Generally speaking, one in four people are affected by chronic pain, which is a complex and devastating condition. Those suffering from chronic pain have to come to terms with the way this disease alters their lives. However, not many people are aware of how chronic pain can influence a sufferer’s life.
We have created this post to help offer some crucial information surrounding the effects of chronic pain. Continue reading to find out more.
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Now, you might not fully understand chronic pain. Most people believe it to mean that it’s an intensive pain felt by people. However, it goes deeper. This is pain that lasts for more than three months. One of the most common forms of chronic pain is known as musculoskeletal pain, such as severe arthritis or lower backaches.
This long-term pain is typically caused by an initial injury, like a pulled muscle or back strain. It’s understood that this chronic pain develops once nerves have become damaged. From this nerve damage, the pain becomes more intense while lasting for longer.
Most sufferers of chronic pain developed this condition from sustaining an alternative injury. Such medical issues might include:
When a person is suffering from chronic pain, it can affect every aspect of their lives. From beginning as a pebble in a shoe, it can grow to a thorn or a sharp piece of glass – depending on the pain’s intensity.
However, the most significant difference is that you can easily take the foreign object out of your shoe. When it comes to living with this chronic pain, it becomes far more complex than simply taking the pain out of the affected region of your body.
This constant suffering can affect a person’s mentality in various ways. It plays a role in how you think, feel, sleep, concentrate, remember, and even how you interact with other people. Persistent may sound intense, exaggerated, and far-reaching. However, only people who experience this pain understand how debilitating it can be.
Research has been conducted to identify the different ways our brain reacts to short-term and long-term (or chronic) pain. From these investigations, results have shown that the body can change the central nervous system (CNS) while also influencing emotional, sensory, and modular circuits otherwise inhibiting pain.
Chronic pain is now seen as a neurological disease of its own – comorbid with common symptoms of depression and anxiety. This is because of the altered emotional and cognitive states by the CNS. Hence, the longer you suffer from this pain, the greater it becomes and the more prone you are to feelings of anxiety, fear, and depression. That is why constant and debilitating pain can have a massive impact on a person’s life.
Here are some of the most prevalent ways chronic pain can affect your life:
Living with chronic pain can adversely affect a person’s mood by making them more susceptible to emotional changes, fostering fear, anxiety, and depression. These mood disorders can also promote dependency on prescription medications that are designed to treat pain. Such medication might include opioids.
The more an individual feels sad, alone, or scared, the more likely they are to abuse these medications. Abusing this medication can also offer a temporary mask to this pain because of the ‘euphoric’ feeling formed. Nonetheless, this sense of discomfort and hopelessness returns once the medication wears off, which can rapidly develop into a vicious cycle.
Suffering from chronic pain can severely disturb a person’s sleeping patterns. When experiencing unrelenting or sporadic pain, it’s difficult for sufferers to fall asleep and remain sleeping for seven to nine hours.
According to the National Sleep Foundation, an estimated 21 percent of Americans experience chronic pain. This causes each sufferer to lose an average of 42 minutes of sleep each night.
A study performed by the University of Alberta showed that pain doesn’t only affect a person’s emotional, physical, and mental states, it can also play an adverse role in their concentration and memory. Chronic pain interferes with the memory trace required to hold information for long-term storage and processing. This can affect a person’s ability to remember, focus, and concentrate at the moment.
There’s no doubt that the side effects of living with pain can bleed into relationships with family, friends, and coworkers. The physical limitations that generally develop and the tendency to be less patient while suffering from this pain can limit a person’s ability to emphasize and interact with others.
Such issues might lead to interruptions in an individual’s social life. This is because a person might be more inclined to remain at home rather than going out to public areas and socializing. Chronic pain can also interfere with sexual relationships, parenting, on-the-job or household tasks, and interacting with children.
Unfortunately, mental health issues (commonly brought on by chronic pain) and drug dependence are linked to an enhanced risk of addiction. Many opioids (like Vicodin, OxyContin, and Percocet) affect the part of the brain that perceives pain. Such addiction can be caused by these substances flooding the brain’s neurotransmitters with dopamine (a ‘feel good’ hormone).
Living with pain is a consistent battle to fight against the mental, emotional, and physical discomforts caused. Trying to limit all these symptoms in one go can be overwhelming. However, the right support from friends and family can play a vital role in helping reduce this pain.
When chronic pain stems from the spinal region, you have many medical treatments that you can look at. One of these is the breakthrough spine surgery implants available from Premia Spine. These implants are used to treat deformity while stabilizing and strengthening the spinal column and facilitating fusion.
Contact us now to learn how these spine surgery impacts from Premia Spine can fight against chronic pain.
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