Craft, 2007 Modulation of pain by estrogens

[Barbarannamated]

I have twice noticed an increase in headache and neck pain when I was late in putting on a new low dose estrogen patch. I did a brief search and came up with quite a bit of information about the role of estrogen in pain modulation. I find it interesting that I have Premature Ovarian Failure (suspected to have been present many years ago) and I also have the 3 types of pain mentioned in this particular article: TMJ, migraine, and arthritis. Other articles show a correlation between estrogen and fibromyalgia.

 

MODULATION OF PAIN BY ESTROGENS

Craft RM.

Department of Psychology, Washington State University, Pullman, WA 99164-4820, USA.

Pain. 2007 Nov;132 Suppl 1:S3-12. Epub 2007 Oct 24.

 

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/17951003/

 

ABSTRACT

 

It has become increasingly apparent that women suffer a disproportionate amount of pain during their lifetime compared to men. Over the past 15 years, a growing number of studies have suggested a variety of causes for this sex difference, from cellular to psychosocial levels of analysis. From a biological perspective, sexual differentiation of pain appears to occur similarly to sexual differentiation of other phenomena: it results in large part from organizational and activational effects of gonadal steroid hormones. The focus of this review is the activational effects of a single group of ovarian hormones, the estrogens, on pain in humans and animals. The effects of estrogens (estradiol being the most commonly examined) on experimentally induced acute pain vs. clinical pain are summarized. For clinical pain, the review is limited to a few syndromes for which there is considerable evidence for estrogenic involvement: migraine, temporomandibular disorder (TMD) and arthritis. Because estrogens can modulate the function of the nervous, immune, skeletal, and cardiovascular systems, estrogenic modulation of pain is an exceedingly complex, multi-faceted phenomenon, with estrogens producing both pro- and antinociceptive effects that depend on the extent to which each of these systems of the body is involved in a particular type of pain. Forging a more complete understanding of the myriad ways that estrogens can ameliorate vs. facilitate pain will enable us to better prevent and treat pain in both women and men.

 

PMID 17951003 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

[Barbarannamated]

I'm certain that there is some correlation between estrogen and neck pain/stiffness for me. Ran out of estrogen patches and need to see doc for more. Having bad flareup of neck pain/foggy thinking.

Just documenting.