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Thousands of people a year strain their ankle or break a bone in their body. If you get proper treatment than their is a very big chance that everything will be OK again. But for some people the pain will not go away and their doctor is not able to tell them what is wrong with them. There is nothing to see on an X-Ray and test after test will reveal nothing. Months or years after testing you are told that you have RSD disease, but what is RSD?

The most commonly used name for RSD is reflex sympathetic dystrophy, it recently is renamed to complex regional pain syndrome type 1. However, this new name has not caught up yet and RSD is still used more often than the new one. RSD disease is a progressive disease targeted at the autonomic nervous system. This part of our nervous system regulates everything that we can not control. It regulates our heartbeat, blood flow, breathing in and out, digesting food and much more. This nervous system is divided in two parts that both control a part of our autonomic nervous system.  When your body is under stress the sympathetic nervous system takes control and speeds everything up. It decided either to fight or flee and makes you able to react quickly. The parasympathetic nervous system works the other way around. It slows down your body reaction and leads energy to other parts of the body that need attention, like digesting food.  In a healthy situation the sympathetic nervous system will take control when you sprained or broken an ankle. It will turn on the healing process and it will shut it off when your ankle is fully healed again. But when you have RSD disease this last step is not working, the healing process is not shut off and instead it is over reacting. The healing process becomes the disease it self and can be very destructive for your body.

Pain in RSD Disease

A doctor can probably describe tens or hundred types of pain that you could suffer from. With RSD their are 4 types of pain associated with.

Burning Pain: Burning pain is one of the four types of pains that comes with RSD. It is caused because the nerves on the spot you broke your ankle or sprained your wrist are hypersensitive. The hypersensitivity is called allodynia. Even a slight breeze from the wind can cause a tremendous amount of burning pain sensation.

Vascular Pain: Your sympathetic nervous system has controls over your blood vessels. It constricts the blood vessels if your blood pressure needs to rise and it will dilate the blood vessels when the pressure needs to go down. With RSD your state of alertness is always overreacting. The blood circulation is either overdoing it or doing nothing at all. The constant high blood pressure in your hurted body parts cause a pressure like pain that comes along with swelling, temperature changes and losing color. The high blood pressure damages the blood vessels and damaged blood vessels do damage to the skin, bone and muscles in the damaged area.

Muscle Pain: Because there is not coming enough blood to the muscles, the muscles will deteriorate. There is also a chance on muscle spams and tremors. If the RSD is very advanced, a hand or foot could look more like a claw than a normal limb because of all the damage done to it.

Bone Pain: Damaged blood vessels and damaged muscles will on their turn damage the bones. RSD disease is highly associated with osteoporosis and arthritis.

Is there a cure for RSD disease?

Sadly to say that until now there is not yet a cure for RSD. If the disease is discovered on time it can be controlled very well. Unfortunately for only 50% of all patients the disease is caught on time. For the other 50% the disease is only discovered after months or years. If you have had an outbreak of RSD than you are never cured. It can reoccur with every new sprained ankle, wrist or other injury. If you have the complaints and symptoms for more than a year than it is considered as chronic. Damage done by the disease is irreversible if it is persistent for a longer period of time.

Treatment for RSD Disease

Although there is not a cure for RSD, there are some rather effective treatments that fight the symptoms and the pain. Blocking the nerves is the most effective treatment as it will lessen the pain significantly.

Nerve Blocks: Blocking the nerves is a very effective and popular treatment for diseases and disorders to the nerves. If you are in constant chronic pain because of hypersensitivity of a nerve than blocking the nerve might lesson the pain. The procedure consists of a needle that is inserted near a nerve and injects a local anesthetic. They can also decide to connect a catheter so you can constantly add new anesthetic to the are to numb the nerve.

Medications: Medications for RSD are aimed at the nervous system. Most medication used by RSD patients are not specially designed for this disease but aimed at the nervous system. Very often your doctor will experiment by changing the medication combinations in order to help you find what will help you the best. Medications that are often used for the treatment of RSD are: anticonvulsants, antidepressants and antihypersensitives. Although medication might not be the most effective treatment, they can help you reduce the pain significantly.

Spinal Cord Stimulator: A SCS is a device that is implanted by your doctor near your spinal cord. It is actually a catheter connected to a pump and it works on batteries that are also implanted in your body. The aim of the device is to constantly provide you with a doses of pain medication. Morphine is an example of a drug used to reduce pain. This treatment is very invasive and will only be used when you can not stand the pain any more.

Physical Therapy: Because your muscles and skin don’t get the blood they need you will get symptoms that are arthritis related. Your muscles, hands, feet will get stiff and if you don’t do anything about it you will loose function. That is why you need professional physical therapy to remain the motor function in your body parts. It is a very effective treatment and necessary if you don’t want to loose motor function in your body parts. Never decide to do some exercises on your own as they could do you harm. Therefore always ask advice at your doctor and physiotherapist.

Although it is not a very rare disease, it is also not a common one. The hard part is that it mostly goes unrecognized to after the point where it is curable. Awareness is the only thing that might help to get this disease treatable.