Chronic pain is a debilitating condition that affects every aspect of your life. Everyone experiences it differently – for some, it’s sharp and shooting pain, but for others, it may be dull burning pain. What separates chronic pain from acute pain is that chronic pain persists much longer, sometimes even after the original injury has healed.
This means finding the underlying cause of chronic pain and eliminating it is not as simple as putting a band-aid on the bruise. And the disease process can be complicated even further since constant pain can lead to other symptoms changing the way you think and behave.
How Chronic Pain Changes You
Mood
Chronic pain can make a person more susceptible to emotional changes that can lead to changes in mood like increased depression, anxiety, and fear. In turn, this makes a person more likely to abuse certain medications like opioids in a vicious cycle that will only make their mood worse over time.
Sleep
As well as affecting your mood, living with a chronic pain condition can do great damage to your sleep schedule. It can make it difficult not only to fall asleep but also to stay asleep for the recommended eight hours when you are experiencing chronic pain. Almost 21% of Americans experience chronic pain, per the
CDC. Each one of these people loses, on average, 42 minutes of sleep each night. And they also reported an impact on the quality of their sleep – nearly 2/3 of chronic pain patients reported they did not have good sleep quality.
The Brain
Pain affects more than the way a person thinks, feels, and behaves – it also affects your memory and how well you can concentrate. Studies even confirm that chronic pain indeed can impair your ability to remember or focus, which can in fact only exacerbate other symptoms associated with chronic pain.
Treatment for Chronic Pain
With chronic pain treatment, the main focus is to reduce symptoms and allow you to get a normal life back. Chronic pain conditions often cannot be “cured”, but you can find relief from the symptoms with a personalized treatment plan.
Ketamine for Chronic Pain
Ketamine was first approved by the FDA for use as an anesthetic and to treat acute pain conditions, but it has also found significant use as a chronic pain reliever in recent years, with many organizations now recommending it for the treatment of chronic pain conditions.
Research into ketamine infusions for treating pain is a constantly growing field, but it is generally believed that ketamine helps to foster connections between synapses and restore damaged nerve connections, essentially “rewiring” the brain. Ketamine infusions may be particularly effective at not only treating the pain symptoms of Chronic Pain Syndrome, but also the additional depression and anxiety symptoms.
The recent FDA approval of Spravato (a ketamine-based nasal spray for treatment-resistant depression), as well as the development of a psychedelics research centers at Johns Hopkins University, may indicate a shift in the chronic pain treatment industry, providing innovative new options like ketamine infusion to those who experience persistent and treatment-resistant chronic pain. We are here to answer any questions you may have about how ketamine infusions can help reverse the frustrating course of your chronic pain. Please call or
submit an online request for free information today.
