San Diego Union-Tribune (Sunday)
PERIPHERAL NERVE PAIN AND CHRONIC PAIN WARNING
SAN DIEGO, CA — The most common method your doctor will recommend to treat your chronic pain and/or nerve pain is with prescription drugs that may temporarily reduce your symptoms. These drugs have names such as Gabapentin, Lyrica, Cymbalta, and Neurontin, and are primarily antidepressant or anti-seizure drugs. These drugs may cause you to feel uncomfortable and have a variety of harmful side effects. Chronic pain and/or peripheral nerve pain is a result of damage to the nerves often causing weakness, pain, numbness, tingling, and the most debilitating balance problems. This damage is commonly caused by a lack of blood flow to the nerves in the hands and feet, which causes the nerves to begin to degenerate due to lack of nutrient flow. As you can see in Figure 2, as the blood vessels that surround the nerves become diseased they shrivel up, causing the nerves to not get the nutrients to continue to survive. When these nerves begin to “die” they cause you to have balance problems, pain, numbness, tingling, burning, and many additional symptoms. The main problem is that your doctor has told you to just live with the problem or try the drugs which you don’t like taking because they make you feel uncomfortable. There is now a facility right here in San Diego that offers you hope without taking those endless drugs with serious side effects. (See the special nerve pain severity screening at the end of this article.) In order to effectively treat your nerve pain three factors must be determined;
1. What is the underlying cause?
2. How much nerve damage has been sustained?
NOTE: Once you have sustained 95% nerve loss, there is likely nothing that we can do for you.
3. How much treatment will your condition require? The treatment that is provided at San Diego Pain Relief Center has three main goals;
1. Increase blood flow
2. Stimulate and increase small fiber nerves
3. Decrease brain-based pain The treatment to increase blood flow, stimulate small nerve fibers and get you back to health is our
Electrochemical Stimulation (EC Stim) treatment.
In addition, we use a state-ofthe-art diagnostics like the TM Flow diagnostic unit to accurately determine the increase in blood flow and a small skin biopsy to accurately determine the increase in small nerve fibers. The EC Stim electric cell signaling system delivers energy to the affected area of your body at varying wavelengths, including both low frequency and middle frequency signals. It also uses amplitude modulated (AM) and frequency modulated (FM) signaling. During a treatment session, the EC Stim system automatically changes to simultaneously deliver AM and FM electric cell signal energy.
THE GREAT NEWS IS THAT EC Stim IS COVERED BY MEDICARE, TRICARE AND MOST INSURANCES
Depending on your coverage, your treatment could be little to no cost to you. The amount of treatment needed to allow the nerves to fully recover varies from person to person and can only be determined after a detailed neurological and vascular evaluation. As long as you have not sustained at least 95% nerve damage there is hope! San Diego Pain Relief Center will do a chronic pain and nerve pain severity screening to determine the extent of the nerve damage as a public service to you and/or your family and friends. This nerve pain/pain severity examination will consist of a detailed sensory evaluation, extensive peripheral vascular testing, and a detailed analysis of the findings of your nerve pain.