I have heard from many of you suffering from the pain aspect of MS. Neurological pain is very tricky to live with long term. Pain is the body’s way of warning you that you are in danger. It wants you to stop whatever you are doing by sending danger messages to the troubled body part from the brain and from the sensation of pain back to the brain.
With chronic pain, a loop is formed that may continue even when there is no danger to your body at all. With neurological pain, there may have been no actual harm occurring to begin with. The muscles surrounding a stimulated nerve may tighten up in response to pain over time, but that neuralgic pain in your arm is not actually going to be hurt by moving it.
What to do? Try to move a little bit every day. Giving in the ‘stop everything’ message is not helpful. Nor is gritting your teeth and pushing through beyond your limits and then collapsing again. The best way is to do an exercise (walk one block) and then the next day, add just a little bit more. Over time see if you can go two blocks, or one more minute or do one more repetition of an exercise. Overall, you accomplish more that way than by ceasing all activity or overdoing it one day and then paying the price for several days after that.
Try to exercise with different music, with and without friends, in a different room, in a different state of mind or a different time of day. Notice how pleasurable sensations can flood the system so that it closes the ‘gateways’ of pain. (Rocking a crying colicky baby to sleep is an instinctive demonstration of this.) Notice how when you are engaged in something that you enjoy, (watching a good movie, having a good laugh with others, doing the activity you most enjoy) your pain recedes from the front of your attention to a manageable level in the back of your mind. The brain needs tricks to stop telling your body you are in danger when you are not.
The brain is a ‘pattern addict’ and you can break the cycle by disrupting painful patterns. Any other suggestions? Please let us know. Thanks.