What Is Chronic Pain?:

What Is Chronic Pain?: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronic_pain

Chronic pain was originally defined as pain that has lasted 6 months or longer.

More recently it has been defined as pain that persists longer than the temporal course of natural healing, associated with a particular type of injury or disease process.[1]

The International Association for the Study of Pain defines pain as \"an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with actual or potential tissue damage, or described in terms of such damage.\"[2]

It is important to note that pain is subjective in nature and is defined by the person experiencing it, and the medical community's understanding of chronic pain now includes the impact that the mind has in processing and interpreting pain signals.

What is Chronic Pain?: www.ninds.nih.gov/disorders/chronic_pain...nic_pain.htm#What_is

While acute pain is a normal sensation triggered in the nervous system to alert you to possible injury and the need to take care of yourself, chronic pain is different.

Chronic pain persists.

Pain signals keep firing in the nervous system for weeks, months, even years.

There may have been an initial mishap -- sprained back, serious infection, or there may be an ongoing cause of pain -- arthritis, cancer, ear infection, but some people suffer chronic pain in the absence of any past injury or evidence of body damage.

Many chronic pain conditions affect older adults.

Common chronic pain complaints include headache, low back pain, cancer pain, arthritis pain, neurogenic pain (pain resulting from damage to the peripheral nerves or to the central nervous system itself), psychogenic pain (pain not due to past disease or injury or any visible sign of damage inside or outside the nervous system).