Common Causes of Chronic Pain

You watch as the world whirls around you, wishing you could be more of a participant than a bystander. But chronic pain has other plans and holds you back.

The physical, mental, and emotional effects that chronic pain can have on your life are almost without limits, which is why our team here at Advanced Spine Care and Pain Management has devoted our practice to helping patients lead healthier, pain-free lives.

To give you a better idea about just how prevalent and impactful chronic pain can be, we’ve outlined some of the more common causes and how we can go about remedying them.

Defining chronic pain

Chronic pain can mean different things to different people, depending upon your unique circumstances. For example, the accepted definition for chronic is any pain that lasts for three months or more. That said, you may receive a diagnosis that portends a future of managing pain, which means you don’t have to wait until the three-month mark to qualify.

Or, perhaps you have a condition that flares up every so often, but isn’t a constant companion. In this case, we would consider the pain chronic if the underlying problem goes unresolved, since it can strike at any time.

Ultimately, defining chronic pain is something that’s unique to the person experiencing the pain and the impact it has on their quality of life.

Common causes of chronic pain

There are a wide range of problems that can lead to chronic pain — too many to list here. For the sake of brevity, we’ll list some of the more common culprits, which include:

• Arthritis
• Migraines
• Degenerative disc disease
• Spinal stenosis
• Cancer pain
• Neuropathy
• Fibromyalgia
• Complex regional pain syndrome

Again, this list is by no means comprehensive, but it should provide you with some insight into the broad spectrum of conditions that can lead to chronic pain. 

Going a step further, there’s a good case to be made for considering chronic pain a primary (and highly complex) condition that takes on a life of its own once it takes hold.

Addressing chronic pain

It would be difficult here to describe how we go about treating your chronic pain since it depends upon the cause. We want to assure you, however, that pain management is our focus and we have a number of tools to turn to, including:

• Medications
• Physical therapy
• Medical marijuana
• Injections
• Nerve blocks
• Regenerative medicine, including stem cell and platelet-rich plasma therapies

In many cases, we use these treatments in combination for best results.

If you want to gain the upper hand on your chronic pain and get back to living, contact one of our two offices in Staten Island or Hartsdale, New York, to set up a consultation.