Like nearly 52 million adults in the United States, you wake each morning and wonder just how much your chronic pain is going to influence the day ahead. In fact, it’s never a matter of if, but how much, and the negative impact is only getting worse the longer the pain persists.
Since September is Pain Awareness Month, we thought we’d shine the spotlight on some of the surprising ways in which pain can impact your life — obviously not in good ways.
When people refer to chronic pain as a prison, the comparison is no exaggeration. Chronic pain can trap you in a never-ending cycle of poor mental and physical health. The team here at Neuropathy & Pain Centers of Texas wants to help break this cycle, which is why we offer comprehensive pain management services. These services are designed to, yes, relieve your pain, and also to improve almost every other area of your life as we help you to put chronic pain in the rearview mirror.
Let’s first touch on what we consider to be chronic pain. By the numbers, chronic pain is any pain that lasts three months or longer. That said, if we diagnose you with a degenerative issue, such as osteoarthritis, which affects about 32.5 million Americans, we can call it chronic right off the bat.
Some of the more common roads to chronic pain include the aforementioned arthritis, as well as:
This list is far from comprehensive, but it certainly illustrates the magnitude of the problem.
Now, let’s dive into what occurs in your body when you experience ongoing pain, outside of the obvious discomfort, such as:
Pain places your body in a state of stress and triggers the release of stress hormones. These hormones lead to physical and mental changes such as difficulty with concentration and muscle tension throughout your body. With chronic pain, these metabolic changes endure, placing you in a permanent, and unhealthy, stress response that can wear your body down.
As you might imagine, living with pain on a daily basis can certainly take a toll on mental health. For example, symptoms of depression and anxiety are nearly 5 times more common among people who struggle with chronic pain than in those who are not dealing with pain.
When people have chronic pain, the pain can take on a life of its own. When you have an injury, the tissue damage can alter the sensitivity of your peripheral nervous system, making you more susceptible to pain. So, when people describe chronic pain as a vicious cycle, there’s a good deal of scientific proof to back this up.
When you’re in pain, your body jumps into action to fix the problem, enlisting many of your resources in the effort. As a result, many people with chronic pain complain of fatigue because their bodies exhaust themselves trying to address the pain.
Given all these potential side effects, it’s little wonder that chronic pain can make your world very small as you’re unable to visit with friends, work, or perform simple daily tasks.
As a practice that focuses on pain management, we want you to know that our overriding goal is to bring you much needed relief from your chronic pain. It's tough to say here what that might entail, because each circumstance is different, but we want to assure you that we leave no stone unturned when it comes to breaking you free from chronic pain.
For expert and skilled management of your chronic pain, we invite you to call or message one of our locations in Waco, Arlington, Wichita Falls, or Fort Worth, Texas, today to schedule an appointment.
