Phantom Pain And A Plastic Brain
Gruesome costumes abound at Revolution Health today. Characters from popular horror movies seem to be a favorite, some employees even toted plastic chainsaws and spouted red ink/blood. As I was chased down a hallway by a ghoulish colleague who pretended to amputate one of my arms, I began to think – maybe this could be the subject of an interesting blog post? [Enter awkward segue here.]
Did you know that one in every 200 people in the United States has had a limb amputation of some kind? While the majority of amputations occur due to poor circulation (usually related to diabetes), some are caused by trauma, cancer, or birth defects. Limb loss is not a fictional issue, but a real concern for more people than you think. The good news is that most folks do very well with prostheses and rehabilitation programs. But since this is Halloween, I couldn’t resist discussing a potential complication of limb loss: phantom pain.
“Phantom pain” is the term used to describe pain sensations in a missing limb. Although this may sound impossible at first (how can a person feel pain in his foot when that same leg was amputated already?) the reality is that the brain takes some time to adjust to limb loss. The human brain has entire sections devoted to sensing input from and delivering movement messages to our arms and legs. When an arm or leg is lost, that part of the brain continues to function for several months or more. And so as the local brain cells lack the usual input from the nerves in the absent limb, they fire in a spontaneous manner that is perceived as cramping, aching, or burning.
How on earth can you treat this kind of pain? As you can imagine, it’s quite tricky. Some of the more successful approaches involve helping the brain to adjust to the loss of sensory input by touching or massaging the stump and walking on a limb prosthesis. These new sensations help the brain to adjust to the body’s changes. In fact, imagining moving the lost arm or leg can result in some relief of the perceived pain. This is the one case I can think of where imaginary exercise can be of real benefit to your body!Some folks do require special pain medicines (tricyclic antidepressants, seizure meds, and beta blockers can help modestly) to cope while their brain adjusts to the new input. However, most amputees experience the sensation that their limb is still there, but without any pain or unpleasantness. Phantom sensations and phantom pain almost always resolve with time – which is a testament to the amazing flexibility (or “plasticity“) of the human brain.
That being said, I hope you each have a safe Halloween – and that your only potential injury comes from a ghoul with a plastic chain saw.This post originally appeared on Dr. Val’s blog at RevolutionHealth.com.
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