Why Nerve Pain Gets Worse at Night

You’ve probably been there. It’s late. You’re finally lying down after a long day. You want nothing more than to sleep. But your feet or legs start burning, tingling, or buzzing. The discomfort gets worse. You toss and turn. You try ice, pillows, even pain medicine, but nothing seems to work. You’re not alone, and it’s not “just in your head” as our Austin, TX cold laser therapy team can share.

For many people with peripheral neuropathy, nerve pain gets noticeably worse at night. The frustrating part? It often feels worse than it looks. Sometimes nerve tests come back normal, yet the symptoms are very real.

Why Does Nerve Pain Seem To Come Alive At Night?

One reason is that there’s less going on. During the day, your nervous system is busy processing signals from movement, light, sound, and other senses. These signals help mask the pain. At night, your brain has fewer distractions. Pain signals suddenly stand out more. It’s like turning off background music and realizing how loud the refrigerator hums.

Lying down also changes blood flow. When you’re upright, gravity helps keep blood moving. But at night, circulation slows. For people with neuropathy, especially in the feet or legs, this can make nerves feel more sensitive. Even small changes in pressure or temperature can make symptoms feel stronger.

There’s also a hormonal piece to the puzzle. Your body makes less cortisol at night. Cortisol is a natural anti-inflammatory. When levels drop, inflammation around nerves can increase. This creates a perfect storm: sensitive nerves, poor circulation, and a brain that has nothing else to focus on.

And then there’s something called central sensitization. That’s a fancy way of saying the nervous system becomes too sensitive over time. If you’ve had nerve pain for weeks, months, or even years, your body might react more strongly to small signals. At night, when it’s quiet and calm, those signals feel even louder.

This cycle of worsening pain and poor sleep feeds into itself. Pain interrupts sleep, and lack of sleep increases sensitivity. Your nerves don’t get a chance to settle. And your body doesn’t get the rest it needs to recover. Over time, this can make people feel hopeless, as if the pain will never go away. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Working with the team at Move Empower Concierge Physical Therapy can help overcome this vicious cycle.

Treating Neuropathic Pain For Sleep

Most traditional treatments don’t help with this kind of nighttime nerve pain. Pain medication often wears off by bedtime. Even if it doesn’t, it often wears off in the middle of the night since you are sleeping and not able to take it every few hours. Muscle-based therapies like stretching or massage might feel good, but they don’t reach the nerves themselves. Sleep aids might knock you out, but they don’t calm the nerves either. And while TENS units can help some people, they tend to stimulate surface-level nerves and muscles, not the deeper nerves causing chronic neuropathic symptoms.

That’s where STIMPOD comes in. This is a handheld device used by trained professionals to target nerve pain using pulsed radiofrequency. Unlike a TENS unit, which simply stimulates the surface of the skin, STIMPOD sends gentle signals directly to the nerve pathways causing pain. It works by helping nerves reset how they fire. And it does this without drugs, without surgery, and without invasive procedures.

Damaged or irritated nerves can get stuck in a loop. They send pain messages even when there’s no injury. STIMPOD helps interrupt that loop. It works on a deep level, calming the nerve and reducing random misfiring. Think of it like rebooting a glitchy computer. It doesn’t just mask the pain. It helps restore balance to the nervous system.

There’s research behind this. A 2018 study published in Pain Physician found that pulsed radiofrequency helped reduce chronic nerve pain by lowering the abnormal signals nerves were sending. This study and others have shown how PRF (pulsed radiofrequency) may reduce ectopic discharges, which are abnormal signals that irritated nerves send even when there’s no physical cause. That’s a lot of fancy words to say that it’s a way to disrupt those pain signals keeping you up at night without putting you in further pain.

What makes STIMPOD different is how precise it is. It doesn’t stimulate the whole limb or the whole body. It can be focused on the exact nerve pathway involved. For example, if the sural nerve in the lower leg is involved, a physical therapist can use the STIMPOD to deliver signals directly to that nerve. This is especially helpful for people who have specific areas of pain, tingling, or numbness that don’t respond to general treatments.

STIMPOD is also considered a form of cold laser therapy treatment. While it does not produce heat, it uses pulsed energy to stimulate healing at the nerve level. Cold laser therapy is known for helping reduce inflammation, improving circulation, and promoting tissue repair, all of which support nerve recovery. By combining the principles of cold laser therapy with precise nerve targeting, STIMPOD offers a unique, drug-free option for managing chronic nerve pain.

STIMPOD also improves circulation in the area being treated. This helps bring more oxygen to the nerves and reduces local stress. Over time, with repeated sessions, this can lead to fewer flare-ups at night. As oxygenation improves, so does nerve function. The tissues around the nerve become less inflamed. And the nerve can begin to recover its normal function.

What Our Clients Say

We saw this recently in the story of an older man recovering from an injury. He developed nerve pain in his lower leg that worsened every night. The burning and buzzing in his foot made it almost impossible to sleep. After trying different medications and therapies without relief, he began receiving STIMPOD sessions as part of a mobile physical therapy plan. Within weeks, his nighttime symptoms eased. He could finally rest. His mood, balance, and energy all improved. Listen to his own testimonial on his progress: