Dear Red ,
thank you for your Remark. (again, wish my english was better).
you speak better about the pain more than people who suffers it sometimes.
I DO wish we will soon see no doctor in the US OR/AND here is ISRAEL.. using the term "atypical facial pain" or a mental satae causing this.
I pity the persons that were send to pshycaiatric institues over these cases .
I don't deny the connection between body and soul , and mental state are physial state... but this connection is very limited... - no mental state can cause this sever pain. the pain is REAL and caused by something REAL.. . why do we even have to fight to prove it ? even if it's just a minimal-minimal-minimal damage to some tissue in mouth - there IS a cause.
GOD- some days i can't even speak from the pain . is this pshycosomatic ?
belive me red, we who suffer know how OUTRAGEOUS it is we feel this pain.. and you have to try to explain "is this in your head or not ?" how can this be ?
i know mental stress can cause to many things.. .but not to this pain. it my cause the body to be more stressed.. and the muscles to spasm and creat more pain etc...
and i agree about the last thing you said - wish the dentist would FULLY And totally examine all this cases before sending to a neurologist... and even while he IS on the neurological meds road.. they'll still try to work with the patient to find the cause for the pain.. alongside with trying to ease the pain with the meds.
Richard A. "Red" Lawhern said:
Nir,
In a nice way (if one may be nice about such things), I would urge you to wash out the mouth of anyone who speaks the term "Atypical Facial Pain"... with lye soap! There is no such medical entity. PERIOD. And I personally regard implications that any form of facial pain is somehow caused by the patient's mental state, to be outright medical malpractice.
We know that mental attitude or expectations can affect perception of pain severity, and there is evidence from functional MRI that placebo effect is associated with actual changes in neurochemistry or brain activity. But there is NO body of objective evidence that demonstrates a cause-effect relationship between the mental state of the patient, and the original development of physical pain. NONE. NADA! The doctor at the hospital you mentioned was outright speculating, on the basis of no real evidence at all. A lot of so-called psychosomatic medicine is highly subjective (in the minds of financially self-interested psychologists who want to treat -- and be paid for treating -- problems that regular medical doctors don't understand).
These things being said, let's admit that dental imaging isn't perfect. Cracked tooth syndrome can be a difficult problem to confirm without actually opening up a tooth with a drill. And sometimes a small abscess may not show up well on a panoramic X-ray. But these outcomes can often be separated or differentiated from neurological pain, if the dentist will simply do an in-depth patient history and a pin-test on the cheek of the patient (looking for trigger zones).
FYI, I contributed in a minor way to a couple of articles on Facial Neuralgia Org. A lot of their material is very good, and I know that it was extensively researched. However, it is my understanding that the materials there haven't been actively maintained since about 2005.
Regards, Red
Nir Morita said:if read about Atypical Odontalgia - in thie artical - very intersting - http://facial-neuralgia.org/conditions/ao.htm. i do wonder what's the differnce between that and Atypical Facial Pain.. i guess the diferences sometimes are very gentle.
I'll say again - that here - every specialist told me - not to remove teeth - cause it can hurt more etc.
but again, i swear i heard personal stories of people wanting to kill themselves from pain . all thier XRAYS were TOTALLY fine . but they've had unexplained headaches.. eye aches... and they removed the teeth - (althout the doctors told them it won't help - and IT DID help. they are cure.) a doctor once told me they've had a patient coming to the hospital every week crying from tooth ache.. they told her nothing was wrong with the tooth - and in the end they pulled the tooth out. althout there was nothing wrong in the XRAYS. after doing so - her pain was GONE. i asked him to medically explain this - and the doctor gave me this exlantion " the lady was so convinced it was her tooth - that when remving it - the pain psycollogically stopped".
crystalv - i do agree that in times... pulling the tooth - seemed to me like a good idea - only for "getting it off my system and move oN" . until the tooth is there.. i will always wonder if it is the cause of all my problems.
today - i'm not so sure.
and 100 mg of amitriptyline ! ! ! that' sound so much.. i couldn't handle almosy the 10 mg