Tailbone Book, Chapter 12: Sympathetic Nervous System Pain of the Coccyx, Causing Tailbone Pain, Coccyx Pain

Tailbone Book, Chapter 12: Sympathetic Nervous System Pain of the Coccyx, Causing Tailbone Pain, Coccyx Pain
  • Is your Tailbone Pain Caused by Sympathetic Nervous System Pain of the Coccyx???
  • This is the next in a series of coccyx pain videos, giving you highlights from the chapters of Dr. Foye’s book, “Tailbone Pain Relief Now!”
The actual VIDEO is at the bottom of this page.
Here is the TEXT from the video:
  • Do you have nerve pain that’s causing your tailbone pain?
  • That’s the topic for this video.
  • I’m Dr. Patrick Foye.  I’m an M.D. or Medical Doctor and I’m the Director of the Coccyx Pain Center or Tailbone Pain Center here in the United States.
  • I’m online at www.TailboneDoctor.com.
  • And this is the next in this series of videos going chapter by chapter through my book Tailbone Pain Relief Now.
  • The idea is to give you highlights of each chapter and provide a format where we can interact and have questions and conversations about the chapter by putting your comments down below the video.
  • So here now we are up to chapter number 12, which is Sympathetic Nervous System Pain at the Coccyx ,or causing tailbone pain essentially.
  • And the idea here is that our pain pathways are set up to sort of sound an alarm system.
  • So if I touch my hand to a hot stove, the pain will signal me to pull my hand away from the stove and then the pain should stop.
  • But sometimes at the tailbone what happens is that somebody has a bone spur or a dislocating bony segment or arthritis and the pain doesn’t stop.
  • The pain is painful every time the person sits.
  • They’re not able to get relief either because their local doctors are not able to give them an accurate diagnosis or an effective treatment plan.
  • So the pain goes on and on day after day week after week month after month.
  • And after a while, the nerves themselves can become hypersensitive and hyper irritable.
  • And at the tailbone there’s a particular type of nerve structure that’s there that’s part of what’s called the “sympathetic nervous system.”
  • And the “sympathetic” nervous system has nothing to do with feeling “sympathy” or empathy for the person that’s having pain.
  • It’s just the medical term for that type of nerve pathway.
  • The sympathetic nervous system is known as the part of the fight-or-flight response.
  • So the idea is that if for example thousands of years ago if a saber-toothed tiger or something were to attack us as humans, then we would have a response where we’re either going to fight it off or we’re going to run away. So, fight or flight.
  • And the idea is that when we have a perceived threat we’re going to react to that.
  • And lots of things happen as part of that sympathetic nervous system: our blood pressure goes up, our heart rate goes up as our heart beats faster to get more blood out to our brain and to our muscles and our pupils get bigger so we can look around and assess the threats.
  • All kinds of chemicals are released in our body. So things like adrenaline, epinephrine is sort of running through our system.
  • So it’s really this sympathetic nervous system response that happens.
  • Now, very interestingly, the entire sympathetic nervous system has this pathway where the sympathetic nervous system is right along the spine on each side right and left.
  • But when it gets down to the tailbone instead of having a right and left ganglion or hub for each of the stopping points along the way for the sympathetic nervous system, there’s just one at the midline and that’s called the ganglion impar.
  • And impar means solitary or unpaired because it does not have a right and a left.
  • It has just the one at the midline and that’s located right at the level of the upper coccyx.
  • So now you have this pathway for sort of sounding the alarm when there’s a threat to you.
  • And the very final train stop (if we want to call the ganglion that)… the very final hub or stop along the way of the sympathetic nervous system ganglion (those chains of nerves that are linked together)… the very final one is right at the front of the tailbone.
  • So you can imagine that if there’s a cause of tailbone pain such as a dislocation, an unstable joint, arthritis in the joint etc, that the local pain driving that irritation in the area can start to have a phenomenon where in addition to the musculoskeletal cause of pain, there can actually also be a nerve pain on top of that.
  • So nerves are hyperirritability or hypersensitivity in that area.
  • So that’s part of the sympathetic nervous system that can be painful at the coccyx.
  • And this becomes really important because if you only treat the musculoskeletal cause of pain without also treating the nerve pain then to the patient they just know that they still have pain.
  • And the doctor and the patient maybe are not aware of why the pain is persisting.
  • So, maybe there was a bone spur or arthritis or a dislocating segment and perhaps there was an anti-inflammatory injection done to help with the musculoskeletal pain and inflammation.
  • But the pain persists and the pain persists in those cases perhaps because the sympathetic nervous system is irritated and nothing was done to quiet that down as well.
  • So, often it can be helpful to, in addition to treating the musculoskeletal cause of the pain, to also put some local anaesthetic such as Lidocaine, etc., on that sympathetic nerve ganglion, that ganglion impar at the coccyx.
  • How you would do that depends. It needs to be “custom done” essentially depending on the specific anatomy of a given patient.
  • I’ve published a number of different techniques for doing this.
  • The original publication was way back in the 1990s by Dr Plancart down in Mexico City.
  • But I’ve more recently published other techniques.
  • This is an area I lecture on quite a bit.
  • But basically, that’s the idea as far as the ganglion impar and sympathetic nervous system pain.
  • Other examples of sympathetic nervous system pain that happen in the body… sometimes people may be familiar with things like R.S.D. or Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy or Complex Regional Pain Syndrome (sometimes abbreviated as C.R.P.S.).
  • Those are conditions where there’s essentially a hyperactive, irritable sympathetic nervous system causing pain usually in an arm or a leg.
  • And doing a local anesthetic block for that limb, that arm or leg, can give a lot of relief.
  • And, similarly, doing a sympathetic block for patients with a sympathetic nervous system pain at the tailbone can give a lot of relief in that area.
  • So that’s the general idea.
  • There is a lot more information, of course, within the chapter, within the book.
  • So, again, Chapter 12 about that type of nerve pain at the coccyx.
  • If you have further questions or comments on that, definitely post them in the comments down below.
  • I’ll be interested to read those and respond to those and I’m sure others will find your comments helpful as well.
  • If you are looking for a copy of the book, the easiest way to get that is to go online at www.TailboneBook.com
  • And from that web page I have the links to the Amazon sites in different countries and such that you would use to purchase the book, depending on where you are located.
  • You can get the paperback book, the whole thing is two hundred and seventy-two pages.
  • Or you can get it as an e-book, an electronic book which you can basically download for a couple of dollars. And that’s available anywhere in the world where you have internet access. You can get the electronic book and you can read that online, you don’t need any special device other than however you access the internet.
  • So anyway, I hope that that information is helpful for you.
  • If you have questions, again, post them down below.
  • To get the book, go to www.TailboneBook.com.
  • And to find me online or to come for an evaluation here at the Coccyx Pain Center, you can find me by going to www.TailboneDoctor.com.
  • All right, I hope that’s helpful.
  • Bye-bye now.
Here is the actual VIDEO:

Here is the screenshot thumbnail image for the video:
Chapter 12 of Tailbone Pain Book, Sympathetic Nervous System Pain of the Coccyx, Causing Tailbone Pain, Coccyx Pain

Chapter 12 of Tailbone Pain Book, Sympathetic Nervous System Pain of the Coccyx, Causing Tailbone Pain, Coccyx Pain

To get your copy of the book “Tailbone Pain Relief Now!” go to: www.TailboneBook.com
For more information on coccyx pain, or to be evaluated at Dr. Foye’s Tailbone Pain Center in the United States, go to: www.TailboneDoctor.com
Patrick Foye, M.D.
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