Understanding Chronic Pain

In the United States alone, it is estimated that fifty million individuals suffer from chronic pain. Over the past couple of decades, it has become clear to researchers that pain response is no simple matter. In fact, pain is a complex process that involves an individual's psychological makeup i.e. stress, emotions, and mental connections and connotations, as well as injury, pain, and sensation.

The Interdisciplinary Pain Management Clinic in Utah is conducting a study that involves individuals that range from healthy students (over 18) to patients who suffer from chronic pain.

The study measures the brain's pain response by administering small painful electric shocks to volunteers in order to map the brain's response to painful stimuli through brain imaging.

Brain imaging has shown that individuals who experience chronic pain have different brain activity patterns and respond differently to pain than those who do not suffer from chronic pain. The study's goal is to better understand how individuals experience pain, in order to have better and more effective methods of treatment.

Professor Richard Chapman (Interdisplinary Pain Management Clinic) indicated that the data garnered from the study seems to indicate that individuals who have fibromyalgia tolerate a smaller amount of pain than individuals who do not have the disorder.

Of course, in today's society the push seems to be to find that illusive all encompassing pain medication that will cure chronic pain once and for all. Since that does not seem to be in the near future, this clinic and other researchers are researching other alternative techniques such as yoga or meditation as possible treatments to ease chronic pain.

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