic pain may be associated with emotional and psychological suffering.

Who Is At Risk?

The world is focused on identifying the molecular and cellular processes that cause sensitization. The results of this research are likely to provide new and better treatments for many types of menstrual pain.

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