Chronic pain

Women are more likely to have chronic pain conditions. Pain is chronic if it lasts
more than three months. Chronic pain can sometimes last years or even decades. Sometimes, pain is caused by injury or disease. In such cases lab tests show definite signs of injury or disease in an organ or other body part. In other chronic pain conditions, the pain can't be traced to any specific disease or injury. The exact cause of the pain is unknown. In these cases, the chronic pain itself is the disease.

Whatever its cause, chronic pain can interfere with all aspects of your life. It can:

• make it difficult to work and interact with family and friends.
• make you feel irritable and depressed.
• make it hard to sleep.
• make you lose interest in food and sex.
• make you less inclined to get physical activity (as a result, you may gain weight, which can make some chronic pain problems worse).
• lead to dependency on narcotic pain-killers or alcohol as a way of coping with chronic pain.
• cause you to have the burden of many doctor bills that come from trying to treat it.

Chronic pain is different from acute pain, which is pain that lasts less than three months. Acute pain, such as pain from a cut, is closely linked to an injury, infection, or inflammation. Inflammation is the body's response to injury or irritation, signaled by pain, swelling, redness, and heat. When the cause of the acute pain goes away, so does the pain.