https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26900907/

A while back I blogged about the connection between MSG and mysterious episodic headaches. This connection is getting more traction among lay people, although the difficulty still remains in patients correctly identifying MSG under different names in food labeling. While cleaning up my desk at the beginning of the new year, I came across a research article from 2016 that I had carefully kept, about the "pro-algesic" effect of certain foods, meaning the effect of foods on increased pain perception.

In this blog I want to uncover another aspect of MSG that is less well known but nonetheless fairly well documented in the medical literature. The connection between MSG and increased pain sensitivity. In our practice we often see patients with chronic pain. Chronic pain is multifactorial, meaning that it has several contributing factors that compound each other. As such it's important to try to remove as many triggers as possible because of the cumulative effect. Obviously with chiropractic we tend to address quite a bit of the neuromusculoskeletal triggers, and try to point patients in the direction of underlying metabolic and inflammatory triggers over which they can have control. MSG is turning out to be a pretty important player among patients with chronic pain in the "fibromyalgia" family, since MSG increases central nervous system pain transmission and perception, and in that way is different from more peripheral sources of pain sensitization such as chronic systemic inflammation.

As with headaches, patients need to learn to recognize the hidden sources of MSG, which will often steer someone to eat a less processed food diet. It may feel a little bit daunting at 1st but it certainly a worthwhile strategy to pursue, since chronic pain can be so life altering, and this is a relatively easy way to decrease its impact.