Like almost everything
else MS, MS pain has
many forms and many
causes. It warrants
exploring many
different therapies.
Living with MS can be
a real pain: an aching,
burning, stabbing,
numbing, cramping,
tingling, sometimes
overwhelming and often
unpredictable pain.
While people with MS attempt to blunt the pain
with traditional and non-traditional approaches,
scientists are hoping to create drugs that can
actually block it.
Evolved to protect us
from harm, pain tells us
to yank our fingers out of
fires. Pain on the inside,
from a burst appendix or
a busted ligament, is also
a warning sign.
According to recent research, nearly half of all
people with MS are thought to live with some
level of chronic or recurring pain. Perhaps one in
every four people with MS-related pain say that it’s
severe enough to hurt their quality of life.
Although pain can’t be measured with objective
tools, this symptom of MS is just as real as any
other. Just ask the people who have it. Some say
their legs feel heavy or numb, or as if they’re being
cut off or impaled on hot pokers. Some say they
constantly ache, as if with perpetual flu, or they
feel bruised, or they feel a suffocating pressure
around the chest. Yet they don’t have the flu, there
are no knives or pokers, and they haven’t been
beaten or crushed. So what on earth is going on?
Pain starts when threat-sensitive nerve cells (called
nociceptors) sense danger, be it sharp, hard, hot,
cold or chemical. Through long, stringy fibers
called axons, these nerve cells send a message
up the spinal cord to the brain. A biochemical
chain reaction then prompts the brain to do two
things: first, create a deeply unpleasant awareness
we call pain; second, tell the endocrine system to
produce extra stress hormones to heighten senses
and reflexes. It’s both a warning and an evacuation
system.
But the pain system isn’t perfect. It makes
mistakes. For example, even after injury heals,
some people find themselves in chronic pain.
An over-stimulated nervous system makes extra
nociceptors, and it doesn’t take much for them
to holler, “Ouch!”
It’s all in your head, sort of
In a way, pain really is all in the head—but that
doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt. That’s because pain
has many dimensions, being the body’s response to
a physical threat and the mind’s awareness of that
pain response. It’s as much a perception as it is a
feeling.
Sometimes they signal pain when nothing’s there.
Sometimes they amplify real but mild sensation.
And sometimes they throw all the switches,
turning warmth into a stabbing sensation or
post-workout fatigue into a heavyweight barrage
of blows.
MS pain does “all of the above” because MS pain
is central; it works from the inside out. Lesions in
