nociplastic pain naturopath Cork
Pain, I know it and you know it. We all feel it, we need to, we won’t ever stop feeling it. For the next few minutes while you read this, try to edit out all that you have been told by someone else about your pain. Just for a moment, feel into how these words land with you. Nobody understands or feels your pain like you do.
You probably have a sixth sense for when it is coming before it arrives, like that heavy feeling before a storm. There is a particular quality to the tension that begins to brew, a shift in your sleep, tissues you feel beginning to brace for the day ahead. Over months or years you have had to become a specialist in your own pain. You know which movements to avoid, which positions help, which combination of tools get you through your day. You have your contingency plans. You know you will need to change your schedule or alert those around you.
Nothing has ever really helped long term. Not in the way that lowers the intensity or gives you enough breathing room to feel that you will ever feel free from its grip. You are pretty much resigned to it being in your life and you would be happy if it was just a bit less.
You may have been told your experiences are psychological or hormonal. You have been referred, investigated, discharged and referred again. You have heard more promises and dismissals than you would like to count. You know there is more to it than any of those explanations have managed to capture. The pain is real. It affects your sleep, your mindset, your relationships and how you see life. It is always there, in the background or the foreground, shaping everything around it.
If this resonates, what you are living with is now called nociplastic pain. It has taken the medical world until 2021 to give it a name. As a naturopath with so many more tools than you have been offered, I have believed you and been ready to support you from the moment you walked in the door.
The third category of pain
Pain has historically been understood in two categories. Nociceptive pain arises from actual or threatened tissue damage, the signal from a broken bone, a burn or an inflamed joint. Neuropathic pain arises from damage or disease affecting the nervous system itself, the burning, shooting pain of sciatica or diabetic neuropathy. These two categories left behind a significant and growing population of people whose pain did not fit either one, whose tissue showed no ongoing damage, whose nerves appeared structurally intact, and who nonetheless lived with chronic, widespread pain that conventional treatment could not fully reach.
In 2021, the International Association for the Study of Pain formally recognised nociplastic pain as the third category. In plain terms this looks like the waistband of your trousers or a wristband against your skin registering as sore and cutting. Clothing tags that drive you demented. A touch that makes you squirm or feel like you have been burnt. A stubbed toe that floors you for an hour. Turning around to get something behind you and standing up to find your back has gone completely. A migraine that makes you feel like your head might implode. A body where the sensitivity dial has been turned up so high that ordinary sensations become extraordinary ones, and where the gap between what happened and how much it hurts has stopped making sense to anyone around you, including sometimes yourself.
A third to over half of people presenting with chronic pain meet this criteria. The majority are women. In Ireland alone, fibromyalgia, one of the most common nociplastic conditions, is estimated to affect approximately 2 per cent of the population. At the globally recorded female to male ratio of at least six to one, that represents somewhere in the region of 87,000 women, roughly one in every 28 women in Ireland, living with a condition that medicine has historically struggled to explain, treat or even fully believe.
Why women carry more of this
The conditions that cluster under the nociplastic umbrella, fibromyalgia, IBS, TMJ, chronic pelvic pain, endometriosis, frozen shoulder, chronic back pain after whiplash, widespread post-viral aching, tooth or jaw pain long after a root canal where the nerve is gone, all share a common underlying mechanism of central sensitisation and a pronounced female predominance.
Women are significantly more likely to have their pain attributed to psychological or hormonal causes rather than investigated biomedically. They are more likely to be prescribed sedatives rather than analgesics, to wait longer for pain assessment and to leave appointments without a diagnosis that matches their experience. This is a documented pattern across decades of pain research, not simply a personal observation.
It matters because it shapes the experience of those who arrive in clinic carrying years of unresolved pain, a history of being disbelieved, and a nervous system that has learned to brace not only against the pain itself but against the experience of seeking help for it. That additional layer of threat is not separate from the pain picture. It is part of the nervous system’s threat landscape, and it has to be addressed alongside everything else.
The mechanism: your nervous system repeating a pattern
Pain is not a direct read-out of tissue damage. It is the brain’s best prediction about the level of threat to the body, generated using all available information including sensory input, memory, emotional state, context, expectation and the person’s current level of perceived safety or danger. This reframe explains everything that standard treatment has never been able to reach.
Sometimes it is the back pain that reliably appears when you are stressed, not after you lifted something or had a fall, but in the weeks when everything is too much and your body runs out of capacity. Sometimes it is the pain that floors you at precisely the moment when you have the least room to be floored, when the deadline is imminent, when the children need you. Your body shuts down in a way that feels entirely disproportionate to any physical event that preceded it. This is not weakness or poor coping. This is a nervous system that has been given more than it can manage and has found the most efficient way it knows to demand that the load be reduced.
The pain is real. It just is not physical in the way that a broken bone is physical. And it will not respond to physical tools unless the nervous system experiences those tools as safe.
What I use in clinic and why it works
Each of the approaches I use reaches the nociplastic pain picture from a different angle, and none of them ask your nervous system to push through or endure anything.
Biodynamic craniosacral therapy works with the central nervous system’s threat response, the fascial and dural holding patterns of a body under sustained stress, and the autonomic dysregulation that generates and maintains your heightened sensitisation state. Research on craniosacral therapy in chronic pain populations has found significant reductions in pain intensity and disability with effects maintained at follow up. The mechanism is consistent with the predictive processing model: gentle contact through the craniosacral system provides new information to the central nervous system, gradually revising the threat prediction generating the pain. When the nervous system receives accurate information that the contact is safe, the pain signal begins to quieten, not because the technique forced it, but because the prediction has been updated.
Somatic fascia release works with the structural dimension of this picture. The fascial matrix hosts over 250 million nerve endings and functions as a primary sensory organ of the nervous system, continuously feeding threat and safety information back to the brain. In nociplastic pain, years of bracing and protective fascial tension create holding patterns that maintain the alarm signal from within the tissue itself. Releasing these patterns changes the information going back into the central nervous system and begins to revise the sensitised baseline from the tissue upward. The feeling of release can feel like a widening and softening you did not realise could exist.
EFT tapping addresses the cognitive and emotional dimensions of the pain prediction, the patterns your body has learned including the certainty that pain signals are dangerous, that movement will hurt or that seeking help will lead to dismissal. For women whose pain reliably worsens with stress, relational pressure or emotional activation, EFT reaches the prediction at its source.
Nutritional support addresses the cellular terrain that chronic sensitisation depends on, reducing the neuroinflammatory load that both feeds and perpetuates the sensitised state. Magnesium specifically, consistently depleted in chronic pain populations, plays a direct role in NMDA receptor regulation, one of the primary mechanisms of central sensitisation.
Bach Flower Remedies sit in a different evidential category and I will always be honest about that. What I observe consistently across twenty years of practice is that they offer something the research has not yet found a way to measure, the felt sense of emotional support and acknowledgement that sends a signal to a long-defended nervous system that it is safe to begin to soften.
What a helpful response looks like
A session does not begin with technique. It begins with a conversation, listening to your lived experience in a way that is affirmative and compassionate. Touch will only be offered if it feels right for you, and everything that follows is led by your responses. A tiny area of the body feeling more settled or comfortable is enough. That is the nervous system beginning to update.
A flare after a session is not proof that the treatment is working. It is information about your capacity, and the next session is adjusted accordingly. A helpful response often looks nothing like immediate pain relief. It looks like a calmer evening, easier sleep, less pain interference in the background of daily life, more willingness to move and a slight widening of what feels possible.
You also leave with tools that are fully yours to use in your day to day life when you need them most.
If you have been managing chronic pain and want a conversation that looks at the nervous system picture underneath it, that conversation is available in my clinic in Kinsale, at The Natural Clinic in Cork and online internationally.
Book a first session at loulanatural.com/make-a-booking or send me a message and tell me what is going on.
Serve Your Cells
Frequently Asked Questions
What is nociplastic pain?
Nociplastic pain is the third formally recognised category of pain, defined by the International Association for the Study of Pain in 2021. It describes pain generated by an altered central nervous system rather than by ongoing tissue damage or nerve injury. It includes conditions like fibromyalgia, chronic pelvic pain, IBS, TMJ, endometriosis related pain and many other chronic pain presentations where scans and blood tests come back normal but the pain is very real.
Why does nociplastic pain affect women more than men?
Women are significantly over-represented in all nociplastic pain conditions. This reflects both biological factors, including hormonal influences on pain processing and immune function, and the documented pattern of women’s pain being attributed to psychological or hormonal causes rather than investigated biomedically. The resulting diagnostic delay means many women spend years with unresolved pain and a nervous system that has learned to brace against both the pain and the experience of seeking help.
Can naturopathic treatment help nociplastic pain?
Yes. Naturopathic approaches including biodynamic craniosacral therapy, somatic fascia release, EFT tapping and nutritional support all address the nervous system’s sensitised state directly rather than targeting the peripheral pain site. They work with the predictive processing mechanism that generates nociplastic pain, creating the conditions for the central nervous system to update its threat prediction and reduce pain signals at their source.
What does central sensitisation mean?
Central sensitisation describes a state in which the central nervous system has become hypersensitive, treating ordinary stimuli as dangerous and amplifying pain signals beyond what the peripheral input warrants. It explains why light touch, temperature change or minor movement can produce significant pain in people with nociplastic conditions, and why standard physical treatments often produce temporary relief rather than lasting change.
What is a typical session like for someone with nociplastic pain?
Sessions begin with a conversation rather than technique. Touch is only introduced if it feels right for you, and everything is paced to remain within your window of tolerance. Sessions may include gentle craniosacral contact, EFT tapping, Bach Flower Remedies and guidance on self-regulation tools to use between appointments. A helpful response often looks like a calmer evening, easier sleep or more willingness to move rather than immediate pain elimination.
Is nociplastic pain psychological?
No, not in the dismissive sense of that word. It is a real, measurable physiological state involving functional changes in the central nervous system. The brain is generating a pain signal based on a threat prediction rather than ongoing tissue damage, but that signal is entirely real and the pain is entirely real. Effective treatment addresses the nervous system’s threat prediction directly, which is why body-based and nervous system-led approaches produce better results than treatments aimed at the tissue alone.