PainChampions October 16, 2016 WHAT HAPPENS WHEN PAIN GOES UNTREATED? Not only is it “inhumane to tell people with impossible pain to just suck it up” as I said in the previous article: untreated or under-treated pain is more than uncomfortable. There are profound effects on someone who lives with pain. Many of us living with pain would respond sarcastically, “No. Really?!” Yes, many of those changes seem like common sense, but it helps us know the details. A 1999 Chinese study of cancer patients showed that, after taking into account the effects of cancer, the more pain someone had, the worse the effects on their health and how they functioned. Understandably, the relationship between the severity of pain and impairment was nonlinear: patients with no pain or only mild pain were significantly better functioning than those with moderate and severe pain.1 Dr. Forest Tennant has written, “Persistent pain, which is also often characterized as chronic or intractable, has all the ramifications of a disease in that it may have pre-clinical and overt phases. It may be intermittent or constant, as well as, mild, moderate, or severe. The most unappreciated clinical feature of persistent pain, however, is the plethora of complications that may result — particularly if the pain is constant and unremitting.”2 Our doctors are more likely to listen to us and treat our pain if they can see evidence — and as people with pain, the more we know about what the consequences are, the better we can work to prevent them and search out more appropriate tools for our pain toolbox. Pain steals the resources we need to get through our days. Let’s define some of these losses by looking at three general areas: • Neural and brain changes; • Physical damage (cardiovascular, respiratory, immune system); and • Social and psychological effects.
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