Chronic Pain and Complementary Health Practices

August 1, 2012

Chronic Pain and Complementary Health Practices
Source: National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine

Millions of Americans suffer from pain that is chronic, severe, and not easily managed. Pain from arthritis, back problems, other musculoskeletal conditions, and headache costs U.S. businesses more than $61 billion a year in lost worker productivity.

Pain is the most common health problem for which adults use complementary health practices. Many people with conditions causing chronic pain turn to these practices to supplement other conventional medical treatment, or when their pain is resistant or in an effort to advert side effects of medications. Despite the widespread use of complementary health practices for chronic pain, scientific evidence on efficacy and mechanisms—whether the therapies help the conditions for which they are used and, if so, how—is, for the most part, limited. However, the evidence base is growing, especially for several complementary health practices most commonly used by people to lessen pain.

This issue highlights the research status for several therapies used for common kinds of pain, including arthritis, fibromyalgia, headache, low-back pain, and neck pain.

About these ads
Categories: alternative medicine, arthritis, National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, orthopedic issues
Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 487 other followers

%d bloggers like this: