Neuralgia, as the name suggests, is nerve pain, occurring when a nerve is irritated or inflamed. The pain, spreading along neural pathways, may be fleeting or chronic and can range from mild to outright unbearable.

Only a few types of neuralgia are common. Trigeminal neuralgia is characterized by flashes of facial pain, sciatica which is the irritation of the large sciatic nerve that runs along the buttocks and legs and postherpetic neuralgia which strikes after the type of herpes infection known as shingles and typically manifests itself as continuous burning sensation.

Generally, the likeliest source of neuralgias is irritation or inflammation of a nerve or pressure on a nerve from bones or connective tissue. Trigeminal neuralgia may stem from the pressure of a blood vessel. The exact cause has not yet been discovered by modern medicine