5 Facts You May Not Know About Chronic Pain

It is easier to treat a physical injury or an internal illness because you can always find the cause of it and treat it accordingly. But chronic pain may not be the cause of one single illness. Instead, it is the result of many illnesses.

This makes it difficult to fixate on a specific treatment plan. It is the kind of pain that continues for more than months at a time and keeps getting more unbearable.

Chronic pain and disability take a huge toll on your mental health too. You often end up believing that the pain is probably in your head which gives rise to anxiety and depression. But, it is not so. It is quite real and extremely painful.

Chronic pain is not your usual kind of pain because there is not much information known about it. The only known piece of info is how its sources vary. Let us look at 5 facts that you may not have known about chronic pain.

Caused by physical injury

This is the most common type of chronic pain. You may have suffered some kind of physical injury at some point in your life that remained untreated, or, it may so happen that the treatment was not sufficient.

This may give rise to chronic pain later. Many people over the years have complained about chronic pain. Later it was known that most of them had suffered physical injuries at some point in their lives.

Caused due to brain injuries

Brain injuries are extremely serious and may have dire consequences, which is why they should be checked by a doctor as soon as possible. But, again, they can still be the source of chronic pain later in your life.

Sometimes you may not even feel pain if the injury is not serious enough, but it may still have some kind of effect in the form of headaches. This is also a type of chronic pain.

More common in females

Doctors have received complaints about chronic pain more from females, than from males. This can only be explained by either of two reasons.

Men are often deemed stronger than women which is probably why women are prone to more injuries that may later cause chronic pain.

The other probable reason is how women are extremely resilient and may shrug off a minor injury because it did not bother them much. This untreated injury may cause chronic pain later in their lives.

Common in individuals suffering from PTSD

Chronic pain is sometimes psychological too but that does not make it any less than real. People suffering from PTSD have unhealed trauma which may cause chronic pain.

Such individuals must undergo different types of therapy sessions to overcome this.

Reduced opioid use

The drug opioid is used to treat chronic pain, but it is not without side effects. Patients may end up suffering from substance use disorder. To prevent this, alternative methods of treatment have been employed which can only explain the reduced use of opioids.