Turning Up the Volume—Central Sensitization and Why You Feel “All Over” Pain

What Is Sensitization?

Central sensitization: it’s the pain world’s amplifier, the real challenge that turns pain from local to global, and makes straightforward pain a tangled web. Think of it as your nervous system’s sound system gone haywire turned way up. A bump in the road becomes a mountain. Lights hurt your eyes, gentle sounds feel like an assault, smells make you queasy, and your body starts adding bonus symptoms that defy neat categories.

Main Ingredients of Central Sensitization

●      Sensory hypersensitivity: Not just pain—light, sound, smell, temperature, touch become overwhelming.

●      Sleep disturbance: You can’t fall asleep, can’t stay asleep, or wake up unrested.

●      Fatigue: Both physical and mental. You’re wiped, even with no clear reason.

●      Brain fog: Memory, concentration, and general thinking all slide sideways.

●      Mood disturbance: Irritability, anxiety, depression. Stress feels overwhelming.

●      Motor dysfunction: Tremors, jerks, non-epileptic seizures, movement disorders, weakness.

●      Dysautonomia: Weird autonomic symptoms that can affect the heart, bladder, gut, or things like abnormal sweating, and turn into conditions like POTS

Why Does It Happen?

Central sensitization is your nervous system amplifying everything. What started as knee or back pain now spreads. You collect a shopping list of diagnoses: fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome, IBS, migraines, POTS—the list gets longer, but the underlying story often points back to the nervous system turning up the gain on every signal it receives.

How To Spot It

●      Pain becomes constant and widespread.

●      Triggers multiply—everything makes it worse.

●      The usual fixes stop working.

●      Symptoms cross organ systems.

Managing Sensitization—Breaking It Down

●      Categorize symptoms: Which buckets do they fall into (pain, sleep, mood, brain fog, etc.)?

●      Match treatments: Target the biggest and most impactful problem first—maybe it’s sleep, maybe fatigue, maybe pain itself.

●      Use routines: Anchor your sleep/wake cycles, keep a steady schedule, address activity pacing.

●      Seek professional help: Sometimes you need input from doctors, therapists, and other allied health professionals like movement professionals

●      Investigate comorbidities: Check for other treatable diseases—don’t let “It’s all in your head” stop the exploration.

Our Takeaway for You

Central sensitization isn’t a character flaw or a figment of the patients imagination—it’s a real, systematic process with physiological underpinnings. The sooner it’s recognized and broken down, the sooner you can shrink its impact. If your symptoms have gone from “localized and logical” to “everywhere and overwhelming,” you aren’t alone—central sensitization is the thread that links many complex, confusing symptoms, but it’s one we can untangle together.

For more insight and practical advice, tune in to episode 6 of It’s Not in Your Head Podcast.