Numb & Sensitive Scars

You may find parts of your tummy or scar are numb or sensitive. This is down to the nerves being cut during part of your surgery and we need to help regulate them again. You need to start Sensory Retraining.

When the nerves around your scar are damaged they can stop sending messages to the brain leading to feelings of numbness; they may over compensate and send lots of messages leading to hypersensitivity.

Through waking-up the nervous system the aim is to restore normal nerve firing and normal sensation to your scar and surrounding tissues.

Our first aim is to reintegrate the tissues around the scar. If you're noticing numb or sensitive patches above or below your scar, we are getting to work on these.

Reintegrating Around Your Scar

1. Grab a wet flannel (washcloth) and use it to create small movements all around your tummy, avoiding your scar

2. Start with up and down then side-to-side, zigzags and finally in circles.

3. Make 5 circuits around your scar

4. If you find patches that are more sensitive or numb, spend a little longer working on them

Sensory Retraining

For those patches that are numb or sensitive, using different textures and temperatures can be helpful to further wake up the nerves. Some things to try on these patches:

• Temperature Recognition: Try placing a cold spoon on the numb / sensitive area for a few seconds

• Try switching the massage techniques between a warm flannel and a cold flannel so there is contrast

• Texture Recognition: Use different textures so brush cotton wool along the area and follow it with something rough like a dry flannel

• To help your brain start associating the different textures try putting a metal spoon or some cotton wool on your tummy and really sense the texture. Put your focus in to feeling each object to imprint the connection in your mind and how that should feel

• Touch Localisation: Have someone touch a numb patch. Now point to the area you think they touched you. Now look at the area being touched and consciously think "I am being touched here".

Hands-on Help

In our Berkhamsted Clinic we are fortunate to have a specialised cold-laser to work specifically on scars. This helps stimulate sensation where there is numbness or to calm nerves down where there is pain or hypersensitivity. We tailor treatment to your needs, it's painless and can help improve scar function. We may also use dry needling, a technique that helps stimulate the nerves directly and can be useful for areas that have loss of sensation.

If you need help and support with your scar, don't forget you can WhatsApp us on 07970 807625 and we can help recommend the right products and techniques for you based on your individual scar.

See you soon,

Felicity x