Word: paines
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WHAT CAUSES CHRONIC PAIN...
Before you can give pain the treatment it deserves, you have to understand what it is and why we have it. Nasty though it is, pain plays a valuable role in our overall health. Doctors liken it to an alarm system for the body. When skin, cartilage, muscle or other tissue is injured, peripheral nerves in the area send a shrieking signal to the spinal cord and brain. The immediate result, usually processed in the spinal cord: you pull your hand away from the stove, you shift your weight off the broken bone, you sit down. All pain signals ultimately...
With chronic pain, however, the alarm continues to shriek uselessly long after the physical danger has passed. Somewhere along the line--maybe near the initial injury, maybe in the spinal cord or brain--the alarm system has broken down. What researchers have only recently come to understand is that prolonged exposure to this screaming siren actually does its own damage. "Pain causes a fundamental rewiring of the nervous system," says Dr. Sean Mackey, director of research at Stanford University's Pain Management Center. "Each time we feel pain, there are changes that occur that tend to amplify our experience...
...pain-management clinics such as those at Stanford and UCSF or the Wasser Pain Management Center in Toronto, doctors dive in with a broad array of therapies, devising a program that is tailored to the individual patient. The four main elements of such programs are drugs; injection therapies (nerve blocks like epidurals); physical therapy and exercise; and behavioral techniques that include relaxation training, biofeedback and psychotherapy. "If you ask most physicians how they would treat a patient, they would say, 'I use this drug' or 'I use that drug.' But there are many ways of treating chronic conditions that...
That's been true for Bill Highland, a retired electrician from Yuba City, Calif., who for the past two years has been battling searing pain in his shoulder blade and armpit from shingles. Highland tried a variety of drugs, but they brought only temporary relief. Finally he was referred to pain psychologist Ingela Symreng at the Pain Management Center at the University of California, Davis, to learn techniques that would help him control his pain. Symreng teaches patients relaxation exercises, breathing skills, guided imagery (focusing on pleasant mental images) and distraction techniques. Highland, 83, quickly became a master of deep...