New Pain Category: Nociplastic Pain

[Wishful]

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1521694219300610

"A third descriptor of pain, nociplastic pain, now exists; nociplastic pain is defined as “Pain that arises from altered nociception despite no clear evidence of actual or threatened tissue damage causing the activation of peripheral nociceptors or evidence for disease or lesion of the somatosensory system causing the pain""

I think this term better fits my ME aches than 'neuropathic pain'. I'm fairly convinced that ME is altering my perception of pain. I'm posting this so that others might use this new search term to get better results.

 

[heapsreal]

That would fit those with mri results showing white matter lessions and chronic headaches??

 

[Pyrrhus]

Unfortunately, there is no scientific evidence to support the idea of "nociplastic pain."

It's just another attempt by psychiatrists to claim that it's "all in the head".

Of course, pain hypersensitivity is often seen in ME, where things that normally don't cause pain do cause pain in ME. But that's a "pain hypersensitivity", AKA hyperalgesia (for example Allodynia), which is a completely different concept...

 

[Wishful]

It's just another attempt by psychiatrists to claim that it's "all in the head".

No, from my reading it's from pain researchers who do not consider it psychological.

From the wiki: "Its causes are not fully understood but it is thought to be a dysfunction of the central nervous system whose processing of pain signals may have become distorted or sensitised.[3]"

There are at least three places where pain perception can occur: from whatever the nerves are set to monitor (tissue damage, etc); from damaged or otherwise altered nerves; and from the parts of the brain that process those signals. Nociplastic is supposed to cover the biological processes that can trigger pain perception that isn't from actual pain signals at the input to that processing system.

I suppose allodynia can take place in all three of those places. I wouldn't consider my ME aches to be allodynia since I don't think there are actual pain signals travelling through my nerves. I think they are processing errors: firing of nerves without the input signals that should be required to trigger them.