You Don't Have to Suffer

By Martin A. David martin.david@hqpublications.com Pharmavita Columnist October 18, 2005

There was a time when chronic pain syndrome was thought of as an imaginary disease or a form of malingering. Today's researchers and health care professionals have learned to pay careful attention to pain relief as a medical specialty.

Something Hurts

Take a quiet moment to relax and experience your whole body. Turn off the hustle and bustle of your everyday life and just feel. If you are like most people, you will experience some amount of pain somewhere in your body.

Pain can range from a simple discomfort such as simple twinges of leg pain or neck pain, all the way to chronic pain conditions such as arthritis pain. Almost all of us have some amount of simple or acute pain at some point in the day. It may last for a few seconds or it may cause hours of agony.

For most of us, the sudden touch of lower back pain or foot pain is hardly noticeable. It comes and goes. It can often be corrected by a simple change of posture or by changing activities. It is seldom serious enough to reach for the pain relief afforded by pain medication.

Being Aware of Pain

The kind of acute pain or chronic pain that doesn't go away is the body's signal that something needs to be taken care of. Too often people with chronic conditions try to be brave by coping with ongoing pain and not revealing it to their health care providers. In the case of arthritis pain, this causes unnecessary suffering. In the case of chest pain, it can be deadly

About the Author
Martin A. David consults as a Senior Technical Writer for a number of Silicon Valley firms. He is also a translator, specializing in Danish, French and Spanish literary works. He has written numerous feature articles for publications including the Los Angeles Times. He has also published a novel, and a non-fiction book in the area of dance. Martin earned his B.A. in Liberal Arts from Brooklyn College in his native New York. He currently chairs the Santa Clara Cultural Advisory Commission in Santa Clara, California.