I have something called Peripheral Neuropathy. As it was explained to me, the nerves in my feet are dying. This is most often caused by diabetes or liver disease but in my case the cause is unknown. I am in a tremendous amount of physical pain almost all the time. My feet feel sort of like a cross between the tingling when your feet fall asleep and having incredibly tight shoes on, and sometimes the pain is shooting.
My pain threshold has increased tremendously in the year and a half since when I first started experiencing it, and I am able to shut out a lot of the pain now. I have made some lifestyle changes to help minimize pain, but I am a long way from pain free. I take some medication to help me sleep at night, but it makes me very groggy, so it isn’t reasonable to take during the day. There are no other known pain remedies, so unless some treatment is found, pain looks like a part of my life for the foreseeable future.
My question is this: I am 46 years old. Assuming no other health problems come along to prevent me from living to 90 years old, could my chronic pain significantly shorten my lifespan? I mean directly shorten it. I realize there are indirect ways it can shorten it, by keeping me from getting the exercise I need or causing me jump in front of a speeding train, but can chronic pain itself shorten life?
Wanderer
Have you tried accupuncture or hypnosis?
Probably the most pain I have been in that I couldn’t control on my own was a compressed disc in my back.I was considering accupuncture when it began to let up.An Epidurral steroid injection in my spine finally gave me relief. I was so concerned they would have to operate that I would have done anything.
Hang in there.They have medical professionals that deal with pain control.Don’t know where to tell you to get hold of them though.Anyone???
Pain is a very real stress factor and depending on how robust your baseline immune system and overall health is can put additional stress loads on your bodies ability to fight infection and repair itself…so yes chronic pain can most certainly reduce your lifespan on a probabilistic basis but will it kill you? Who knows? Your friends all say you’re too mean to die and you’ve been slipping statistical punches for awhile now. ;]
Seriously, great things are happening with pain management of late esp. with pain that does not respond to medication. One of the things researchers are using to investigate this pain is the venom of the only animal conventional pain medications do not work with and whose venom acts in the same manner and on the same nerve pathways as currently unmanageable pain. Believe it or not that animal is
I think this is a difficult question to answer, since the biggest variable in the bunch of variables is the individual him/herself.
Stories abound of people who suffered incredible trauma and lived, contrasted with people who died from relatively little trauma.
But constant pain? That’s a tough call. My grandmother lived into her 80s even though she had pretty bad arthritis. Not as serious as the condition you describe, I know, but as an arthritis sufferer myself, I can attest that at times the pain makes me want to cut my feet off.
Other factors play a part, too. Meds can help reduce pain, and may therefore increase your life expectancy. I believe attitude can be a factor as well. Medical science has done research (which I’ve only heard about, not followed) on the positive influence of prayer, and Norman Cousins’ experience with fighting a debilitating illness through laughter theraphy is well known, albeit controversial.
The human body is a mysterious thing, and medical science, in spite of its marvelous advances in recent years, doesn’t really know much about it.