Chronic pain is not simply persistent acute pain. Acute pain is the sensation of pain directly following damage, trauma, or surgery of a part of the body. Chronic pain is pain that lasts more than three to six months, the injury may have even healed, but the pain persists. While often times the same medications are used for both acute and chronic pain, they are two very different problems. Neuroscientists are studying the nature of chronic pain, and what mechanisms are useful to treat it. What they are finding helps physicians prescribe appropriate medications for individuals who suffer from chronic pain.
Chronic pain is neuropathic disease caused by damage to the somatosensory system (The sensory system). The somatosensory system has two main players: the brain, and the nervous system (both of those two players can be further divided). Research scientists are finding out that the nervous system is not like a simple electrical circuit as we once thought. It is far more complex. It was once believed that the pain signal traveled along a pathway much like throwing a switch to turn on a light. Pain was entered at the source, and the signal sent through the circuit until it reached the brain where it was identified.
The individual players in the nervous system act more like a neighborhood with a twitter feed, or blog to the brain. The brain is more like the mayor’s office, it has to decide what to do with the information and how t keep the neighborhood happy. When injury happens, like lightning striking a building and starting a fire, there is the immediate damage, then the call out for help. But after the fire is out and the building rebuilt some people in the neighborhood are still not happy and adopt maladaptive behaviors. They continue to tweet about the fire. They keep the blog going with running commentary as if the fire is still going. They have a memory that they don’t want to put behind them. Pain has a memory. Damage nerve cells take on maladaptive behaviors continuing to send signals about the damage that has healed. And here the old good pain reliever which many patients has been trusted, continues to paly its role.
Ultram is a conversation blocker. It allows you, the mayor, to go about your day, while toning down the volume of the nerves conversation. The nerves still tweet, still blog, but you don’t follow that page anymore. Ultram lets you get back to moving and get on with your life without the constant jabber of chronic pain.
It is divided into two categories allodynic and nociceptive. Nociceptive pain is the direct result of tissue injury. This can come from arthritis, cancer, sprains. Allodynic pain is pain resulting from stimulus that should not be painful, like a breeze or light touch. People who suffer allodynic pain are often incapacitated and misunderstood as well as under medicated.
Ultram and chronic pain after healing