Imagine that you’re playing soccer with your local team or you’re out for a hike with friends. Everything is going well until you trip and land on your foot wrong. You’ve twisted your ankle and it ends up being quite sore with a burning sensation for the next few days.

Weeks later, if the pain has not subsided and your ankle and foot is now swelling, changing color and abnormally sweating you are definitely going to be concerned. In addition, if you notice that you are afraid to touch the area out of fear of making symptoms worse, then surely you know that this just can’t be right. One likely explanation of these symptoms is Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy (RSD), also known as Chronic Regional Pain Syndrome (CRPS).  For some reason the sympathetic nervous system, that portion of the nervous system that monitors injury sites, has simply gone nutty.  RSD/CRPS almost always begins after an identifiable event such as a crush injury, torn ligament, or fracture, and always results in excessive pain to a stimulus or even hypersensitive pain when there is no stimulus.