Chronic Pain

When pain lasts for three months or [blank] , it is classified as chronic, a condition that affects more than 30 per cent of the world's population. Chronic pain has long been believed to be a stubborn version of acute pain - which [blank] in less than three months once the damage is healed - and it was treated in much the same way. Yet an increasing body of research has led doctors to believe that chronic pain should be treated as a disease in its own right, rather than an enduring symptom of tissue damage or physical trauma. This could have [blank] implications for the treatment of lasting pain, together with the way we prescribe addictive opioids. Recent research has revealed that in some people, chronic pain is a problem with the brain. An injury can lead to pain that [blank] after the tissue has recovered because the brain has rewired itself and learned to send pain signals, despite there no longer being a reason. Known as central sensitization, it is as if the volume has been turned up on pain.