Trigeminal Neuralgia Overview

Trigeminal neuralgia causes facial pain. Trigeminal neuralgia develops in mid to late life. The condition is the most frequently occurring of all the nerve pain disorders. The pain, which comes and goes, feels like bursts of sharp, stabbing, and electric shock. The pain lasts from a few seconds to a few minutes.
People with trigeminal neuralgia become plagued by intermittent severe pain that interferes with common daily activities such as eating and sleeping. They live in fear of unpredictable painful attacks, which leads to sleep deprivation and under eating. The condition can lead to irritability, severe anticipatory anxiety and depression, and life-threatening malnutrition. Suicidal depression is not uncommon.
People often call trigeminal neuralgia "tic douloureux" because of a characteristic muscle spasm that accompanies the pain.
The pain comes from one or more branches of the trigeminal nerve-the major carrier of sensory information from the face to the brain.
There are 3 branches of the trigeminal nerve: the ophthalmic, maxillary, and mandibular. The pain of trigeminal neuralgia occurs almost exclusively in the maxillary and mandibular divisions.
You most commonly feel pain in the maxillary nerve, which runs along your cheekbone, most of your nose, upper lip, and upper teeth. Next most commonly affected is the mandibular nerve, affecting your lower cheek, lower lip, and jaw. In almost all cases (97%), pain will be restricted to one side of your face. Most of the time, doctors cannot identify any disease of the trigeminal nerve or the central nervous system. Trigeminal neuralgia most frequently affects women older than 50 years. The disease occurs rarely in those younger than 30 years. Such cases are usually linked to damage from diseases of central nervous system, for example, multiple sclerosis.

Trigeminal Neuralgia Causes

The condition has no clear-cut cause.
Some experts argue that the syndrome is caused by traumatic damage to the nerve as it passes from the openings in the skull to the muscles and tissue of the face. The damage compresses the nerve, causing the nerve cell to shed the protective and conductive coating (demyelination). Others believe the cause stems from biochemical change in the nerve tissue itself. A more recent notion is that an abnormal blood vessel compresses the nerve as it exits from the brain itself. In all cases, though, an excessive burst of nervous activity from a damaged nerve causes the painful attacks.

Trigeminal Neuralgia Symptoms

A defining feature of trigeminal neuralgia is the trigger zone-a small area in the central part of the face, usually on a cheek, nose, or lip, that, when stimulated, triggers a typical burst of pain. A light touch or vibration is the most effective trigger. Because of this, many common daily activities trigger the attacks. Washing your face, brushing your teeth, shaving, or talking. Common sensations such as having wind hit your face. Eating and chewing.
Many people avoid food and drink rather than experience the severe pain. These people risk weight loss and dehydration, a leading cause of hospitalization in this group. People frequently require hospitalization for rapid pain control when their trigeminal neuralgia becomes unmanageable at home.

Between attacks, most people remain relatively pain-free. A subgroup, however, experience a dull ache between attacks, suggesting physical compression of the affected nerve, either by a blood vessel or some other structure.

Trigeminal Neuralgia Treatment

|Medical Treatment|
Trigeminal neuralgia is extremely painful but not life threatening. Thus, a goal of therapy is minimizing dangerous side effects.
Medications used to treat trigeminal neuralgia are those used for many other nerve pain syndromes-drugs originally designed to treat seizures. Pain specialists use invasive therapy, including nerve blocks, nerve destruction, and nerve decompression techniques, as well as drug therapy to treat trigeminal neuralgia. Injection techniques also can relieve unremitting pain instantly and further confirm the diagnosis. Using real-time x-rays, doctors can target the anatomical origin of the nerve deep in your skull.
All these measures have some effect, but will have a certain degree of sequela and recrudescence.

|Medications|
Doctors use 3 main drugs to treat trigeminal neuralgia-baclofen (Lioresal), carbamazepine (Tegretol), and phenytoin (Dilantin).
For years, carbamazepine had been the mainstay for treating this disorder. In fact, many experts believe that if you get no relief from 2 days of carbamazepine treatment, doctors must reconsider the diagnosis of trigeminal neuralgia. Carbamazepine in unusual instances causes a rare blood disease known as aplastic anemia. The side effects of this drug include dizziness, sedation, confusion, and rash.

|Surgery|
If doctors clearly determine the cause of the disorder to be compression of an artery on the trigeminal nerve deep in your skull, a neurosurgeon can perform microvascular decompression. The surgeon moves the compressing artery to a location away from the compressed root of the nerve. The major disadvantage is that it requires a microsurgical operation-with all its complications-to get access to the root of the trigeminal nerve.

|Doctor Li's TCM treatment|
Doctor Li's TCM treatment to cure trigeminal neuralgia is created on basis of her over 30 years' clinical practice. By adopting more than 10 precious herbal, the medicine, which is safe, with total effective ratio of 91%, is easy to be accepted by the patient. The medicine has helped over 35,306 serious trigeminal neuralgia patients restore happy and healthy lives, so awards in the academic community and high compliment from the people find her, but she said to help patient restore healthy life is the happiest thing in her life.

The main principle of Doctor Li's magic TCM treatment is described as follows:
In the Traditional Chinese Medicine theory that has long history, trigeminal neuralgia, and an unsolvable problem in the international medical community, is called as "King of Pain".
Trigeminal neuralgia more frequently occurs in the elderly, whose average age is 59.3, and all these people are weak in body, accompanied by qi deficiency and blood stasis, blood deficiency causing wind, blood deficiency and qi stagnation, and jingluo block. That is why they are sick. Doctor Li's therapy can promote the circulation of qi and blood, expel wind and get rid of pain, nourish blood and subdue hyperactivity of liver, remove stasis and prenote netidian. Long-time practice proves that TCM therapy is very effective to cure trigeminal neuralgia, which leads to the conclusion that it improves nerve microcirculation to relieve pain. The amazing effect doctor Li achieve is rewarded with high praise from the people both inside and outside of China, and helps 35,306 patients restore happy and healthy lives.