Allodynia is a type of pain. People with allodynia are extremely sensitive to touch. Activities that aren't usually painful (like combing one's hair) can cause severe pain.
When skin hurts to touch, it means your nerves are oversensitive or your brain is overreacting to stimulus. A number of pain conditions can make you hypersensitive to pain, like migraines, diabetes, shingles, and complex regional pain syndrome. There are medications and treatments that can help you cope with the pain.
Allodynia is defined as "pain due to a stimulus that does not normally provoke pain." An example would be a light feather touch (that should only produce sensation), causing pain.
allodynia. Allodynia is also a type of hyperesthesia. People with allodynia show extreme sensitivity to touch. Sensations that do not typically cause pain, including cold temperatures, a light touch, or brushing the skin, become very painful.
Allodynia is not life threatening, but it can make daily life challenging. It can also lead to anxiety and other mental health conditions. The outlook for people with allodynia varies depending on the severity of the symptoms and any underlying conditions, such as diabetes or migraine.
Tactile sensitivity or hypersensitivity is an unusual or increased sensitivity to touch that makes the person feel peculiar, noxious, or even in pain. It is also called tactile defensiveness or tactile over-sensitivity. Like other sensory processing issues, tactile sensitivity can run from mild to severe.
Extreme sensitivity
Fibromyalgia can make you extremely sensitive to pain all over your body, and you may find that even the slightest touch is painful. If you hurt yourself, such as stubbing your toe, the pain may continue for much longer than it normally would.
Symptoms of Fibromyalgia
Chronic, widespread pain throughout the body or at multiple sites. Pain is often felt in the arms, legs, head, chest, abdomen, back, and buttocks. People often describe it as aching, burning, or throbbing. Fatigue or an overwhelming feeling of being tired.
Despite the pain, allodynia is not an increased sensitivity to pain or the result of physical damage. It should also be viewed as a side effect of migraine, not a phase of a migraine attack. While far from life-threatening, allodynia is another example that migraine is more than just a headache.
Treatments for Allodynia
Counseling and Therapy – Treats underlying depression and mental sensitivity to pain. Physical Therapy – Desensitizes pain in the problem area. Nerve Block Injections – Delivers pain relief directly into the problematic nerve(s).
Because allodynia is an evoked pain, testing requires an external stimulation of non-painful quality. Mainly three different types of stimulation have been used to test allodynia in animal models of neuropathic pain: mechanical touch, cold, and air blow.
Tactile allodynia is one of the characteristic symptoms of fibromyalgia. It is a neurological condition in which the sensation of pain—sometimes severe—can occur with a simple touch. With this condition, the body perceives pain to otherwise harmless physical (tactile) stimuli.
The skin's reaction to injury and inflammation can make a normally gentle feeling touch turn painful.
“This increased skin sensitivity and pain from touch is hypothesized to occur for a number of reasons,” says Jacob Teitelbaum, MD, medical director of Fibromyalgia & Fatigue Centers. “Over one-third of people with fibromyalgia develop a small fiber neuropathy caused from the chronic pain.
Symptoms include pins and needles, numbness, tingling, and weakness. People with fibromyalgia may experience the same symptoms. However, these symptoms tend to come and go in fibromyalgia. In peripheral neuropathy, they are usually constant.
Hyperesthesia is usually caused by what doctors call a peripheral nerve disorder or peripheral neuropathy. The peripheral nervous system includes all the nerves outside of your brain and spinal cord. Peripheral neuropathy occurs when nerves in the peripheral nervous system have been damaged or are diseased.
Individuals who are sensitive to touch may respond by avoiding sensations or having a bigger reaction than would be expected by others. For example, refusing to wear socks with seams because the seam or texture of the sock irritates their skin.
Common desensitization therapy techniques for hypersensitive areas of the hand include massaging the affected skin with a hairbrush or other coarse material to provide constant stimulus for short, repeated intervals throughout the day.
A: You can consult a general practitioner or your family doctor for allodynia.
For most persons, allodynia resolves when the migraine pain resolves. In some persons, allodynia may persist long after the migraine headache subsides. If headaches become daily, allodynia may even become a daily continuous condition.
Stress-induced allodynia—Evidence of increased pain sensitivity in healthy humans and patients with chronic pain after experimentally induced psychosocial stress.