Diana, I thought I posted to you but I guess I didn’t press the send button. 🙄
I felt the same way for the longest time. I had cancer 20 years ago. if it were to appear in my bones (most likely place), I would like to know that, asap, so I could have the most time or get the best results through treatment. Also, the long term effects could put me at risk for subsequent cancers. This is why I avoided pain meds. It paid off because I get the full impact of LDN. However, chronic and acute pain can change the body metabolically when it goes unaddressed. So the pain can evolve to something else, chemically, in one’s body. An example would be that an acute pain didn’t stay locally but felt like it was ‘frying’ my brain or the chronic pain that was originating on one side would be duplicated on the other side during PT treatment. (Very weird… happen several times and required treatment of both sides even though one side was asymptomatic. I’m just summarizing here what can happen with sustained or chronic pain and not really explaining how. I learned in hindsight, there was a cost for not having earlier intervention. I don’t think I would have done it differently because it was not due to my lack of asking for help. It is a reflection of the usual issues we have with providers. The only thing I would have done differently was to fly to NM to see the only person I knew prescribing LDN…. or get a referral from him. In my I spire Journal, I posted twice about LDN in April 2011. So when an MD showed up locally and a few EDSrs had good results…and I had been dx’d with MCAS since then…. well, it was time.
So what I can recommend to you is that not addressing the pain, in anyway, because you want to know where it comes from is an assumption. not addressing it runs the risk if it evolving and becoming an entity in itself (physiologically). Does all pain do this? No. But it is riskier in chronic pain and unaddressed acute pain. So all I am sayi g is ‘be careful’ a d as a scientist, know your assumptions! :-))
LDN is being shown to heal the intestinal wall in the Crohn’s patient…. I’m hoping for a positive effect, with regards to that, on my mast cell activation. I do feel it has affected my gut (PM me for details as it us TMI) and my sense of taste (spicey food is not so spicey anymore… Receptors for capsacium are similar to opioid receptors). Yes, it has been used with those who have auto-immune & cancer dx’s so time will tell with that. It has had a pretty instant positive affect on me with regards to sleep but that is not the usual from what I hear. It also has reduced the pressure in my head and a low level occipital headache I had after a trial of butterbur (low level because I took feverfew instead of going back in the Butterbur ).
You know me from Inspire :-). We can communicate or talk by phone if you want more info
Best,
EDS99