Why is pain so exhausting?

One of the most common feelings associated with chronic pain is fatigue, which can become overwhelming. People with chronic pain may report feeling lacking in energy and motivation to engage with others or the world around them.

In fact, a UK study of people with chronic health problems found that pain and fatigue were the two biggest barriers for an energetic and meaningful life.

But why is long-term pain so debilitating? One clue lies in the nature of pain and its powerful influence on our thoughts and behaviors.

Low-term pain can protect you

Contemporary ways of thinking about pain emphasize its protective properties—the way it grabs our attention and forces us to change our behavior in order to protect a part of our body.

Try this. Slowly pinch the skin. As you escalate the pressure, you will notice that the sensation changes until it becomes painful. The pain is what keeps you from squeezing harder, right? It’s how pain protects us.

When we are injured, tissue damage or inflammation makes our pain system more sensitive. This pain stops us from mechanically stressing the injured tissue while it heals. For example, the pain of a broken leg or a cut under the foot means we avoid walking on it.

The concept that “pain protects us and promotes healing” is one of the most vital things that people with chronic pain tell us. they learned what helped them recover.

However, long-term pain can overprotect you

In the brief term, pain serves an extremely effective protective function, and the longer our pain system is energetic, the more protection it provides.

But persistent pain can overprotective we and prevent recovery. People suffering from pain call it “hypersensitivity of the pain system”. Think of your pain system as being on alert. And that’s where exhaustion comes in.

When pain becomes an everyday experience, triggered or reinforced by an ever-widening range of activities, contexts, and cues, it becomes a constant drain on resources. Living with pain requires significant and sustained effort, and this makes us tired.

About 80% of us are lucky enough not to know what it’s like to be in pain, day in and day out, for months or years. But take a moment to imagine what it’s like.

Imagine having to concentrate challenging, gather energy, and operate distraction techniques to complete everyday activities, let alone work, caregiving, or other responsibilities.

Whenever you feel pain, you are faced with a choice of whether and how to act. Continually making that choice requires thought, effort, and strategy.

Mentioning your pain or explaining its impact on every moment, task, or activity is also tiring and challenging to communicate when no one else can see or feel your pain. For those listening, it can become tedious, exhausting, or distressing.

No wonder the pain is exhausting

In chronic pain, it’s not just the pain system that’s on alert. Increased inflammation throughout the body (immune system on alert), impaired production of the hormone cortisol (endocrine system on alert), and stiff and cautious movements (motor system on alert) are also hand in hand with chronic pain.

Each of these contributes to fatigue and exhaustion. So learning to manage and resolve chronic pain often involves learning how to best manage the overactivation of these systems.

Losing sleep is also factor both in fatigue and pain. Pain causes sleep disruption, and sleep loss contributes to pain.

In other words, chronic pain is rarely “just” pain. It’s no wonder that long-term pain can become overwhelming and debilitating.

What actually works?

People who suffer from chronic pain include: stigmatized, rejected AND misunderstoodwhich can lead to them not getting the care they need. Ongoing pain can prevent people from working, limit their social contacts and affect their relationships. This can lead to a downward spiral of social, personal and economic disadvantage.

That’s why we need better access to evidence-based care and high-quality education for people with chronic pain.

There is good news, however. State-of-the-art chronic pain care, which is based on gaining a contemporary understanding of the biology underlying chronic pain, it helps.

The key seems to be recognizing and accepting that a hypersensitive pain system plays a key role in chronic pain. This makes a quick fix highly unlikely, but a program of gradual change—perhaps over months or even years—holds promise.

Understanding how pain works, how chronic pain becomes overprotective, how our brain and body adapt to training, and then learning recent skills and strategies to gradually rewire both the brain and body offers hope based on science; there is a sturdy supporting evidence With clinical trials.

Any support is helpful

The best treatments for chronic pain require effort, patience, persistence, courage, and often a good coach. All of this is a pretty overwhelming proposition for someone who is already exhausted.

So if you are among the 80% of the population who do not experience chronic pain, think about what is needed and support your colleague, friend, partner, child or parent on their journey.

---

For more information on chronic pain, visit: Revolution in pain.