Often the terms "pain" and "chronic pain" are confused by many people, including those who are empowered to treat the conditions.
Pain is the natural reaction of our body to a stimulus such as a bee sting, twisting an ankle, touching a hot pan, or an over dosage of ultraviolet light resulting in sunburn. In most situations it's an impulse that requires some defensive maneuver to prevent further damage. If it's touching something hot we withdraw the extremity to avoid further burning of tissues, or infection due to bacteria entry resulting from the burn. If it's a delayed reaction to overexposure to sunlight we should not go back out and sunbathe as our body has signaled no further exposure or more pain will follow.
Chronic pain is not a natural reaction, it's unnatural. Humans are not created to experience pain. The absence of pain is the natural state not the endurance of pain. The term "chronic pain" has crossed the path of being a natural occurrence to that of being an unnatural occurrence however many people suffer from this diagnosis and are ignored because of confusion between the two terms.
Pain is not a diagnosis but symptomatic of an occurrence.
Pain is usually treatable and all of us suffer this symptom due to what we do or what happens to us in the course of living.
Chronic pain is not a symptom but is a diagnosis usually brought on by inability to determine the causation, or the inability to correct the cause. Often once pain occurs non-reversible actions are taken which result, not in treating a symptom but in creating a diagnosis. An example of this is surgery when surgery is not indicated. The results of the surgery leaves scar tissue which was non existent prior to being treated for pain. Recovery from the destruction of soft tissue results in lack of mobility due to the rehabilitation time needed to recover from the invasive procedures. The original cause of the pain may not be addressed but the treatment may have progressed additional complications resulting in continual pain. It is at the point that the symptom of pain is not correctable or discoverable that the diagnosis of chronic pain emerges.
Many patients with chronic pain are treated for pain and when those treatments fail then the patient is assumed to suffer not from a physical abnormality but from a psychological condition.
Electrotherapy, specifically interferential, can be a beneficial treatment for the diagnosis of "chronic pain". In many cases the use of electrotherapy in the form of TENS, Interferential or High Voltage can actually restore the body to being pain free which is the natural state.
With better education and greater observation the diagnosis will be recognized for what it is, a condition - not a symptom.
Here is a MedFaxx video on why chronic pain is not natural.
