In life, there is a kind of pain that is like a frog boiled in warm water. It occurs slowly and is easily overlooked by people, or it will pass if it is tolerated. This is what is called chronic pain in medicine. Chronic pain brings harm to people’s body and mind, reduces the quality of life, and more importantly, people’s “suffering” of it is likely to have serious consequences. Below, the pain doctor will introduce you to five kinds of pain that should not be ignored.
Chronic headache lasts for a month and must be treated.
For sudden severe headaches, everyone feels unbearable and will immediately go to the hospital for examination. However, for chronic headaches, many people dismiss it as a minor problem. There are also many patients who have no abnormality after X-ray, CT, and even magnetic resonance examinations, so they ignore it.
Actually, this is very wrong. Chronic headaches lasting more than a month must be treated aggressively. Chronic headaches will not only affect the quality of life, causing upset, insomnia, etc., but also reduce the body’s resistance, reduce the body’s reactivity and emergency capacity, and even affect the function of the human body’s multi-system organs.
The World Health Organization Blue Book pointed out that controlling migraine can increase global GDP by two or three percentage points. It can be seen that headaches can still affect the national economy and people’s livelihood.
Stiff
neck Stiffness or pain in the neck and shoulders is generally caused by keeping the neck and shoulders in one position for a long time without paying attention to activities.
Nowadays, people tend to sit in front of the computer all day and lack activities. Usually, there are still many people who keep their mobile phones in their hands every day, always looking down at their mobile phones, or drivers, etc. These people often have stiff necks and shoulders, and long-term bad habits, which may Causes the cervical spine to gradually age and degenerate.
When intervertebral disc herniation compresses the spinal cord or bone hyperplasia compresses nerves and blood vessels, and severe neuralgia, dizziness, and mobility impairment occur, surgery may be required, and sometimes surgery cannot completely improve the serious symptoms. It’s too late.
In addition, it should be noted that neck and shoulder pain may not only be a problem of the cervical spine, but the nerve reflex area of the heart may also be projected to the neck and shoulder. Therefore, cervical pain should also be actively checked, and must not be careless, to prevent life-threatening neglect.
Post-herpetic neuralgia can cause
depression if you have shingles for a month, and there is still pain left, we call it post-herpetic neuralgia.
This kind of pain has various manifestations, but most of them are spontaneous pain or induced pain. There are often acupuncture, knife cuts, burning, insect bites, slight touch, wind, clothing or slight changes in temperature may induce pain, Pain makes people feel “life is better than death”.
With aggressive treatment, most postherpetic neuralgia will gradually improve. However, if you don’t pay attention, wait for the pain to disappear, and wait for the vicious cycle of herpes zoster pain to involve and erode the dorsal root ganglia of the spinal cord and even the dorsal horn of the spinal cord, which may leave very stubborn and severe neuralgia, resulting in serious consequences.
Long-term severe pain can lead to mental-psychological diseases such as depression and mania, and make patients gradually enter a vicious circle of “pain-self-stress and loss of life ability-pain aggravation”.
Chronic low back pain can cause loss of mobility if ignored The most common cause of
chronic low back pain is lumbar muscle strain. Lumbar muscle strain is a chronic lumbar strain, and it is also a well-known lumbar disease. Most people’s attitude to it is to drag it to death.
It is mainly caused by two reasons. One is that after acute lumbar sprain, it cannot be treated in a timely and reasonable manner, resulting in the formation of chronic traumatic scars and adhesions of the psoas muscle, which weakens the strength of the psoas muscle and causes low back pain.
Another reason is the accumulation of long-term and cumulative waist micro-trauma, such as some repairmen who work in a sitting position for a long time, often operating in non-physiological positions, and clock workers and typists who work in a fixed posture for a long time. In addition, some workers who need to bend over, if they do not pay attention to their body position and strengthen the exercise of the lumbar back muscles, may have accumulated damage to the waist, resulting in lumbar muscle strain.
Long-term low back pain will eventually lead to dysfunction of the spinal stabilization system, accelerated spinal deformation, and may develop into irreversible severe entrapment of nerves in the later stage, resulting in intolerable low back pain and radiating pain in the lower limbs. Severe cases can affect the function of bowel and bladder, and even lose part or all of the ability to move.
Diabetic peripheral neuralgia can lead to amputation.
Diabetic patients experience numbness in the hands and feet, like wearing a hand (sock) cover, or a needle-like feeling, which may be caused by diabetes complicated by peripheral nerve damage.
If this kind of neuralgia occurs, if enough attention is paid, the blood sugar level is closely monitored, and the treatment is active, the endocrinologist cooperates with the pain doctor, and it is possible to control its progress or even gradually relieve the condition.
However, if enough attention is not paid to it and it is allowed to develop, the neuropathy will be further aggravated and worsened in the later stage, and neuropathic pain will appear, which means that the patient’s protective sensory function is abnormal, and in severe cases, sensory loss will occur, which seriously affects the patient’s quality of life. .
Diabetic peripheral neuropathy is known to be one of the main risk factors for the formation of foot ulcers in diabetic patients, and patients at high risk of foot ulcers may eventually lead to gangrene infection and even amputation.
