Bite Sized! Stellate Ganglion Treatment, Chronic Pain, and Unresponsive PTSD

Thanks to the medical community finally acknowledging post-traumatic stress disorder rather than shell shock or malingering or... personal weakness, targeted therapies have been rapidly improving.

We no longer recommend generalized SSRIs or one-size-fits-all interventions, but instead use multidisciplinary treatments to tackle the myriad causes and symptoms of the disorder.

One of the most modern treatments is the stellate ganglion block.

Stellate ganglion blocks, SGBs, involve injecting anesthetic between cervical vertebrae, vertebrae in your neck, to stunt the activity of the stellate ganglion.

The stellate ganglion itself refers to the fusion of the cervical and thoracic ganglions.

This area contains the nerve interchange between the brain, upper limbs, and head that And it's known to hold a central role in sympathetic nervous system activation.

That's your fight or flight response.

So the wild part is that the stellate ganglion block is foreign.

It's news to most of us, but it's been used since the 1940s to treat depression.

In the 1990s, it was first utilized for PTSD in conjunction with medication and traditional therapy.

In the 2000s, it finally became a subject of scientific research, exploring these anecdotal and clinical connections.

So, although the stellate ganglion block procedure has been used for PTSD, pain, heart arrhythmias, and other nervous system aberrations, the mechanisms by which it is effective are currently... say it with me, unknown to medical science.

One theory is that the block reduces nerve growth factor and nerve growth, which can then decrease neurotransmitters and nervous system activity.

The authors tell us, This block has been utilized in pain conditions in the head, upper limbs, refractory angina, and cardiac arrhythmias that occur as a byproduct of abnormal connections between the sympathetic and and sensory nervous systems.

The precise mechanism of the block has been a topic of investigation.

However, newer theories suggest that the block may reduce the amount of nerve growth factor and neurite overgrowth, causing a decrease in norepinephrine and sympathetic activity.

So, to better understand these connections, the authors conducted a review of the prior publications on the stellate ganglion block.

Reminder, all of which have been published in only the 2000s in order to seek answers.