Defining Chronic Pain

To set the scene for the next project I will be describing, I want to take a post to define chronic pain.

For our purposes, we will define chronic pain as pain that persists for 3 or more months. I will use the example of chronic leg pain throughout this post. Let's say that one day I wake up, and my left leg hurts. I take some Advil to try to alleviate the pain. However, the leg pain comes back when the Advil wears off. Over time, taking Advil alone is not enough to make the pain manageable. Perhaps I begin going to physical therapy or I see my pediatrician about my leg pain. Through this example, we see that chronic pain is pain that persists despite treatment (in my case, the treatment options are taking Advil, going to physical therapy, and talking to my pediatrician). Chronic pain inhibits daily life. You can see how my chronic leg pain might make my quality of life decrease: I will be less inclined to go on walks with my friends, daily tasks such as going up stairs might become harder, etc. Now that you know how simple chronic pain can be (my leg pain example), try to guess how many people are affected by chronic pain. In the US alone, chronic pain affects around 100 million people. Therefore, effective methods of treating chronic pain are needed in healthcare. This idea will be essential in describing my next project in the lab.