I ran into this article this morning in a newsletter I receive. This is scary. The heading of the article was from the Spinal Injury Foundation and the link takes you to the article at Entrez Pub Med. - National Library of Medicine. I'm not sure the link within the paragraph will carry over when I copy and paste, so I will add it at the bottom of the article also.
"A Hole in the Head and Back Pain"
Anyone who treats chronic pain patients or lives with one will tell you that pain can have a major impact on cognition, attention, and focus. However, a recent study has expanded our understanding in very unexpected ways. Apkarian studied the brains of patients with chronic low back pain with a special MRI technique. He tracked the size of certain parts of the brain across one year. What he found is astounding. Two areas of the brain that help to control pain (Thalamus and Prefrontal Cortex) were shrinking at a rate of 10-20 times normal aging!
What does this mean? All of our brains shrink a little as we age. These two areas are involved in the perception and control of pain signals. What may be happening is that they may literally be wearing out, much like a pancreas wears out from producing too much insulin in a type II diabetic.
This new finding may help explain why many chronic pain patients have difficulty controlling or modulating pain signals. Other research has shown that huge areas of the brain light up in pain patients when even small areas are provoked.
These new findings taken with other studies by the same author argue for much more aggressive treatment of those in pain. In addition, when they say, Its all in your head, they're right!
Christopher J. Centeno, M.D.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retri...=15548656&query_hl=7