Chronic Pain Treatment

Do you suffer from chronic pain? Are you looking for help and don’t know where to turn? Have you gone from doctor to doctor seeking help but were dismissed or given pain pills and other medications to mask your symptoms? You are not alone, and there is hope!

Chronic pain is becoming increasingly prevalent in the United States and around the world. According to an Institute of Medicine Report from 2011 about 100 million U.S. adults alone suffered from chronic pain. This means that chronic pain affects more people than cancer, heart disease, and diabetes combined. The number of chronic pain sufferers continues to rise and the cost of diagnosis and treatment has reached over $600 billion. Sadly in many cases, the root causes are not being uncovered and treated properly and people continue to suffer from chronic pain on a daily basis, severely inhibiting their quality of life.

What is Chronic Pain?

There are two kinds of pain: acute pain and chronic pain. Acute pain is a normal response in the body to some sort of injury or problem, alerting a person that something is wrong. It shows up, is treated and heals, and goes away. Chronic pain is pain that persists over long periods of time and is usually classified as pain that has persisted for more than 3 months.

With chronic pain the signals that fire with acute pain continue to fire for weeks, months, and even years. Sometimes an injury or illness starts the chronic pain cycle and continues from there. At other times, no injury or initial cause appears to be present.

Although chronic pain is more likely to affect older adults as they age, incidences of chronic pain are showing up in younger and younger populations. Surprisingly many of these cases aren’t being reported because young people want to be normal and fit in so they’re ignoring their pain and just living with it.

Physical Symptoms of Chronic Pain

Symptoms of chronic pain can include persistent pulsing, shooting, burning, aching, stinging, or electrical pain anywhere in the body. It can also be felt as discomfort, tightness, soreness, or stiffness. Chronic pain sufferers report the following types of pain:

Other Symptoms of Chronic Pain

Chronic pain can also lead to emotional and social difficulties as sufferers deal with the never ending pain. Chronic pain sufferers may deal with:

Causes of Chronic Pain

Chronic pain is often undiagnosed or misdiagnosed and therefore never properly addressed. At LifeWorks Wellness Center we know that the root causes of chronic pain can be due to:

How We Treat Chronic Pain Differently

Conventional medicine may ignore chronic pain or try to cover it up with pain medications. This quote from the report Relieving Pain in America shows just how bleak the outlook is with conventional medicine:

“For many patients, treatment of pain is inadequate not just because of uncertain diagnoses and societal stigma, but also because of shortcomings in the availability of effective treatments and inadequate patient and clinician knowledge about the best ways to manage pain.”

Not only are conventional treatments ineffective, but the whole premise of conventional medicine is erroneous. Did you notice that the final words of this quote talk about managing pain? At LifeWorks Wellness Center in Clearwater, FL our goal is not to manage chronic pain, but rather to identify the root causes and eliminate the pain all together. We use a comprehensive approach to diagnosis and treatment that examines every possible cause of chronic pain and treats it effectively, giving people their lives back.

Treatment options for chronic pain vary based on what your specific issues are. Here are some of the treatment options we use at LifeWorks to help you regain your health: