If you suffer from chronic pain, you’re not alone. We all know that pain can impact our lives and we’ve all suffered from back pain, neck pain, headaches,or pain in our joints. But few of us realize how many other people suffer and the real causes of chronic pain.
According to the American Academy of Pain Medicine, pain affects more Americans than diabetes, heart disease and cancer combined. The chart below depicts the number of chronic pain sufferers compared to other major health conditions.
|
Condition |
Number of Sufferers | Source |
| Chronic Pain | 100 million Americans | Institute of Medicine of The National Academies |
| Diabetes | 25.8 million Americans (diagnosed and estimated undiagnosed) |
American Diabetes Association |
| Coronary Heart Disease
Stroke |
16.3 million Americans7.0 million Americans | American Heart Association |
| Cancer | 11.9 million Americans | American Cancer Society |
While acute pain is a normal sensation triggered in the nervous system to alert you to possible injury and the need to get yourself out of harm’s way, chronic pain is quite different. Chronic pain persists. It’s like a watch-dog that continues barking when there is no intruder. It just goes on and on without relief. There may have been an initial mishap — sprained back, serious infection, or physical injury. But pain continues or returns even after the initial problem has been healed.
Arthritis is the most common cause of disability in the U.S. and costs more than $128 billion per year. There are more than 100 types of arthritis. It’s a condition that affects more than 46 million U.S. adults–1 in 5 adults–and the number is expected to increase to 67 million adults by the year 2030. There are two major types of arthritis —osteoarthritis, which is the “wear and tear” arthritis, and rheumatoid arthritis, an inflammatory type of arthritis that happens when the body’s immune system does not work properly.
Medications May Not Be the Best Answer for Chronic Pain
The American Academy of Pain Medicine offers the following information:
- Most pain sufferers (63%) have seen their family doctor for help.
- Forty percent made an appointment with a specialist, such as an orthopedist.
- Treatments for pain have yielded mixed results. Although 58% of those who took prescription medication say that doing so was fairly effective for their pain, only 41% of those who took over-the-counter medications felt they were effective.
- Prescription drugs are the second-most abused category of drugs in the United States, following marijuana.
- Prescription painkillers are considered a major contributor to the total number of drug deaths. In 2007, for example, nearly 28,000 Americans died from unintentional drug poisoning, and of these, nearly 12,000 involved prescription pain relievers.
EFT or Tapping Provides Powerful Relief for Pain
In my book, Stress Relief for Men: How to Use the Revolutionary Tools of Energy Healing to Live Well, I describe a different approach to dealing with chronic pain. Most of us accept the common belief that all our pain has a physical cause. “I have never seen a patient with pain in the neck, shoulders, back or buttocks who didn’t believe the pain was due to an injury,” says John E. Sarno, MD, author of Healing Back Pain: The Mind-Body Connection.
Since 1973, Dr. Sarno has conducted research and clinical practice on disorders relating to musculoskeletal pain. Dr. Sarno was one of the first researchers to recognize that chronic pain, so pervasive in our culture, could not be adequately treated without acknowledging the emotional aspects of pain.
Eric Robins, MD, a Los Angeles–based physician, describes what most of us experience when we go to our doctor complaining of chronic pain. “Typically, when a pain patient goes to a physician for help,” says Robins, “the doctor orders an MRI scan, which invariably shows some sort of anatomic abnormality like a slipped disc. The doctor concludes that the disc is causing the pain and prescribes symptom-suppressing drugs or therapies.” Robins goes on to share the experience he has had with this kind of treatment philosophy. “Unfortunately, this approach usually has poor long-term results,” he says. “The pain may disappear for a while, but it soon comes back, often worse than before.”
Dr. Robins found that Emotional Freedom Techniques, also known as EFT or Tapping, can relief chronic pain without the use of drugs. “Again and again,” says Robins, “patients with chronic pain have unresolved emotional issues or anger that’s tied to past traumas. Stress and negative emotions aren’t just in our heads; they are stored in our bodies, often in skeletal or smooth muscles. It’s hard for blood to flow through chronically tensed muscles.”
In his book EFT for Back Pain, Gary Craig, who developed EFT says, “What excites me most about EFT is its application to physical health and wellness. I’m convinced more than ever that modern medicine has walked right by a major contributor of chronic and acute diseases. Our unresolved angers, fears, and traumas show up in our physical bodies and manifest not just as back pain but as rheumatoid arthritis, cancer, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s disease, and hundreds of other illnesses.”
I’ve found that EFT can be very helpful in our lives. I’ve used it to relief physical and emotional pain from my life. I’m pleased to offer these helpful techniques for men and women who want to live a life free of pain and suffering. Do you know about EFT or Tapping? Have you tried it? How has it worked for you?
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