This study says something that is the opposite of what I've always assumed to be the case.
In the brain, GABA and GABA receptors are inhibitory - they slow down the firing of nerves and slow down the entire central nervous system. That's why they calm anxiety.
I've always assumed that outside the brain, out in the body, in the peripheral nervous system they did the same thing.
This study says the opposite. It says that GABA and GABA agonists are excitatory in the peripheral nervous system - they make nerves fire faster and they sensitize the nerves, specifically those that are involved in sensing pain. It even implies that GABA and GABA agonists are inflammatory.
I'd always assumed that the pains in my body were because I wasn't making enough GABA or that GABA receptors in the body had become dysfunctional like we think they may have in the brain. But, the opposite might be true. It could be that once we stopped taking benzos, or z-drugs, that as we got out of the acute stage our body tried to compensate by making more GABA out in the peripheral nervous system, making more peripheral GABA receptors, or both. That would take a little time and it might explain a few things that have been a mystery to me.
1.) I did have a lot of muscle spasms in acute withdrawal, but as acute withdrawal carried on and started to pass, the muscle spasms started to get better.
2.) At around the 4 month mark, I started to get new pains in my body - in particular the soles of my feet. Eventually I also had pains in the fingers and hands.
3.) As time went on, maybe another 6 months, I started getting pain in my ribs and on the sides in the flanks. Or at least that's when those pains got to be really debilitating.
4.) It has always been a mystery why there was a lag between when I tapered off, and when these new body pains got so bad. Maybe it took awhile for the body to overcompensate and make too much GABA or make other changes that set off this excitatory activity.
5.) GABA supplements don't cross the blood brain barrier. But they should distribute in the body outside the brain just fine. So I reasoned that if GABA supplements didn't help my anxiety, at least they might help the pains in my body. They did not. In fact, they seemed to make the pain worse. I have never understood that.
This paper is interesting in that it might explain some of these weird details that have perplexed me.
Also, it says that a GABA antagonist can decrease this hypersensitization in the peripheral nervous systems. Now, for those of us with anxiety issues, that might be a really bad idea since it could well make the anxiety worse. But ....... if you could find a GABA antagonist that did not cross the blood brain barrier it might improve your body pains without making the mental issues worse. There might even be a natural compound out there like this.
Anyway, this is a lot of speculation on my part. I could be completely wrong. But it's new information that I haven't seen before and it is interesting that it might have some bearing on the body pains that a lot of us experience post acute withdrawal.
