The injury
The shingles virus traveled down a sensory nerve and damaged it. The skin healed; the nerve didn’t. It now fires pain signals without cause, burning, stabbing, electric jolts along the old rash line.
Post-Herpetic Neuralgia
The shingles healed. The pain doesn’t have to stay.
The rash is long gone. The blisters faded months, maybe years, ago. But the skin still burns, stabs, or screams at the touch of a shirt. You’ve probably been told it’s “just nerve pain now” and handed another prescription. You’re not imagining it, you’re not exaggerating it, and you are not out of options.
- Practicing in Fort Lauderdale since 1994
- Physician referrals welcomed
Why pain outlives the rash
Post-herpetic neuralgia isn’t leftover shingles. It’s what the virus did to the wiring on its way out.
Central sensitization
Here’s what makes PHN different from other neuropathies: months of relentless signaling teach the spinal cord and brain to amplify pain. The volume knob itself breaks. That’s why a bedsheet can feel like a burn, and why treatments aimed only at the skin-level nerve keep failing.
The dismissal
Friends can’t see anything wrong. Doctors see a healed rash. You’ve learned to stop mentioning it, which is its own kind of pain. We believe you. The mechanism above is real, measurable, and something we can work with.
The playbook that keeps failing you
Standard PHN care escalates from lidocaine patches to gabapentin to capsaicin to, eventually, “learn to live with it.” Every rung on that ladder treats the signal, none of it retrains the amplification. Pain that has been centrally sensitized needs the nervous system itself addressed.
Treating the volume, not just the wire
Most providers treat PHN as generic nerve pain. Here the starting point is the central sensitization that keeps it alive, the amplified signaling behind the burning and the light-touch pain. That read shapes your evaluation and your plan.
The clinical logic: The acupuncture works on the amplified signaling itself, the central sensitization that standard care never touches. ATP Resonance BioTherapy® supports repair in the damaged peripheral fiber, and O3 ReBoot Therapy® supports circulation to tissue the virus affected. The protocol addresses both ends of the pain: the broken wire and the broken volume knob.
How we work with your doctor
Nothing changes with your medications except through your prescriber. Physicians across Broward County send us the PHN cases that outlasted the standard ladder, and many patients simply send themselves.
Susan Mitchell, AP
Clinical Director · 30+ years
You’re Not a Case Number
Your protocol, personalized
Your treatment frequency, therapy mix, and program length are set as a plan at your evaluation, built around your case. We hold to that plan for the most part, and adjust it as needed when your response calls for it.
What shapes your plan
Nerve involvement & duration
How long you’ve had symptoms and how much sensation has changed sets your starting intensity.
Your response
Your baseline is measured at the evaluation, and adjustments follow what those numbers do over the course of care.
Your goal
For some cases the finish line is regained sensation; for others, stopping the spread. We define it with you, not for you.
Candidacy comes first: the evaluation determines whether the program fits your case, then we discuss the investment in person.
The Plan
Three steps, starting with being heard
- 1
$45 initial consultation
Tell the whole story, including the parts you’ve stopped telling other doctors. We assess your pain pattern and your candidacy.
- 2
Personalized protocol
A staged, personalized plan tuned to your pain pattern, sensitivity level, and history. Progress is measured against your day-one baseline, not guessed, and the plan adjusts as you respond.
- 3
Reclaim your skin
A shower that feels like water again. A seatbelt you buckle without thinking.
What Relief Looks Like
When touch is just touch again
A breeze across your arm that doesn’t burn.
Clothes you forget you’re wearing.
A day organized around living, not the next flare.
Sensitization deepens with time
The longer a nervous system practices amplified pain, the better it gets at it. PHN that’s “waited out” for years becomes more entrenched, not less, and the life around it shrinks to match: the shirts you can’t wear, the hugs you brace for, the sleep you ration. The earlier the recalibration starts, the better the odds, though the degree of relief varies from case to case.
Questions, Answered
Post-Herpetic Neuralgia FAQs
There is no expiration date on treatability, we’ve evaluated patients years past their outbreak. Entrenched sensitization takes a full, staged course of care to retrain, which is why the program is structured in phases rather than a handful of sessions.
That paradox is called allodynia, and it’s a signature of central sensitization: light-touch fibers are being misread as pain fibers by an amplified nervous system. It is a textbook finding, not evidence that the pain is “in your head.”
Facial (trigeminal) PHN is evaluated case by case, it involves the same mechanism with higher stakes around the eye. The consultation determines whether and how the protocol is adapted for trigeminal involvement.
No. We work alongside your current regimen; many patients taper with their physician’s guidance as pain recedes. Nothing is discontinued except by your prescribing doctor.
PHN is centrally sensitized pain, where the amplification itself, more than the skin-level nerve, is what keeps it going, and that is what the protocol targets. Reading a hard case through more than one lens is often what these turn out to need, and PHN is a pattern this clinic sees a great deal of.
This is a fair concern with post-herpetic neuralgia, since the skin in that area is often hypersensitive and even light touch can hurt, something we assess for on day one. Treatment is adjusted to your comfort and pain level throughout, and if any technique increases your pain, we change it immediately. Discomfort, when it happens, is typically mild and temporary, though sensitivity and tolerance vary from patient to patient.
Lingering nerve pain after shingles, called post-herpetic neuralgia, often needs more than one approach. Many patients are managed by their physician with medications like gabapentin or lidocaine patches, and that care should continue. What we focus on alongside it is calming the overactive nerve signaling and supporting the irritated nerve tissue itself. Patients who respond typically notice the pain becoming less sharp or less frequent over a series of sessions, though the degree of relief varies from case to case.
Patients who respond typically log first changes (fewer jolts, longer calm stretches) in the initial intensive phase. Touch tolerance typically rebuilds through the rehabilitation phase.
Book Your Consultation
Your feet have been sending the message for years. Answer it.
Your initial consultation is $45. Tell us your story, and we’ll evaluate your case.
Visit us
3471 North Federal Highway, Suite 500
Fort Lauderdale, FL 33306
Physicians
Physicians across Broward County refer patients here; a phone call is all it takes.
New Patient Offer
$45 Initial Consultation
Book your first visit
We’ll confirm by call or text, usually the same day.
No referral required · We coordinate with your physician.