People who are diagnosed with a chronic, painful, inflammatory disease, i.e. Rheumatoid Arthritis, Fibromyalgia, etc., may experience pain even when their inflammation is well controlled.
Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com
Dealing with constant pain is exhausting, debilitating, physically draining, nutritionally challenging, fatiguing and can interfering with a person’s mood and memory ability.
Centralized pain signals arise from distress changes in the central nervous system CNS which is comprised of the brain and spinal cord where pain alerts are processed according to a September/October 2018 article in Arthritis Today (p. 28). Experiencing intense, chronic, unrelenting pain marks the brain with sensory input pathways.
According to Wikipedia, chronic disease and chronic pain is a condition that lasts longer than three months. Can you imagine attempting to perform functions of your daily life while being bombarded by pulsing, unrelenting sensations cascading throughout your muscles and joints?
Photo by Projeto Equality on Pexels.com
Merriam Webster defines “chronic” is something that is “continuing or occurring again and again for a long time.” This includes reoccurring lower back pain or hormone-related migraine headaches as well as joint inflammation from finger and toe disfigurement of rheumatoid arthritis.
Chronic pain, pain every day in every way, raises the normal functioning awareness of throbbing affliction for anyone experiencing it to a threshold of unbearability.
We have read well-researched professional articles discussing adequate medical interventions to either reduce or help to control life-long, unrelenting pain. However, there is a fresh look at this well-worn issue. MDedge/Family Medicine News reprinted a recent interesting article (September 21, 2018) originally issued from De Vita MJ et al. JAMA Psychiatry. 2018 Sep 19 that addresses this exact subject.
Photo by Bruno Thethe on Pexels.com
Meta-analysis finds that the threshold for chronic pain can be raised to make the pain more tolerable. This study states that chronic pain can feel less unpleasant and more tolerable which suggests that there can be an influence on the overall pain process.
The “influencer” in this meta-data analysis is cannabinoids wish shows that there is a significant association between cannabinoids and higher pain thresholds. An interesting twist to this finding is that plant-based cannabis has a significantly stronger association with reductions in pain unpleasantness than synthetic.
A fresh look at pain control may be worth a glance.
