Chronic Pain Management San Jose CA

Definition of Chronic Pain…

Pain is classified as acute or chronic, based on its duration.  is defined as pain lasting 3-6 months or more.  Acute pain usually is caused by injury or trauma, and it stops once the injury is healed. The two must be treated differently.  With chronic pain, the pain itself is the disease, and it does not respond to such standard therapies as surgery, medication, or bed rest.

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).

One of the most common causes of chronic pain is osteoarthritis, an age-related process of wear-and-tear in the joints. Chronic and cancer pain can be made worse by conditions resulting from the experience of the pain itself: emotional and muscular tension, misuse of drugs, inactivity or overactivity, and chronic depression.