Suffering From Chronic Pain in Your 20s?

Many young people experience chronic pain even as early as their 20s. They tend to find themselves working closely with a team of medical experts trying to ease the symptoms and find a way through but obviously it can be very debilitating especially at a time in life when freedom and mobility are so critical to the lifestyle. The idea of going out and maintaining a normal 20-something social life is quite difficult with chronic pain. Many lifestyle changes young people are forced to inhibit such as medications, specific and strict diets gets in the way of social activities.

With chronic pain comes new and different priorities and limitations arise. Chronic pain is a full-time job. Chronic pain forces young people to always be in constant energy-saving mode.  People in their 20s have to become acclimated to certain foods in their diet but cooking healthy food and exercising does become more challenging. 

But sleep hygiene is above all else very important to those with chronic pain. They also focus on getting an actual pain guru, someone who can really understand the difficulty of living with chronic pain. 

There is constant research around treatment and cure for a chronic pain.

Recently researchers from Columbia University Medical Center may have found a way to reverse chronic pain. Did you know that in the United States, there are about 100 million people who suffer from chronic pain? Chronic pain is a condition that can be very debilitating. It often leads to many years of consistent pain that does not go away.

Chronic pain is pain that last longer than six months. The severity of the pain can vary from mild to severe and it can either be persistent or occur in intervals. Chronic pain can either be not much of a problem for a person to deal with, or, it can be completely debilitating. The pain can last for months or even years and the longer a person suffers from it, the more a person suffers emotionally and physically.

Chronic pain can cause serious emotional problems for a person due to how difficult it can be to deal with the physical pain and to find a lasting treatment for it. The emotional pain can even make the physical pain worse. This can lead to feeling anxious, depressed, stressed out, angry, and fatigued. The combination of these feelings can result in a decreased amount of the production of the body’s natural painkillers. It can also make a person more sensitive to the physical pain. Due to the link between the body and the mind when suffering from chronic pain, treatment requires not only physical, but psychological treatment. 

The symptoms of chronic pain include mild to severe pain that does not go away, pain that may be feel like a shooting, burning, aching pain, feeling of discomfort, soreness, tightness, or stiffness. The pain associated with chronic pain occurs with multiple symptoms. Other symptoms of chronic pain may include fatigue, sleeplessness, withdrawal from activity and increased need to rest, weakened immune system, changes in mood including hopelessness, fear, depression, irritability, anxiety, and stress, or disability.

Researchers may have found a way to reverse chronic pain as they claim to have discovered the molecular pathway for chronic pain in laboratory animals. They did so by studying animals who do not feel chronic pain at all. They were able to identify a faulty gene that works by switching off switch off the pain associated with chronic pain.

The study analyzed data from fifteen rats in which they determined that inflammation or injury causes a series of chemical events that activate the protein kinase G. This causes nerve cells to become ‘hyperexcitable’ and sends pain signals to the brain. Whenever protein kinase G is activated, there is pain present.

Currently, people suffering with chronic pain tend to manage their condition through using medications such as painkillers. This has become a worldwide problem because painkillers have many negative side effects and many people often become addicted to or dependent on them. While the study’s findings are not ready to be used in human patients yet, the researchers hope that this could lead to a number of new treatments in the future for people suffering from chronic pain, which would stop the abuse of painkillers as a form of treatment.