Chronic Pain And Chronic Health Issues: A Massive Problem
Chronic or persistent pain is a massive worldwide problem that is not going away.
If you have chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, IBS, headaches, TMJ, RSI, etc. just substitute your ailment word for the word ‘pain’ here. It’s the same neural system creating different problems.
The numbers vary by country, but between 10% to 55% of all people in the world have chronic pain.
To give you an idea of the size of this problem, the U.S. alone spends $635 billion a year treating chronic pain!
Can you believe there is more money spent on chronic pain than for diabetes, cancer, and heart disease combined!
With all that money spent, why are we not seeing a reduction in chronic pain cases?
TWO MAIN REASONS
- Many healthcare providers are still treating chronic pain the same way they treat acute pain.
- We know from a lot of recent research the source of most chronic pain is in the brain and nerve pathways while the source of most acute/subacute pain from injuries is in the local tissues likes the muscles, fascia, ligaments, joints, bones, etc.
- Treatments like physical therapy, chiropractic care, injections, pain pills, surgery, etc. can be good options for acute pain and injuries in the local tissues. However, with chronic pain they miss the mark because they are still focusing on treating the tissues (symptoms). The science is clear that most of the structural changes we see in the body are normal age-related changes.
- Most clinics practice pain ‘management’, not pain ‘solution’ aiming to eliminate the problem.
- There’s a big difference between managing and solving something. Managing leaves the impression that it always has to be controlled which could go on forever. Doesn’t give you much hope for a solution, does it?
- The pain ‘management’ approach has led to additional problems such as an opioid (pain pill) epidemic and a reliance on health care practitioners for ongoing treatments. These treatments usually offer only short-term relief to ‘manage’ the pain and keeps patients coming back for more.
Do you know it is possible to ‘solve’ your chronic pain and health issues and and not be stuck ‘managing’ them forever?
What does it take? A different approach than the one you’ve been doing. This approach treats the source of the pain and many health issues using the most powerful organ in your body, the brain and its associated nervous system! If you change the signaling in your brain and nervous system, you can change the root of the problem.
Learn more by clicking on The Brain and Nervous System Approach.
