Chronic pain is defined by experts as pain that has not gone away or recurs frequently even after six months have passed. Traditional treatment methods often fail to bring relief.

Chronic pain persists despite the fact that an injury has healed. Pain signals remain active in the nervous system for weeks, months, or years. Physical effects include tense muscles, limited mobility, a lack of energy, and changes in appetite. Emotional effects include depression, anger, anxiety, and fear of re-injury. Such a fear may hinder a person's ability to return to normal work or leisure activities. Common chronic pain complaints include:

• Headache
• Low back pain
• Cancer pain
• Arthritis pain
• Neurogenic pain (pain resulting from damage to nerves)
• Psychogenic pain (pain not due to past disease or injury or any visible sign of damage inside)
• back pain.
• neck pain
• fibromyalgia/fibrosis
• myofascial pain
• TMJ pain
•  "whiplash" pain
• sciatica
• carpal tunnel syndrome
• pelvic pain
• neuropathy
• neuralgia pain
• phantom limb pain.

Chronic pain can also result from illness or conditions such as

•  osteoporosis
• lupus (SLE)
• rheumatoid arthritis
• scoliosis
• endometriosis
• and scleroderma

In many cases, unfortunately, the underlying cause of an individual's chronic pain is unknown.

Chronic pain may have originated with an initial trauma/injury or infection, or there may be an ongoing cause of pain. However, some people suffer chronic pain in the absence of any past injury or evidence of body damage.

Who Does Chronic Pain Affect?
 
 Chronic pain affects people of all ages, races, and occupations. Severe chronic pain is a devastating health problem that affects as many as one in ten Americans (more than 25 million people).

Chronic pain disables more people than cancer or heart disease. It costs the U.S. economy more than $90 billion per year in medical costs, disability payments, and productivity. Yet it has received little attention from medical researchers until recently and is one of the most under funded major health problems in the United States.

For every person seeking relief from chronic pain, others are inevitably affected: husbands and wives, parents and children, friends, employers and co-workers. Chronic pain can interfere with every aspect of a person's life: work, relationships, self-esteem, and emotional well-being.

Chronic pain brings a burden of depression, anxiety, frustration, fatigue, isolation, and lowered self-esteem. Pain makes it hard to work, hard to play, hard to get support from others, and hard to live a happy life. Chronic pain shatters productive lives.