Ketamine Treatment for Chronic Pain

Ketamine Treatment for Chronic Pain

Nothing disrupts daily life quite like chronic pain can. It diminishes quality of life, impacting one’s mental health, physical mobility, social life, career, and other facets of life.

Living with chronic pain is not only debilitating, but it can also leave you feeling frustrated, hopeless, and very isolated.

Fortunately, it can be treated safely. Although the source of your chronic pain may have no cure, your quality of life can be improved without the use of dangerous opioids.

What is chronic pain?

Chronic pain is an ongoing and persistent activation of nerve receptors that signal pain in body, lasting weeks, months, or years. It can be experienced in one isolated part of the body or overall. The nervous system is constantly activated, signaling pain receptors that rarely stop.

Our practice understands that the pain never really “turns off” for chronic pain sufferers.

What causes it?

Chronic pain can be triggered by a myriad of different conditions. Some common sources of chronic pain can include:

Inflammation
Auto-immune disorders
Nerve damage
Headaches and migraines
Neuropathy
Injury
Surgery

Even after recovery and healing for many of these conditions, chronic pain may still persist post-healing. There may be little to no evidence of the condition, like a past surgery, but the pain remains, thus becoming chronic.

An interesting treatment alternative

Ketamine is an anesthetic drug that has been used since the 1960s for minor surgery. It’s a dissociative anesthetic, which puts the patient into a trance-like state to eliminate pain and induce sedation.

In recent decades, ketamine has been used in treating mental disorders, like major depression, generalized anxiety, and PTSD. And it is also used as an alternative chronic pain treatment.

Since then, many clinics across the nation have begun providing various ketamine treatments for their patients, especially for chronic pain conditions.

How ketamine helps chronic pain

When other medications have stopped working or are not as effective as they were in the beginning, many are turning to ketamine therapy to treat chronic pain.

The drug targets pain receptors in the brain and blocks them. It works in stopping your nerves from chronically firing off pain signals.

Pain is linked to activity in a neural receptor called N-methyl-d-asparte (NMDA). Ketamine blocks the pain activation of this receptor, providing pain relief. Because ketamine targets neural receptors responsible for pain directly, the results can be felt immediately.

How do you take ketamine?

Ketamine for chronic pain is given at small, non-addictive doses under medical supervision in our offices. It is administered through an IV infusion, usually in the arm or hand, and you are closely monitored continuously by our team of licensed and trained doctors and nurses. Many patients positively report instant relief after a ketamine treatment.

After one infusion, results can vary from lasting a day or two, or several weeks. A series of infusions over time is recommended to provide long-lasting relief from chronic pain. Our experienced Physicians will recommend a treatment plan for you based on your medical history and health factors.