Chronic pain can be described as pain that lasts long enough, or is intense enough, to affect a person's normal activities and well being. It may continue over a long period of time or come and go. Any area of the body can be affected.
Chronic Pain is an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience that starts with an injury or illness. The incoming pain signals trigger specialized nerve cells in your brain to tell your muscles how to respond.
With chronic pain, the pain signals keep firing up the nervous system for months, even years, either continually or as flare-ups. In many cases, the response is needless since the initial injury or illness is over. Or the cause may be an ongoing condition like arthritis, an illness like cancer or unknown. Whatever the cause, chronic pain often is intractable. The cause of the pain cannot be removed or treated, and the pain itself cannot be relieved. Unrelieved pain creates a vicious cycle. It can make people unable to work, concentrate, socialize, eat properly, or sleep. That in turn may lead to depression, anxiety and frustration, which accentuates the pain and leaves the patient even less able to cope with the normal activities of life.