Chronic Pain
Chronic Pain is a conditions or more recently suggested a disease which affects approximately 13% of the Irish population. It results in work limitations and absenteeism, impaired relationships and a significantly reduced quality of life. Pain is chronic when it lingers past 3 months. The pain may have originated as it normally does due to injury but with chronic conditions the pain will continue even when the injury has healed. When discussing symptoms of pain which is chronic it must also be explained the effect chronic pain has on the quality of life of the individual suffering.
The symptoms can be as follows:
- Pain which lingers after 3 months and seems to not go away. It may vary from mild to intense pain and more constant in nature.
- The pain may be dull, shooting, electrical or burning.
- You may not know what triggers your pain which means you find it difficult to know what will calm it down!
- You may feel over sensitive to touch.
People suffering with chronic pain will feel tired, drained, fearful and at times suicidal. Chronic pain has such an impact on peoples life that in certain cases it is difficult to continue to work and maintain relationships. Physiotherapy helps ease the pain ad re-educate muscles patterns which have become disrupted from the pain. The main aim is to reduce the pain and increase your overall ability to exercise and get on with every day activities and work. Early treatment of pain by your physiotherapist will help prevent chronic pain developing as once it develops it can be very difficult to fully resolve due to it’s unreliable behaviour.
