Consequences of chronic pain
The consequences of chronic pain are huge. Chronic pain has a huge impact on your whole life. It affects not only your health, but also your work, your friends and family and your family.
As you can see in the diagram below, everything affects each other and works as a kind of vicious circle.
Pain takes a lot of energy, because through your brain your pain alarm is on, your body and mind is always on alert and your brain is trying to get your body and mind to that pain. And that exhausts you. That makes you so tired. Besides, you sleep badly because you keep waking up from the pain. You have to find a position where you experience less pain and can sleep again. This lack of sleep, which builds up more and more, eventually makes you overtired. If you can't sleep, you start worrying. You worry about what you can no longer do and wonder if it will stay that way. Besides fatigue, lack of sleep also causes stress. Worrying about your body, but also about whether it will stay that way and what the consequences will be for your work or finances, also causes stress. Stress can also cause you to lose weight.
When you have a lot of pain, you tend to move less because you are afraid that this will make the pain worse. Because you move less, you get stiff muscles and joints and poorer fitness. But you will also regain weight because you move less. Because you have so much pain and cannot work, you have to take sick leave, which ultimately affects your finances. and so you remain in a divisive circle, getting worse and worse by the day.
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