pain management support group

Recent research observes that people living with persistent spinal pain experience difficulties with mental concentration and remembering information.

In the January 2011 edition of Neuroscience and Behavioral Physiology, Russian researchers divided 64 patients with musculoskeletal pain syndromes in the lumbosacral area persisting for more than 3 months into 2 age groups: 30-50 years (n=41) and 51-60 years (n=23). A reference control group consisted of 20 healthy volunteers comparable in terms of gender, age, and level of education. All subjects underwent clinical neurological, orthopedic, and psychological evaluations.

In patients with chronic spinal pain, complaints of difficulty with mental concentration were present in roughly 17%, and 1-in-5 (20.2%) had problems with remembering information. Also, compared with healthy subjects, patients with chronic pain in both age groups had significantly worse performance in tests assessing attention, mental flexibility, and in visuomotor coordination (for example, reduced ability to control the direction of hand movement while tracing the changing path of a printed line, as found in patients with Parkinson's disease).

Cognitive dysfunctions in younger patients were worsened by pain intensity and negative emotional characteristics of pain, particularly anxiety. In older patients cognitive deficits were influenced by anxiety and emotional distress, and by their level of catastrophizing; that is, harboring irrational thoughts and excessive fears about the severity of their condition.

Typical side effects of powerful pain medications may act as an additive artifact to the enhanced cognitive disruption experienced by these chronic pain patients. Thus medicated chronic pain patients experience the double-whammy of cognitive impairment from pain and further impairment from the medications.

Having lived with chronic back and leg pain for 40 years, I can personally vouch for this study's conclusions. Chronic pain does appear to disrupt my normal cognitive functioning, particularly related to attention, concentration and communication processing. What's worse is the apparent additive effect of powerful opiate medications. This "double-whammy" leaves the patient with no viable solution. One is impaired with and without appropriate medications.

Until we experience a powerful pharmacological advance, chronic pain patients will remain impaired. The cost in terms of lost employment, productivity, personal and family relationships will remain a significant impediment to all of us in this predicament. Let's hope for molecular pharmacology breakthroughs in the near future.

Finally, chronic pain patients should take advantage of any and all viable mind-body therapy available. I've discovered that keeping my brain active (as a writer) helps. So does using biofeedback, acquired in pain management programs. However, our ability to multitask and continue to maintain effective cognitive performance might be severely limited.

Read the entire study here: http://updates.pain-topics.org/2011/01/chronic-back-pain-affects-memory.html .