Bob Roehr. “New Report Details Uphill Battle to Solve the U.S.'s Pain Problem,” Scientific American, July 1st, 2011, http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=chronic-pain-report&page=2.
PainBalance. “Prevalance of Chronic Pain,” Pain Balance, July 5th, 2011, http://www.painbalance.org/chronic-pain-prevalence-1743750239.
WebMD. “Pain Management Health Center,” WebMD, July 7th, 2011, http://www.webmd.com/pain-management/guide/pain-management-overview-facts.
Wikipedia. “Chronic Pain,” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, June 13th, 2011,http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronic_pain.
Pain is by definition, an unpleasant sensory or emotional experience associated with actual or potential tissue damage. Chronic Pain is any pain that lasts longer than the expected healing time and continues despite outward signs of injury. Anywhere 3 to 12 months post injury can be considered the transition point from acute to chronic pain. Chronic pain can be present in any part of the body and can have negative effects on physical functioning, the ability to work, personal relationships, sleep, mood and overall well-being. Chronic pain is a debilitating condition that effects over 116 million Americans and costs over $635 billion a year in treatment and loss of productivity in the work place annually. Common chronic pain ailments include back pain, neck pain, carpal tunnel syndrome]3], tendinitis, arthritis, [headaches and joint pain but is not limited to any specific area on the body or magnitude of pain level. Neuropathic pain is a neurological reaction that causes pain that is unrelated to any peripheral injury.
Symptoms and Complications
Symptoms and Complications
Why do we have pain?
The cause of Chronic pain, or pain that won't go away even when an injury has healed in not fully understood. The brain and it's neurotransmitters are largely responsible for our experience of pain and it is believed that the pathways that facilitate and modulate pain have gone awry.
Your perception or processing of pain by the nervous system is called Nociception. There can be many causes of pain, from injury, to chemical substances or hot or cold stimuli that can irritate our nerve endings called Nociceptors. Nociceptors are found in every tissue in the body except for the brain (your brain tissue actually can’t feel pain). These nerve fibers activate when we experience a painful event (stubbing your toe) and send pain signals up the spinal cord to the brain. All processing of pain occurs within the brain through nerve receptors and neurotransmitter which then send signals back down to the injured area resulting in the sensation of pain.
Having an abnormally high level of pain response to a mild stimulus (i.e. bumping your arm against the table) is called Hyperalgesia and pain caused by a non-painful stimuli (i.e. a feather touching your arm) is called Allodynia. Referred pain can also occur when pain from an internal organ produces the perception of pain on another area of the body other than the organ itself.
Pain is by definition, an unpleasant sensory or emotional experience associated with actual or potential tissue damage. Chronic Pain is any pain that lasts longer than the expected healing time and continues despite outward signs of injury. Anywhere 3 to 12 months post injury can be considered the transition point from acute to chronic pain. Chronic pain can be present in any part of the body and can have negative effects on physical functioning, the ability to work, personal relationships, sleep, mood and overall well-being. Chronic pain is a debilitating condition that effects over 116 million Americans and costs over $635 billion a year in treatment and loss of productivity in the work place annually. Common chronic pain ailments include back pain, neck pain, carpal tunnel syndrome]3], tendinitis, arthritis, [headaches and joint pain but is not limited to any specific area on the body or magnitude of pain level. Neuropathic pain is a neurological reaction that causes pain that is unrelated to any peripheral injury.
