Chronic pain is one of the commonest ailments affecting people of all ages. It’s also one of the most difficult to treat and cure. Most people feel that they have no alternative but to suffer in silence, and to reduce their activity to control the pain. However, a pain clinic that uses chiropractor therapies and exercise to help manage and reduce chronic back pain, arthritis and migraines can achieve remarkable results. A body and mental health center that works for you can help you get your life back.
Chronic pain is a common problem
Lower back pain is the most common type of pain suffered by Americans, affecting 27% of the respondents, according to a study by the National Institutes of Health. The next most frequent ailment, headaches or migraines, affected 15%. Other common sources of chronic pain are gout and arthritis.
Altogether, Americans spend more than $50 billion each year on back pain relief. The irony is that most treatments are barely effective, and people are just forced to deal with the pain, limiting their activity and movements to manage their lives.
More than one in four, or 26% of Americans over 20 years of age, report that they live with some kind of chronic pain. Chronic pain is defined as persisting over 24 hours or more. That’s 76.5 million Americans living with pain that circumscribes their lives and cannot be cured.
Economic consequences of chronic pain
Chronic back pain and similar conditions affect not only everyday life but also the sufferer’s capacity to work. This has serious consequences for individual workers, employers and the economy as a whole. It is estimated that the annual costs of chronic pain, when you add in healthcare expenditure as well as lost income and productivity, is around $100 billion.
Workers typically lose hours due to conditions like back pain, arthritis and musculoskeletal pain. This loss averages 4.6 hours per week. Such conditions affect more than half or 52.7% of the workforce surveyed.
Chronic head aches and similar conditions are difficult to treat because there is no known cure for these. Some body and mental health centers use treatments like chiropractic therapy to help chronic pain sufferers regain control over their bodies and their lives.
Loss of control and enjoyment of life
Along with loss of productivity, chronic pain sufferers also experience the loss of enjoyment of life and ordinary activities. One survey found that more than half or 51% of the respondents felt that they had little to no control over the pain. In the absence of any effective treatment, the only course left to sufferers is to restrict their activity.
Chronic pain also leads to depression in the vast majority of cases. As many as 77% of the respondents said that they suffered from depression resulting from the pain and its effects on their lives and work.
Chronic pain affect the ability to concentrate at work. It even prevents sufferers from sleeping well, with 86% of respondents saying that they were unable to rest because of the pain.
Conventional medicine and even surgery don’t offer a cure for chronic pain, and the chances of reducing pain are small. Many patients who have been through multiple treatments and surgeries find that a body and mental health center that uses therapies like chiropractic treatment can actually relieve the pain and help them recover their lives. Many sufferers who try such therapies come to these after having tried everything else. Their only regret is that they didn’t try them sooner.
