When you stub your toe, sensory nerves register the hit and send a message to your brain, which responds with a pain signal — ouch, there’s a problem.
When the pain comes directly from nerve damage, called neuropathy, these damaged nerves fire off signals to your brain, and your brain responds accordingly with pain, but there’s no underlying problem to fix. Instead, the peripheral nerves just keep firing off pain signals.
For the 5% of people around the Western world who suffer from neuropathic pain, relief can be challenging but not impossible.
Here at Charlotte Ketamine Center, Dr. Neal Taub and the team have great success helping patients find much-needed relief from neuropathic pain with combined IV treatments, which include ketamine and lidocaine. Let’s take a look.
We already discussed that neuropathic pain encompasses nerve damage, but we want to paint a more complete picture as there are many roads to this type of pain.
Rising head and shoulders above other causes of neuropathy is diabetes, a disease that affects more than 38 million Americans. At least half of people with diabetes develop peripheral neuropathy, mostly in their extremities.
Joining diabetes in conditions that can lead to neuropathy are:
This list is far from complete, but it gives you an idea of the range of medical conditions that can involve neuropathic pain.
One of the biggest challenges with neuropathic pain is there’s often nothing to fix to stop the pain signaling. The damage is in the nerves; until the nerves regrow and get healthy again, they keep sending pain signals.
Making matters more frustrating, many conditions, such as diabetes, lead to irreversible and progressive nerve damage, so there’s no end in sight to the pain.
Whether you’re dealing with neuropathic pain that’s irreversible or the nerves can get better, but they’re not there yet, you’re in pain now. And you need solutions now.
That’s where IV combined treatments can really make a difference. The key ingredients in our IV infusions are both highly effective painkillers — ketamine and lidocaine.
Our goal in combining these nonopioid painkillers is twofold: First, lidocaine brings immediate relief for neuropathic pain. Second, ketamine adds to that relief but also offers longer-lasting relief by disrupting the pain cycle and preventing the transmission of pain signals.
The longer you deal with neuropathic pain, the harder it can be to treat because the pain signaling forms a sort of loop that can get stuck. Our combined IV treatments can help break this loop.
If you’d like to explore whether combined IV treatments are right for your neuropathic pain, please call our office in Charlotte, North Carolina, at 704-519-6918. You can also use our online email form to send us a message.
