{"id":100,"date":"2007-06-20T07:45:02","date_gmt":"2007-06-20T14:45:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.howtocopewithpain.org\/blog\/100\/complex-regional-pain-syndrome-crps-can-mirrors-help\/"},"modified":"2025-09-04T14:26:26","modified_gmt":"2025-09-04T18:26:26","slug":"complex-regional-pain-syndrome-crps-can-mirrors-help","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.howtocopewithpain.org\/blog\/100\/complex-regional-pain-syndrome-crps-can-mirrors-help\/","title":{"rendered":"Complex Regional Pain Syndrome (CRPS) &#8211; Can Mirrors Help?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p align=\"center\"><em>Mirror, mirror on the wall<br \/>\nCan you help my pain, after all?<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Well, that&#8217; a version of the rhyme that never made it into Snow White! But if you&#8217;re looking for <em>pain\u00a0relief<\/em> (instead of\u00a0finding out who&#8217;s\u00a0the fairest of them all :), <em>mirror boxes<\/em> might offer an answer. Mirror image therapy is an exciting treatment for many pain syndromes. Today we&#8217;ll look at <strong>Complex Regional Pain Syndrome<\/strong>\u00a0(CRPS), also called RSD. CRPS is a neurological pain disorder with symptoms which include:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>pain out of proportion to any injury<\/li>\n<li>movement problems, e.g. muscle spasm, clumsiness<\/li>\n<li>temperature control problems, e.g. the affected area becomes cold or hot out of the blue, excessive sweating, pain increases with exposure to cold<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>There&#8217;s a lot that&#8217;s <em>unknown<\/em> about CRPS, but we <em>do <\/em>know that the changes that occur in CRPS affect not only\u00a0the area where there&#8217;s pain, commonly a hand, foot, arm or leg. The changes also involve the <em>spinal cord<\/em> and <em>brain<\/em>. The <em>body map<\/em> hypothesis\u00a0may\u00a0apply to CRPS.\u00a0This hypothesis says that there&#8217;s an internal representation of your body in your brain. This picture\u00a0helps you\u00a0know where your body is\u00a0in space, even with your eyes shut. It also helps you perform movements, without having to think about each little part of a complex movement.<\/p>\n<p>In CRPS,\u00a0the brain&#8217;s map of the area where there&#8217;s pain may become distorted. It&#8217;s not clear if this distortion is a <em>cause <\/em>or a <em>result <\/em>of pain, but correcting this distortion can help. In CRPS, movement often hurts and can make pain worse. But <em>lack<\/em> of movement means fewer <em>normal<\/em> sensations coming into the brain. This allows pain signals to get too much play in your brain, creating a\u00a0sort of spiraling feedback loop&#8230;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>pain, which causes you to move less, which causes fewer normal movement sensations going to your brain, which causes pain signals have less to compete with to get your brain&#8217;s attention, which causes PAIN,\u00a0and we&#8217;re back to the beginning<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>So where do mirror boxes come in? Let&#8217;s say your right hand is affected by CRPS. You can put your right hand in the box so it&#8217;s not visible. You then move your left hand, and your brain sees the reflection as if your right hand is moving. And because your left unaffected hand is moving, the movements are easy and fluid. So it looks to your brain like you&#8217;re right hand&#8217;s moving comfortably and easily. It may be that tricking your brain into seeing that everything&#8217;s ok, lets pain begin to slowly decrease.<\/p>\n<p>Now for the &#8220;be careful&#8221; section&#8230;<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>It gets trickier to use a mirror if&#8230;<br \/>\n&#8211; both your right <em>and<\/em> left side are affected, i.e. there&#8217;s no pain-free part<br \/>\n&#8211;\u00a0an area like\u00a0your chest, back, or stomach is affected,\u00a0where there&#8217;s not an obvious mirror image part<\/li>\n<li>It&#8217;s controversial if you can just start out using a mirror, or you need to build up to this kind of work, by graded motor therapy.<\/li>\n<li>It&#8217;s also controversial if you need to\u00a0move the hand or foot that&#8217;s in the mirror box, i.e. the affected limb that&#8217;s hidden from view.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>So,\u00a0if you&#8217;re interested in mirror therapy, take a look at the NOI website. Read some more on the treatment to educate yourself. And, most importantly, get some guidance from a medical practitioner &#8211;\u00a0MD, physical therapist, etc.\u00a0&#8211; who&#8217;s informed about this treatment. It&#8217;s a very exciting option &#8211;\u00a0and one I want to make sure you use safely. You can learn more as well as purchase a mirror with instructions for use:<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.noigroup.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">NOI Group<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Mirror, mirror on the wall Can you help my pain, after all? Well, that&#8217; a version of the rhyme that never made it into Snow White! But if you&#8217;re looking for pain\u00a0relief (instead of\u00a0finding out who&#8217;s\u00a0the fairest of them all :), mirror boxes might offer an answer. Mirror image therapy is an exciting treatment for [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-100","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-1"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.howtocopewithpain.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.howtocopewithpain.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.howtocopewithpain.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.howtocopewithpain.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.howtocopewithpain.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=100"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.howtocopewithpain.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8051,"href":"https:\/\/www.howtocopewithpain.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100\/revisions\/8051"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.howtocopewithpain.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=100"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.howtocopewithpain.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=100"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.howtocopewithpain.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=100"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}