Good article from Self magazine about chronic pain(great magazine, by the way).
I thought this part was very interesting:
"Over time, prolonged discomfort can permanently damage your nervous system, diminishing your body’s ability to ease pain, so you experience it more intensely. According to one researcher, if you can’t treat the ache within a short window, it’s more likely to persist. “Central nervous system changes peak at three weeks of pain, and then they may become irreversible,” says Clifford Woolf, M.D., professor of anesthesia research at Harvard Medical School in Boston.
Unfortunately, most doctors and patients aren’t aware of how urgently treatment is needed. One survey conducted by the American Chronic Pain Association in Rocklin, California, found that 72 percent of people with chronic pain have lived with it for more than three years, and a third have dealt with discomfort for longer than a decade. Chronic pain interferes with a sufferer’s life, straining relationships, deep-sixing careers and leading to depression, even suicide. Thankfully, new discoveries in research are finally giving doctors a better understanding of how pain becomes persistent — and the best ways to ease suffering."
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22494294/
That makes sense
I'm enjoying all of these old posts being brought to the top...many of them I never saw. I'm home from work today, sick with the flu, so these old posts are giving me something to take my mind away from my nausea.