Chronic pain—pain that lasts longer than three months—affects hundreds of millions of people around the world.
Experts estimate that about 10% of the global population suffers from it. In the U.S. alone, the CDC reported that in 2021, over 50 million adults had chronic pain, and 7% had pain so severe that it disrupted their daily lives.
For many years, doctors treated chronic pain mainly with medications, especially opioids. But the opioid crisis in the U.S. has forced medical professionals to rethink this approach and explore new ways to help people in pain.
Dr. Rachael Rzasa Lynn, a pain specialist at the University of Colorado, shared new developments in pain treatment on The Conversation Weekly podcast. She explained why understanding chronic pain is complex and how treatments are evolving.
Pain happens when the body experiences injury or inflammation. Nerves send signals to the brain, where pain is felt. This type of pain is called nociceptive pain and can happen with injuries or conditions like arthritis.
Sometimes, nerves themselves get damaged and send pain signals even when the body isn’t injured. This is called neuropathic pain. There’s also nociplastic pain, which continues even after an injury has healed. Many people experience a mix of all three types, making treatment challenging.
Doctors often ask patients to rate their pain on a scale from 1 to 10. But pain is more than just a number. It affects a person’s ability to do everyday things, their sleep, mood, and relationships. Because we can’t see pain, it’s hard to measure it accurately. Most assessments rely on what the patient says.
New treatments are offering hope. One is called pain reprocessing therapy. In this method, patients work with therapists to understand their pain and change how they react to it. The brain learns to see pain signals as less dangerous, which can help reduce the pain.
Another option is nerve ablation. This treatment numbs and slightly damages certain nerves so they can’t send pain signals for months or even years. It has been used for spine pain for a long time and is now being tried for other areas too.
Some treatments use electricity to change how nerves send pain signals. Small devices are placed near the nerves to deliver tiny electrical pulses. This process is called neuromodulation.
One well-known example is spinal cord stimulation, where wires and a small battery are implanted to block pain signals. These methods are now being used to treat many types of pain, including foot pain, migraines, and even pain after surgery.
The opioid crisis helped push these new treatments forward. While opioids help some patients, they can be dangerous and addictive. Now, researchers are looking for new drugs that relieve pain without these risks. Some are even exploring cannabis-based treatments.
Looking ahead, the big goal in pain medicine is to better match treatments to individual patients. For example, two people with the same knee condition might respond very differently to the same treatment. Right now, doctors use trial and error to find what works, but researchers hope to one day predict the best treatment from the start.
The future of pain care lies in more personalized approaches. If scientists can figure out how to match each person with the right treatment from the beginning, it could save time, reduce suffering, and improve lives.
If you care about pain, please read studies about vitamin K deficiency linked to hip fractures in old people, and these vitamins could help reduce bone fracture risk.
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