Pat Oreilly

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Chronic pain is not just pain that lasts a long time...


Pat Oreilly

I am still amazed when I hear people talking about pain and realize that even when they have lived with pain for some time they have no understanding about what the term "chronic pain" really means. Chronic Pain is not just pain that has lasted a long time. Chronic pain is a complex condition that when left untreated can cause serious physical and emotional damage to the person that has unwillingly become the host for this life shattering villian. Let's take a look at pain.

Acute pain is a signal from the body to the brain that there has been an injury  and some action is necessary to stop the pain or keep it from getting worse. It is the message that causes us to pull away from the source of the pain, or to protect ourself from further damage by protecting the area quickly. This is the most common type of pain. It is the pain we learn about in biology and it is usually treated successfully.  All doctors understand acute pain, it is unpleasant but usually responds well to treatment.  .

Chronic pain is a different animal entirely. Chronic pain means that the pain has remained after the acute phase has healed, or should have healed. This is an important distinction because chronic pain is complicated, difficult to treat, and left untreated it causes even further damage in the body. A chronic pain condition means that instead of the body sending a message to the brain about injury, the brain is generating the pain message on its own and sending it to the body. The severity of chronic pain has no relationship to the severity of the incident that caused it. The injury may have been a minor one yet the pain is so intense that the person experiencing it cannot bear it. In some cases there never was an illness or injury, the pain message center became dysfunctional on its own.

In addition, in a chronic pain condition the same nerves that carry the physical pain message also carries psychic pain messages which are anger, depression, anxiety and others. Since both messages travel to the body along the same neuropathways they become intertwined and produce a combination message that tries to tell the body there is pain, both physical and emotional. For treatment to be effective both psychic and physical must be addressed. Furthermore, each individual has a different percentage of physical and psychic, making the generic method of pain management worthless for many.

And that is just the beginning of the dilema. Once pain messages are generated and sent to the body, the pain itself begins to change the nervous system, hormonal system and many other systems in the body. Once again, these changes are unique to each patient therefore treatment must encompass many factors in the right amounts and strengths. Many of these changes are permanent. Once they happen there is no going back.

Also, it is common for people to experience both chronic pain and acute pain at the same time. Conditions such as Arthritis, autoimmune disease, back injuries are all examples of both acute and chronic pain in one person. Many doctors only treat the acute pain, which is the easiest to treat, and leave the chronic pain. This is dangerous because it is the chronic pain that causes the changes in the body.

Treating chronic pain successfully means that the person must find a certain percentage of relief from many modalities. Perhaps the person can experience 40% relief from medication, 20% relief from exercise, 10% from relaxation exercises and so on. Finding the right combination can be very tricky but the option of not finding relief where one can means that it is likely the pain or the changes will get worse and the person will end up suffering even more. This not a condition that responds to the grin-and-bear-it method of pain control. Do that and eventually you may be able to do nothing at all.

Pain has changed your life and the only way to survive is to make lifestyle changes that can fight the damage pain. By learning all you can, making permanent changes with those therapies that you find that do help and keeping the best attitude possible one can still win the battle over pain.

Remember, chronic pain is not just pain that lasts too long. It is a separate condition that is complicated, has a mind of its own and wants to destroy you. Fight back, your life is at stake.

Pat Oreilly, 2002