Hi Felicia,

It's great to see you here! Welcome to the forum ... everyone is so nice here so i'm sure you will fit in right away!! Please feel free to ask any questions you may have - i'm sure people will be more than happy to help you if they can!!

Thank you again for the information that you sent me regarding the TENS - I hope you don't mind me posting it on here, I just thought it would be useful for others as after speaking to both you and my PT's, they said that the information was very informative and useful!!

My PT's at my local Childrens Hospital and yourself told me that sometimes you have to persevere with the TENS unit and try it in different areas to get the best amount of pain relief ... sometimes that may involve putting it on the Spinal Cord even IF the Pain isn't present there as that is where a lot of the pain signals are!!

MomInPain - I DO believe that you can use the TENS machine on any two limbs that have RSD. My PTs told me that I could use it on both my leg and arm when the pain was too bad and a lot of the people I have spoken to with full-body RSD use it all over there body so i'm sure it would be OK but I would speak to your Doctor beforehand. I'm not sure if the TENS would work any different if you had a Spinal Cord Stimulator put in place, again that is something to talk to your Doctor about as I think sometimes they like to try the SCS on it's own without any other meds or therapies to see if it helps (or so I have been told by other RSD'ers on another forum).

I hope the TENS helps any of you that decide to try it. I am still looking into getting the TENS but my PT's don't think it will help as I now have Independently Maintained Pain and my RSD is in the CNS.

No worries Ali about posting it here , where it may be useful dont hesitate, I just thought since I was responding to the same post I would say where the info had come from (I was about to repost it myself till I realised what it was lol).

Also, a good way to try and use it for two limbs (two lower limbs for example) is place both electrodes, one either side of your spinal column. This way they are intercepting the pain signals before they enter your spinal cord from both limbs. Make sure you place them on your lower back, or even try placing them just above where you sit on the back of your hips (kinda your bottom). But having a machine that can take several pairs of electrodes is also helpful.


As far as the centrally maintained pain (this is my understanding of how the TENS works in this situation) TENS relys on the gating theory so it targets the faster conducting nerve fibres whereas pain signals travel along the slower fibres, but in centrally maintained pain (same as independent pain, pain in the CNS) the body is still translating pain signals are coming from the periphery even though there are none coming. So, if you use a TENS, all of a sudden there are these signals coming from that limb that are NOT pain signals and they are the faster nerves too so the brain starts to deal with those signals that are really coming and it doesnt have time to continue the pain ones is has created in itself, the gating theory still applies. This is why it is still ok to try using the TENS in chronic pain situations as almost everyone with chronic pain will have these central changes in the brain.
This is actually pretty hard to understand and a lot of medical people dont really get it either as they haven't studied the relevant pain science.

Hope this was helpful