One in four Americans have daily pain

[UpInArms]

Source: Reuters

CHICAGO (Reuters) - More than a quarter of Americans have daily pain, a problem that costs the country more than $16 billion a year in pain remedies and about $60 billion a year in lost productivity, U.S. researchers said on Thursday.

Their random survey of U.S. citizens found pain was fairly evenly divided between men and women, but poorer Americans reported being in more pain than wealthier people.

"Those with lower income or less education spent a higher proportion of time in pain and reported higher average pain than did those with higher income or more education," Dr. Arthur Stone of Stony Brook University in New York and colleagues wrote in the journal Lancet.

Stone and Dr. Alan Krueger of Princeton University based their findings on a telephone survey of nearly 4,000 U.S. citizens. People in the survey provided pain ratings for three randomly selected periods during the day. They also gave information about what they were doing during those times.

The data were adjusted by the Gallup Organization to represent the entire U.S. population.

What they showed is that 29 percent of men and 27 percent of women reported feeling some pain during the sample times. People with lower income or less education spent more of their time in pain, and reported more severe pain.

Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/bondsNews/idUSN0132822120080501?sp=true

[Mz Pip]

1. FIle this under

"No shit Sherlock."

[OhioChick]

2. No Surprise. n/t

[gateley]

3. 100% of visitors to GD:P experience daily pain(s). nt

[Mojorabbit]

4. And the more

un addressed pain you have, the less you are able to earn a good living, and the lower your income is....

[juno jones]

5. Lower income types probably have more pain because...

ta-da, more physical labor and more opportunities to fuck oneself up. Easy. I solved it. Now will someone freaking HELP?

[aquart]

14. Didn't they just do a twin study on this?

Separated at birth twins: good health to the upper class one, poor health to the lower class one?

[ileus]

6. drug seekers...

[Kali]

7. did you forget the sarcasm or eye rolly smilie?

or are you serious?

[jhrobbins]

8. Thank you for this because my partner has MS and suffers from

significant daily pain and takes significant medications for it and it pisses me off when someone decides that he doesn't need this medication and that it is somehow an addictive personality 'seeking drugs'.

[Fire_Medic_Dave]

10. Who decides this?

Does your partners doctors refuse him medication and accuse him of drug seeking?

David

[pop goes the weasel]

11. that's about the size of it

Everyone I know who lives with chronic pain has the same experience. And if your present doctor who is willing to prescribe narcotics leaves practice or starts feeling heavy breath of the DEA on his neck, it may be years before you can find another doctor willing to treat your pain. At the same time, a person who gets a minor surgery, such as wisdom tooth extraction, is generally prescribed as much narcotic painkiller, with refills even, as some of us with chronic pain are on, with no refills.

[aquart]

17. Is he in California?

Because that's where my sister is. And this sounds terribly familiar.

[Delphinus]

20. Ditto here in Indiana. n/t

[jhrobbins]

13. No, he is in a pain management program with a pain management

specialist. It isn't his doctor, but his sister in law is a nurse and she thinks that people in pain should 'soldier through' the pain. Having lived through 10 years of this, I can day that his meds are a life saver and he never seeks out any other doctors for additional meds like I have heard some others do.
I guess what I meant is that some friends, when they find out what he is taking think that he must be an addict. However, I have never seen a change in him when he takes his meds other than the tension of constant pain is alleviated.

His is an interesting case about how he contracted his condition. The doctors at Mayo said that it was caused by an allergic response to the rabies vaccine he had to take about 11 years ago. It took a long time to diagnose - his first neurologist thought it might be ALS and then there were a number of others that posited a number of conditions, but we finally went to Mayo and they told him then what it was.

[Fire_Medic_Dave]

26. I understand.

There is still some bias among some physicians about pain meds, but I find it less and less frequently. The public however is quite misinformed about pain meds and chronic pain. The simple fact is pain is a stressor telling your body that something is wrong. That is a good thing that prevents us from doing further injury. However that same stessor also prevents us from healing well if our pain isn't controlled or in the case of chronic pain it causes other systems to be stressed unnecessarily. I fell on a fire several years ago and had a major shoulder injury. I ended up having a rotator cuff repair, bicep tendon repair and a a/c reconstruction all the same time. The 6 weeks after surgery I went through 2 bottles of Vicodin, 2 bottles of Percocet and a bottle of Oxycontin. Guess what after 6 weeks I was able to control the pain with Naprosyn. After 8 weeks I was off of everything no withdrawal no problems. You don't get addicted to narcotics when you actually take them for pain, it's when you start taking them when you don't need them that it becomes a problem. Ignore the idiots who want to judge. It usually comes back on them. Good luck.

David

[aquart]

16. Just imagine everything I'm saying to you right now.

And every rotten, agonizing pain I'm wishing on you. And the years of crying because the pain won't end. The loss of every achievement. The isolation.

But, of course, someone without empathy is unable to imagine anyone else's suffering. Perhaps experience will help.

[Doctor_J]

23. Easy, there ileus. For every Rush Limpballs there are 100 or so

people who really have pain. Put away your Bill O'Reilly attitude (or add a sarcasm smilie).

[dysfunctional press]

25. with the pain i have EVERY DAY, you're damn right i'm a "drug seeker"...

and i will be until i die.

[knitter4democracy]

32. Excuse me? Some of us can't take those drugs.

I can't take narcotics (I inherited a condition from my dad in which we just get the side effects and absolutely no blocking of the pain pathways). I had appendicitis for ten years (that had been misdiagnosed, obviously) and could only take ibuprofen. When I woke up from the surgery where they took my right kidney and a pound of flesh and three inches of rib with it, all I got was the numbing agent in the epidural.

Not all people in pain are on drugs. If you need painkillers, trust me, you're not getting the high. Most people balance the side effects with the pain control and muck through as best they can.

Have you ever passed out from pain? I have. Several times. Pain on that level is very hard to deal with on a daily basis without something to take the edge off.

[w8liftinglady]

46. sometimes,I literally have to fight with my docs to get pain control for my patients.

yes,there are addicts.There are also addicts with pain.There are people who have terrible pain,and have had so for years.They deserve comfort.

[Sonicmedusa]

9. Pain is only a symptom

And without diagnosis and treatment, it is a symptom of how vastly fucked up health care is in one of the richest countries of the world.

[aquart]

15. Dental problems alone can cause huge amounts of pain...

Dribbled out in aches over the decades.

But dental care is never addressed.

[poppysgal]

12. There are nearly 50 million Americans without health insurance.

what do they do about their pain?:hi:

[aquart]

18. Some just die.

Actually, quite a few just die. Really scary statistics on that.

[Delphinus]

22. Yeah,

isn't it over 18,000 people per year whose deaths are directly attributable to lack of insurance coverage? That doesn't seem like much, but when one of those 18,000 people are someone you know, it makes a heck of a difference.

[Vinca]

19. I'm uninsured with a muscle injury that has been untreated for 3 years.

It causes chronic pain and has definitely cut into my level of activity. I live on Aleve and go about my business, hoping for the best. Maybe someday we'll have a government that gives a shit and produces an affordable plan.

[Delphinus]

21. And almost the same amount who are

underinsured.

That's an entire third of our country's population, isn't it? Don't we have 300 million?

[dysfunctional press]

24. 70mg of methadone daily for chronic back pain, and 22.5mg of hydrocodone for migraines

3-4 times per week.

narcotics are the BEST. unfortunately, the dea won't let the doctors do refills or phone in the script for methadone- i have to get a new handwritten prescription from the dr. EVERY month. royal pain in the ass.

[Manifestor_of_Light]

27. The male bosses refuse to deal with any bodily needs or functions.

Like eating lunch, and going to the bathroom. I had to argue with a judge once to get a break in a trial, so I could eat lunch.

He finally backed down when I gave him my doctor's phone number and said "Judge, I have low blood sugar and i need to eat. My doctor is Dr. ___. His phone number is ________. Would you like to call him to confirm this?"


And if you're female, forget it. No consideration for pregnancy or menstruation.

In some countries female workers can get a day off every month to deal with their periods. Women who have severe cramps have a helluva time dealing with work and the fact that 13 times a year, she could be completely bedridden for up to four days. Society doesn't deal with that at all. Oftentimes, treatments to cure cramps don't work -- for example, birth control pills or even surgery for endometriosis, including cutting a major nerve.

That's debilitating, chronic pain that lasts almost 40 years.


Ibuprofen works, but opiate derivatives don't. I never saw an NSAID until 1981.

[knitter4democracy]

33. Amen to all of that.

My appendicitis was misdiagnosed as endometriosis. Try explaining to a male boss that you can't walk that day. Grrr!

[kimmerspixelated]

28. I find that regular supplementation of Omega 3 fish oils

help a lot with that sort of thing. Most all maladies are from a vitamin or mineral deficiency.

[Redstone]

29. No. That comment is just fucking stupid. The damaged nerve in my shoulder is

from an old injury and botched surgery, NOT "from a vitamin or mineral deficiency."

My RSD (Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy) is from getting SHOT, for Christ's sake, NOT "from a vitamin or mineral deficiency."

I could add to this list, but I won't waste my time doing so, because you are obviously either willfully ignorant or just looking to annoy people by pretending to be ignorant.

Got any credentials to back up your assertion? Any research, or links thereto?

No?

I didn't think so.

Redstone

[kimmerspixelated]

40. I believe that it was a nobel prize winning scientist

who claimed it to be true. I will someday soon do a post to report his name.I did not make it up! BTW, despite your extreme rudeness, I wish you the best and that you will recover.

[knitter4democracy]

34. Ummm . . . wha?

While I'm all for supplements and take many a day (really help with my residual pain and other health issues), I can safely say that my kidney tumor and my chronic appendicitis, the two big health problems of my life, weren't deficiencies.

[kimmerspixelated]

41. I'm sorry you've had troubles.

There are many reports or studies.. (well-researched, and highly regarded, that have linked deficiencies of Vit D-good old sunshine(that mainstream medicine has told everyone to avoid), to many cancers. Generally, I think any cancer and other serious diseases are basically the result of an imbalance in general.

[knitter4democracy]

44. Maybe. There's not enough evidence.

Vitamin D's quite the fad in medical research right now (they're blaming it for everything in the journals, from fibro to cancer to autoimmune diseases, and my doctor and my hubby, an internist, are getting a touch skeptical of it all, thinking there will be studies a couple of years from now saying all of these are bunk).

The problem is, I don't fit the profile for a kidney tumor, let alone the crazy one I had that no one had ever seen before. I was exposed to a lot of pesticides and herbicides as a kid (lived in farmland and was a step-grandkid helping out on the family farm), so it might have been that. It might have been genetic, but most of my family on both sides died young a couple of generations back, so we don't know what they could've been carrying genes-wise. I'd had all sorts of bloodtests and such for years, and it was never caught until Hubby convinced me that the abdominal pain I was still having seven months after the exploratory surgery that caught the appendicits was a bad thing that needed to get checked out. That's when they found the tumor.

[Akoto]

30. I recently joined the chronic pain crowd.

I'm only 23. My cause has a name, but little else is known about how it works or how to fix it. I cry almost every day, not because the pain is always that bad (and it can be pretty damn harsh), but because I must now fear for the future. What if it DOES get that bad? What if I can't care for myself?

I haven't yet begun pain management, but I'm looking to it for the sake of my quality of life. People who denounce users of pain medication just don't seem to get how awful it can be. It's well studied that people genuinely suffering chronic pain have an extremely low incidence of addiction. There's a chasm of difference between addiction and dependence.

Of course, even well meaning doctors are afraid to treat people who are suffering chronic pain. They risk being targeted by the witch hunters at the DEA.

[knitter4democracy]

35. Oh no. I'm so sorry.

I was 22 when they diagnosed me with endometriosis. Turned out, ten years later, they were wrong, and it was appendicitis. Make sure to get a good second opinion and listen to any doctor who questions the diagnosis, just in case.

With my supposed endo, cutting out meat and dairy really helped massively with my pain. I think it was in part that I'm allergic to dairy, and the last thing you need with pain is allergies (they seem to aggravate each other, I think). See if you can find a doctor who can help you with odd and different ways to manage your pain. Visualization helped me, too, as did low moaning on all fours (when I hit the right tone, it really helped with the worst of the pain).

[Redstone]

39. Welcome to our world, the world of the Pain People.

I wish I didn't have to offer you that greeting. But you're in our world now, and it's not the same world that the other people inhabit.

In your post, you've touched on the number one difference between having chronic pain as opposed to having, say, the pain of a broken leg.

And that difference is everything. That difference is what comes to define your life, and I'm sorry to have to be the one to tell you:

With chronic pain, we lose hope. With a broken leg, we can look forward to doing some physical therapy after the cast comes off, then things will be OK, and we won't hurt anymore.

But with chronic pain, there's no end. There's no hope that the pain will ever go away.

And then, as you said, there's the percieved stigma of being dependent on opiates in order to just get through each day, and live our lives in some semblance of normality.

Funny how nobody criticizes diabetics for being dependent on insulin, but God help you if you're dependent on opiates to keep you alive.

Welcome to our world. It's not a very fun place, but we CAN survive here. I've been her since 1972, and my hope for you is that you find a way to work around your pain and have a good life otherwise.

Redstone

[haroldgiowa]

43. I ran myself out of medicine one time.

Right then and there I promised that I would never let myself run out early on my prescriptions again. I couldn't have made it another day without it. You could only think what can I do to stop the pain. I don't think there is a limit to what you would do to stop it.

To those of you, and I know your out there, who use the pain medicine for a high, shame on you. The only thing I can say is I hope you are never in a position that you need to use medication for pain. The extra hoops and road blocks that were put up for people who actually need the medication is not appreciated. There is a special place in Hell reserved for you. I would never wish the pain on anyone else.

To those who worry what do you do when you can no longer take care of yourself, seek out a Hospice. They will find you some help. They have been a God send to me. I just talk to my Dr. yesterday on the subject of Hospice. I told him without their support I would no longer be here. And I still had to much to do to go anywhere soon.

[knitter4democracy]

45. That's so true, Redstone. So very true.

Every word. People who've never really had pain just plain don't get it. They try to empathize and understand, but they just don't get it.

[baldguy]

31. My knee was never the same after that skiing accident.

But until all the cartilage has deteriorated & beyond repair, there's no point in replacing it.

[area51]

36. kick. (n/t)

[Blue_Tires]

37. o rly?

[hedgehog]

38. Mine is called George Bush.

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

42. Exactly Chimp's approval rating...

:think: