Neuralgia, sometimes called nerve pain, inflicts suffering on its victims and befuddles caregivers. It can have many different causes, but often the cause is unknown. You can treat it with pain medications, including anti-inflammatory medications, but long-term use of pain medications can have adverse side effects. Fish oil, on the other hand, can reduce some of the inflammatory processes that contribute to neuralgia, without the noxious side effects.
Pain
Pain provides a message to your brain that somewhere something is amiss. When tissues sustain damage, nerve cells transmit a message to your brain that triggers cognitive, perceptual, behavioral, hormonal and immunological responses. Compression of tissue, damage from surgery or an accident, inflammation, tumors, foreign substances or chemicals stimulate nerve receptors locally near the trauma. Nearly instantaneously, biochemical and electrical signals transmit information to your brain regarding the nature, location and magnitude of the damage.
Neuralgia
Neuralgia is a type of pain that causes sensations in locations that run along the nerve pathway. This pain does not directly reflect the severity of damage to localized tissue, but rather occurs along the nerve. Neuralgia is often triggered by certain conditions or diseases, including herpes, shingles, diabetes and infectious illnesses, such as syphilis and Lyme disease. Trigeminal neuralgia, which is characterized by intense stabbing pain in certain areas of the face, occurs because of inflammation of the trigeminal nerve.
Inflammation and Nerve Pain
When tissues are damaged by foreign agents, your body rallies defenses to protect the tissues and surrounding area. White blood cells release chemicals to help eliminate the invaders. However, the body's immune response can sometimes be too strong, and sometimes your body reacts as if it is under attack when it isn't. The body's self-protective responses can turn on the body itself, causing damage to tissues as if the tissues were foreign or infected. When this happens, you experience discomfort and pain. Inflammatory processes contribute to the pain you feel above and beyond the stimulation of pain receptors at the original site of the injury or assault.
Diet and Inflammation
Western diets promote inflammatory processes. We eat 30 times the amount of omega-6 fatty acids, which enhance pro-inflammatory reactions, as omega-3 fatty acids, which enhance anti-inflammatory responses. The pro-inflammatory omega-6 and anti-inflammatory omega-3 fatty acids compete for the same binding sites, so when your diet has an imbalance in favor of omega-6 fatty acids, you tend to have overreactive, inflammatory responses.
Fish Oil and Inflammation
Fish oil contains the omega-3 fatty acids docosahexaenoic acid, or DHA, and eicosapentaenoic acid, or EPA, which suppress your body's inflammatory responses. DHA and EPA function like nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, or NSAIDS, but without the potentially noxious side effects of NSAIDs. Neurologist Joseph Maroon from the University of Pittsburg Medical Center found that supplementation with fish oil can reduce pain. Maroon had patients suffering from chronic, nonsurgical neck and back pain take 1,200 or 2,400 mg of DHA and EPA daily. After 75 days of supplementation, 60 percent reported improvement in their joint pain. Eighty percent were satisfied with their improvement. and nearly 90 percent reported they were going to continue to take fish oil.
Fish Oil and Neuropathic Pain
Chronic neuralgia can develop into neuropathic pain, a condition in which the nerves sustain damage from constant overstimulation. It is believed that overstimulation of the nerve cells causes the myelin sheath that surrounds and protects the nerves to deteriorate. The myelin sheath functions like the plastic insulation that covers electrical wiring. When the sheath loses its integrity, incoming and outgoing signals cross, creating feedback loops that cause pain to intensify and persist beyond the level stimulated by local damaged tissues. Neuropathic pain is resistant to treatment. However, in the February 2010 edition of "The Clinical Journal of Pain," Dr. Gordon Ko presents five case studies of patients with chronic neuropathic pain who obtained significant relief by taking 2,400 mg to 7,200 mg of EPA and DHA daily.
References
- "Clinical Nutrition Insights"; Understanding the Natural Management of Pain and Inflammation; Mark Percival; April 1999
- MedHelp: Neuralgia
- Health Communities.com: Chronic Pain Overview
- "Surgical Neurology"; Omega-3 Fatty Acids (Fish Oil) as an Anti-Inflammatory: An Alternative to Nonsteroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drugs for Discogenic Pain; J.C. Maroon and J.W. Bost; April 2006
- "The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition"; Essential Fatty Acids in Health and Chronic Disease; Artemis Simonpoulos; September 1999
- "The Clinical Journal of Pain"; Omega-3 Fatty Acids for Neuropathic Pain: Case Series; Gordon Ko, et al.; February 2010
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