Chronic Pain
If every doctor has told you or your loved one that there is nothing more they can do for your Chronic Pain, we can. There is a Way®! Dr. Diane® Brain Health uses cutting-edge technology. She has the Solutions and ResourcesSM to get you feeling your best and regain your life again. Trained in conventional, complementary, and alternative specialties, the Dr. Diane® integrative team of Brain Health Experts uses her 5 Prong Approach. This approach allows the team to provide you with customized treatment for PTSD. Diane sees each person as unique and knows that one method does not fit everyone.
Meaning of Chronic
It is essential to understand the difference between the terms acute and chronic. In the medical and psychological world, acute is something currently happening, or that has just happened—defined in the dictionary as a present experience of a severe or intense degree. On the other hand, chronic means an ongoing unresolved issue.
Understanding Chronic Pain
A Warning Signal
Pain is neither good nor bad; instead, it is a warning signal that something is wrong. Like a warning light on your car, pain is a symptom warning you of something wrong in the brain or body.
The warning signal of pain helps you to react and respond. Acute pain is an early warning signal. Its psychological symptom is anxiety, which allows you to respond to the threat quickly. For example, when too close to a fire, acute pain tells you to react to its heat so that you can remove your hand and avoid getting burned.
Long-Lasting
Chronic pain is long-lasting, often having a life of its own. Its psychological symptom is depression. Thus, chronic pain and depression often go hand in hand. Chronic pain is also called Post-Traumatic Pain since the source of the depression and despair has typically happened at a much earlier time. Since Chronic Pain affects you emotionally, psychologically, physically, and spiritually, there needs to be a more complex program for the treatment to be successful.
Muscular and emotional injuries from any direct trauma can be painful and slow to heal. Still, movement problems, emotional trauma, and Chronic Central Nervous System (CNS) Pain from diffuse brain injury, rotation injury, and blast injury may linger even longer. In some cases, these conditions may become permanent.
Definition of Pain
As defined by the International Association of the Study of Pain, Pain is “an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with actual or potential tissue damage, or described in terms of such damage.” The perception of pain is a complex operation involving an intricate network of connections to and from the spinal cord and brain, collectively known as the Central Nervous System, or CNS. The location of the brain’s pain centers and the fine points of pain perception remain under research. Still, the CNS allows you to sense pain when something is not right with your body.
With a typical soft-tissue injury, the brain perceives the damage. It sends a message to the muscle to respond by tightening or spasming. This, in turn, sends the sensation of pain back to the brain, completing what is called the pain-spasm cycle. In addition, the actual injury causes the body to react and repair through an inflammatory response.
Pain Assessment
Pain can be difficult to assess because it is personal and unique to the person experiencing it. Therefore, we use subjective methods (what a person feels) and objective methods (diagnostic assessments) of scientific measurement to evaluate pain.
Diagnostic Assessment
There are a vast number of clinical tests done to assess chronic pain. Electrophysiological testing, such as the Nerve Conduction Velocity (NCV) study, is used to locate damage in nerves in various muscles. Also, imaging tests look for structural damage, along with psychological pain assessments such as the Vanderbilt Pain Management Inventory. Each test provides information that helps the clinician diagnose and find suitable treatment to help you manage your Chronic Pain.