ATYPICAL TN way worse when I'm tired?

General General TN & GPN (Old Site)
1

I have TN type 2 with a constant underlying pain in my upper teeth. I would love to know why the pain is worse when I am fatigued or tired? Any thoughts?

2

I'm not sure there is a useful "why" for your question, Lisa. I do know that stress and fatigue both add toxic trace elements to your bloodstream. I can only speculate that these elements may have some influence on the reactive patterns of the nerves to other normally non-noxious stimulus. There are a few papers to that effect floating around in medical literature. Some of them are really difficult reading, even for somebody like me who has spent years in that medium.

Regards, Red

3

My pain is measurably more of a problem when i'm not sleeping well over a few days. If can get a couple good nights of sleep in a row definitely feel much better. That's just me tho. Might very well be a placebo effect I've got myself believing but I'll take it :)

4

You've got a lot of company on this one, Todd. Sleep disturbance can be a major fatigue factor. And emerging functional MRI evidence indicates that fatigue makes the nervous system more vulnerable to both pain and depression.

Regards

5

I am lucky that i sleep well, but after a long day, I began to feel the TN2 effects. I think it is because my defences and coping mechanisms are not so good because I am tired. I am a shift worker and will be returning to shifts soon and I am waiting to see what the effect will be.

6

Hi Lisa,

I think lack of sleep makes all pain worse. When you are tired, your brain's ability to handle pain lowers significantly. I have a number of conditions, and at night when I am fatigued, all pain gets worse, Even in the hospital, patients get worse at night. It's like physical fatigue. If you were to hold your arm in the air, when you are fresh, it's no problem, but as you get fatigued, that arm that is perfectly healthy is not only heavy, but becomes painful. I wrote a discussion about how pain makes your brain react: http://www.livingwithtn.org/forum/topics/how-pain-affects-your-brain

Kind thoughts,
Sheila

7

I find the same thing happens to me also.