occipital neuralgia

I just want to hear from one person who's had this and gotten help from the TMS approach. Anyone out there?

 

I don't have that symptom but think it's another form of TMS.

I just read about it at Johns Hopkins:


True isolated occipital neuralgia is actually quite rare. However many other types of headaches —especially migraines — can predominately or repeatedly involve the back of the head on the one particular side, inflaming the greater occipital nerve on the involved side and causing confusion as to the actual diagnosis. We generally refer to these patients as having migraines involving the greater occipital nerve, rather than as having occipital neuralgia itself.

If a migraine patient has headaches exclusively at the back of the scalp at one side, it may be tempting to perform one of the above permanent procedures to quickly “fix” the problem. Since migraines are thought to be due to a problem in the patient’s brain, however, and not the nerve itself, after a procedure it is possible that these patients might discover that their headaches have moved to another location, or that there is some improvement in pain but continued episodes of nausea, light-sensitivity, etc. We therefore only rarely recommend these procedures in migraine patients, especially since there have been no scientific studies proving that they work over the long haul.

If a patient’s pain does not reliably improve with occipital nerve blocks, we do not recommend proceeding with any of the more drastic measures.

 

The optometrist diagnosed me with early stages of cataracts this year. So I have been working on my eyes with my TMS knowledge. It was recommended to me to read Dr. Bates books. He is another classic person to follow. He basically says vision problems are from eyes that are not relaxed. To relax the eyes you put the palms of your hands on your eyes and vision a black spot. To me this is basically a meditation to relax the eyes. It is also follows the TMS approach in that there is a lot of self talk involved by telling your eyes to soften and relax. Here is a quote from his book on neuralgia:

"While the visitor was explaining to her sceptical hostess the method of relieving pain by palming and the memory of black another member of the family, who was suffering from trigeminal neuralgia, came in, and having heard what was being said, immediately put it into practice and was cured. The hostess later developed severe pain in her head and eyes, and did not obtain any relief until she also practiced palming and the memory of black."

Dr. Bates is from the turn of the century (last century that is), and you can get his book free on-line from: "Imagination Blindness A site dedicated to the Bates method of vision improvement, a method to restore eyesight naturally, without the use of surgery, drugs, or glasses. www.iblindness.org."

Good luck , Peggy

 

I have had diagnosed occipital neuralgia for over 15 years. Mine was right sided. At first it felt like I had a heavy, very painful weight on the back of the right side of my head. My doctor prescribed physical therapy 3 times a week. After a few months I was much improved but during times of stress it would flare up now and again. I felt I knew how to manage it. But a few years ago it hit big time, wham, worse than ever. I tried all my usual remedies and nothing seemed to help. This time it was not just the back of my head but extended down to the top of my shoulder. Extreme spasm and pain. All the research I did on occipital neuraligia was very depressing. Occasionally I felt some numbness on the right side of my face and often in my hands. I saw numerous doctors and they convinced me to get an MRI which revealed multiple cervical bulges and ruptured discs. I was considering the recommended surgery but hesitant because I had back surgery a long time ago and it only helped my pain a little. This was when I revisited all the information and material on TMS. I decided to put off surgery for six months. That was about 18 months ago and I am basically pain free. I say basically because I don't feel much occipital neuralgia but the pain/anxiety does move around. Much more of an annoyance than something I am preoccupied with as before. This week my front teeth are numb for some reason. It is pretty easy to ignore but a little strange. In any case, I did have a pretty constant right sided head ache for over a year. It is such a relief to feel basically whole and normal again. I wasn't sure if that was ever going to happen. The medical world does not offer much for occipital neuralgia.