I keep asking doctors if my ATN is psychological. Although I have a confirmed MRI showing the blood vessel over the trigeminal nerve, I still keep thinking this is all the result of stress, anxiety and chronic insomnia. However, were the emotional symptoms a precurser to the original TN? Well, researching brain chemistry and chronic pain, I at least found out that this constant pain does have a significant effect on the brain chemistry and explains some of the emotional symptoms that seem to get worse as I experience more constant pain. Has anyone else researched this? Here is the article: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/02/080205171755.htm.
The article you reference is only the most recent of several that I've seen. But it doesn't support a conclusion that ATN is in any sense psychological in origin.
The process seems to work in the opposite direction: chronic pain causes changes in brain neurochemistry which over time can become permanently damaging not only to pain circuits, but also cognitive circuits. Pain causes traceable brain changes that appear closely related to those noted in clinical depression. One of the themes of our Face Pain Info article is an advocacy for the abolition of the use of the term "Atypical Face Pain", which some neurologists and psychologists have falsely assigned the status of a psychosomatic syndrome. As the TN Association Medical Advisory Board has recently noted in an article on the TNA website, there is no evidence that depression causes pain, although depression can inter-operate with pain to cause greater patient sensitivity and vulnerability to breakthrough pain crises. 'By the same token, several of the tricyclic antidepressant drugs are known to have a co-action against not just depression but also pain of neuropathic origin. And that action often operates at very low dose levels known to be below the threshold of therapeutic effects for depression itself.
Feel free to follow up.
Regards, Red
Red - thanks so much for emphasizing that ATN is not psycosomatic (spelling?). I think that I just keep getting the impressions from doctors that as soon as they discover that my symptoms are A typical, they refer me to someone else. I have just been referred to about my 5th doctor. I also look for answers because I think my personality has definitely changed over the last year due to this condition and I am not sure that I can attribute all the changes to the medications. If everything that I have read is true, then this painful condition does have a direct effect on brain chemistry and especially, the ability to make decisions, depression, memory etc - not only because we are in pain, but because we remember the pain even after it has stopped. Do you know anything about any trials or info on using Seromycin (antibiotic use for TB) to treat TN or people with a neurologic pain condition? The only info that I could find was from studies in 2007. By the way, you suggested in another discussion that I should ask my doc about Amytripline (again, spelling is probably wrong), and when I did, he referred me to a new doctor - back to a facial pain neurologist that I have not seen before now. That appt is in Feb. I feel like a plate of appetizers being passed around a Christmas party for everyone to try.
Mr. McGinnis, when you see the next doctor, you might consider referring them to the Wikipedia entry on Atypical Trigeminal Neuralgia. I wrote 95% of it, with extensive references. I'll do some digging on Seromycin, as I haven't heard of it being used in chronic pain before. Friend me if you haven't already, and then ping me if I don't get back to you on this.
Regards, Red
PS: The following link will take you to a page listing trials in which this drug has been a factor. I see only one that is pertinent to neuropathic pain, and it's a fairly distant or peripheral issue in that trial. See http://www.druglib.com/druginfo/seromycin/trials/
Regards
Thanks Red - I just finally read the entire section on facial pain on this site and that is alot of information - especially for doctors. Why don't more doctors read this stuff? Since I see the next doctor on Feb 9, that gives me some time to research all that I want to ask him. I would appreciate ANYTHING that you can find regarding the Seromycin. I will check to see I have friended you. By the way, I consider it flattery to be referred to as "Mr", but I'm female, hahaha.
I have been told more than once that I suffer from foot in mouth disease... {:-) I once knew a Navy Lieutenant Junior Grade by the name of McGinnis, and it is traditional for senior officers to address Lieutenants as "Mister".
I'll get back to you if I find something additional on Seromycin
Go in Peace and Power
Red