Nerve pain can be the worst type of pain!
If you haven’t experienced nerve pain yourself, you probably know someone who has.
Nerve pain might be a sharp or shooting sensation of short duration, it might be debilitating pain which stops you in your tracks or it might be constant sensations of tingling and burning which never ever go away.
It can literally stop you from functioning normally. Simple tasks like making a cup of coffee can become something you have to psych yourself up to do.
Nerve pain can seep into every waking thought and when you’re sleeping, it tries to wake you up and often succeeds.
It can often make you feel sick or nauseous too.
Chronic nerve pain
This is usually caused by nerve damage from illness or disease.
Massage may help reduce the horrible sensations and help you cope a little better with the symptoms but it’s never going to change the underlying reason you are feeling nerve pain.
For chronic nerve pain, massage can only offer some temporary relief.
Structural nerve pain
This is pain from irritated and trapped nerves.
I’m talking about sciatica or thoracic outlet syndrome for example. Here professional massage can be really helpful.
Essentially, this type of nerve pain is caused by structures within the body vying for space and arguing with their neighbour about getting squashed, shoved and pushed around.
Massage can ease lots of that localised tension, provide more space and pliability within the soft tissues and enable the structures in that region to settle back to a more normal position for you.
This will often have a dramatic effect on how the whole region feels and the nerve in particular.
I also use a technique called DermoNeuroModulation which is specifically focused on calming the nervous system through gentle skin stretch techniques.
Common nerve issues that clients come in with are:
What should you do?
Firstly, it’s important to rule out any medical reason for your neurological sensations.
For example, tingling in your hands could be a sign of nerve damage from vitamin deficiency or diabetes, or it could be related to tension in your neck and shoulders causing a nerve irritation.
If you’re unsure about the nerve sensations you’re feeling you should really run it past your GP.
If your GP identifies it as muscular or structural rather than medical or disease related, try some focused professional massage.