Finally! Relief for Facial Pain (Trigeminal Neuralgia)
By Rebecca Hanson

Susan was lying on the sofa with an ice pack against her cheek. Months of excruciating pain from ear to nose, hairline to chin delivered in sudden and often-continuous electric-shock-like jolts had defeated her. None of the medications her doctor had prescribed had helped her pain and surgery was too expensive and risky.

After talking with her chiropractor, she learned about a new pain treatment: Cold-laser for facial nerve pain (trigeminal neuralgia). From her first treatment Susan felt relief and within a dozen treatments she had complete relief.  Susan had her life back.

The trigeminal nerve originates at the base of the brain and has three branches that spread across the face. One branch of the nerve runs along the jaw line and is often affected by infected teeth. However, the infected culprit may not show up on dental imaging until months after the onset of pain. Migraine-like pain around the eye can be produced by the nerve-branch that runs from behind the ear up the temple, over the eyebrow to the mid-section of the forehead. And the third branch of this tree of pain creates a blaze of pain across the cheekbone. Sometimes only one branch will be affected and at other times all three.

Before considering brain surgery, most trigeminal pain patients go through the gamut of medications that are supposed to stop the pain. The common theory is that too much electrical stimulation or seizure-like activity is the cause of trigeminal pain. Most physicians offer the usual anti-seizure medications: carbamazepine (Tegretol) and pregabalin(Lyrica). These drugs often come with crippling side effects such as, blurred vision, loss of coordination, dizziness, drowsiness, severe memory loss, feeling like a “zombie”, etc. and in most cases are still not effective in relieving the pain.

There is hope

But there is one treatment that seems to have escaped the notice of mainstream medicine, a treatment that has brought relief to thousands of individuals if they find out about it. Cold-laser treatment—also known as low-level laser treatment—has been used since the 1970’s. It has no side effects. The laser beam only penetrates the first few millimeters of your skin to stimulate the nerves. Cold-laser reduces inflammation, increases circulation, and stimulates the production of stem cells resulting in regeneration of the myelin sheath around that nerve.^[1]

Dr. Krisjan Gustavson, a long-time chiropractor at Diversified Health Clinic in Victoria, BC, Canada, has used cold-laser to treat between 600-700 patients with facial pain including trigeminal nerve pain. He estimates that at least 70% were helped and the average number of treatments was eight. (These are typical results, however, a patient may require more treatments to be pain-free). He has found that some patients remain pain-free for the rest of their lives and only 15-20% will suffer from reoccurring episodes of pain. Rarely, someone suffers chronically from trigeminal nerve pain, and those patients will require ongoing treatments as needed.

Cold-laser has proven to be more effective than the anti-convulsion drugs, is completely non-invasive as opposed to brain surgery and has no unhappy side effects.

If you or a loved one has trigeminal neuralgia then know that there is relief. Consider cold-laser treatment—it could change your life.

^[1]  http://www.lasermedcenter.com/treatment-of-trigeminal-neuralgia.php

About the author:  Rebecca Hanson is a content writer, ghostwriter and co-author living in Victoria, BC, Canada.  Her website is ghostwriteratthesea.com