Fact - Chronic Pain Shrinks Brains

[nopain]

Interesting Article posted by Live Science regarding an article published last month in the Journal of Internal Medicine.

I've republished the article here for those interested (with a link to the source for those that want to dig even deeper):

5 Painful Facts You Need to Know | Back & Neck Pain Solutions - Integrative Medicine & Nutrition

For those short on time here is the excerpt:

If you have chronic pain, you know how demoralizing and debilitating it can be, physically and mentally. It can prevent you from doing things and make you irritable for reasons nobody else understands. But that’s only half the story. People with chronic backaches have brains as much as 11 percent smaller than those of non-sufferers, scientists reported in 2004. They don’t know why. “It is possible it’s just the stress of having to live with the condition,” said study leader A. Vania Apkarian of Northwestern University. “The neurons become overactive or tired of the activity.”

So the next time your Doctor says that Pain is not a good enough reason to operate... perhaps they should consider what happens to Brain of the Chronic Pain Sufferer. It's not like you Brain is going to grow back!

Now I am not here to address Surgery as the only viable option for pain treatment, and of course it would be nice if the Medical Profession understood pain well enough to find the CAUSE of the pain in Chronic Sufferers. But I am here to say, it's not okay to "just go home and live with it".

And it's further frustrating that when you need medication for your condition you are often treated as an addict. And there is so much pressure on Doctors to NOT prescribe pain medications due to potential abuse by the public at large.

The point is PAIN IS NOT OKAY TO JUST LIVE WITH. It's unfortunate but the only person who can truly understand your pain is YOU, and YOU are also the only person that is really going to be able to fight for yourself. People who are not suffering really don't get it.