Chronic pain patients often experience depression and and/or anxiety over their painful state. Chronic neck and back pain patients often complain of bad memory, muddled thinking, and feelings of depression and anxiety. Research from Northwestern University in Chicago shows the cellular and molecular changes in brain function that are associated with chronic back pain, possibly resulting in all of these reported feelings in chronic back pain patients.1
Chronic back pain’s effect on the brain
The authors of this study investigated mice with chronic abnormal nerve pain, studying the cellular and molecular brain changes that may influence behavior. What they found was that chronic nerve pain in mice stunted neuron growth in the hippocampal region of the brain. The hippocampus is the area where spinal pain signals are processed, but it is also the area where symptoms of depression and anxiety begin.
In the same study, researchers looked at three groups of human adult chronic pain patients. These groups included a chronic back pain group, a complex regional pain syndrome group and an osteoarthritis group. Using brain scans, they discovered that the back pain and complex regional pain syndrome groups had smaller hippocampus regions while the osteoarthritis group had normal sized hippocampal areas. Interestingly, the first two groups had similar complaints of anxiety, depression, learning deficits, and poor memory. These complaints correlated with symptoms seen in the group of mice studied.
Chronic back pain healing
So of course, the question is what to do with these symptoms? Will they reverse with cessation of back pain? Is there a best treatment for a back pain cure? We will dive into that in our next post, but you can probably guess that Prolotherapy will be part of our discussion.
For more on Prolotherapy and chronic low back pain, please see our other posts entitled:
Degenerative Disc Disease
Interest Gaining in Stem Cell Therapy for Back Pain
Overuse of MRIs for Low Back Pain
For more information: stem cell injection therapy.
1. Mutso AA, et al. Abnormalities in hippocampal functioning with persistent pain. The Journal of Neuroscience, April 25, 2012; 32(17):5747-5756.
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