Skin sensitive to touch - tender skin - painful skin

Skin senses › Causes of skin sensitivity › Tactile defensiveness › Skin sensitive to touch
Skin becomes sensitive to touch due to a myriad of reasons.
Tender and painful skin condition can be due to its reaction to allergens or underlying adverse health conditions.

There can be two forms of tender conditions to touch. The first being the apparent allergic reactions with lesions and inflammations resulting in tender feeling on touch.
This type of tender condition is dealt in detail in the post "causes of skin sensitivity".
On the other hand there may not be apparent damage or reaction on the skin but it may be touch sensitive, having painful tingling sensation and pinprick sensation.
The cause of this could be due to presence of chemicals and their use in cosmetics, detergents and clothing.
Some foods, food products and many food additives cause tactile hypersensitivity.
Sun exposure and environmental damages can cause the tender and painful feeling.
Hormonal effects and hereditary causes also can cause tactile sensitivity.
Certain health disorders, deficiencies and diseases can also give rise tender feeling to touch.

The deficiencies of thiamine (vitamin B1), biotin (vitamin B7) pyridoxine (vitamin B6) and riboflavin (vitamin B2) have been found to cause hypersensitivity with varied signs like tingling, pin prick and stabbing and painful sensation.
Supplementation with vitamins has been effective in the control of these symptoms.

Diabetes if untreated can cause neuropathy. Diabetic neuropathy affects all peripheral nerves. It can cause skin to be sore and sensitive to touch.
There may be even burning and electric pain.

Migraine apart from being a big bother can also give rise to allodynia (a painful condition of skin being sensitive to touch) and very normal activities like combing can give rise to intense pain.

Herpes zoster is a viral disease and causes blisters with mild to extreme pain with tingling, stinging, aching, stabbing and throbbing sensation.
After the resolution of the attack the lesion area will be very painful for many days to come.

Fibromyalgia (the cause of which is still under debate) can also cause pain and sensitivity of skin to touch.
The affected persons feel widespread painful skin, allodynia (increased response to pressure) and tingling sensation.
The skin may appear normal visually, but becomes highly sensitive to touch.

Peripheral neuropathy is the condition wherein the nerves of the peripheral nervous system are damaged.
There are various causes for this condition. Peripheral neuropathy causes skin to be very sensitive with symptoms like pain, tingling, crawling, itching and pins and needles sensations.
Pain can become very intense.
The affected person becomes so hypersensitive that he cannot stand anything touching certain parts of his body especially his feet.

Demyelineating disorders can give rise to sensitive touch.
There are a number of causes for the occurrence. Myelin sheath around the nerve fibre is destroyed in this ailment.
Paresthesias (sensation of tingling, pricking or stabbing) of the limbs are experienced by the affected persons.

Tactile defensiveness (sensory processing disorder) is a neurological disorder in the the midbrain region.
The stimuli are not properly evaluated and filtered by the brain resulting in exaggerated feeling of touch making the affected person distressed and uncomfortable.
The affected person may not tolerate slightest pressure on the skin.
Sudden appearance of tender feeling to touch can be a hint of progressive damage to the peripheral nerves or even the spinal cord and the brain.