Most diagnoses cite a physical cause for chronic pain, but there's robust evidence that it comes from the mind instead.
As a chronic pain sufferer, I sometimes surprise people by telling them that my pain doesn’t have a physical cause. It’s a mind-body thing, I say, related to stress and emotions. To many, this sounds like admitting to being a little bit crazy. And when I up the ante by suggesting they’ve probably had this kind of pain too, some become outright angry, interpreting my words to mean their pain is “all in their head.” All of which makes a new study published in the Journal of Pain a big deal.
If the cause is non-physical, the money is wasted and the suffering only mounts. And not only are we failing to alleviate the pain, we are creating dangerous side effects that include the opioid crisis as well as surgeries that may be unnecessary and can leave patients worse off. Of course, sometimes chronic pain does have a physical cause, and distinguishing between when it does and doesn’t is crucial.
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