LIFE --1 Hour At A Time!: Chronic Pain Affects Brain Function

This is a brain scan. On the top left is a normal brain, on the right is the brain of a Fibromyalgia patient. There are much fewer active areas, which accounts for the lack of concentration, and the "fibro fog" syndrome. On the bottom left is a brain of a normal person, on the right is the brain of a person with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. Again, parts of the brain seemed to have been burned out. The article below offers a theory of how this happens. If the picture is too small, click your right mouse button on the picture, save it to your desktop, then view it from there, where you can probably enlarge it. I got this from www.fibrohugs.com .

Hello all;

This was on my news station last night, and I wrote to them to find out the source, which they sent me. On the news story, they showed an actual EEG (electroencephalogram) which showed the brain ALWAYS being busy, even when sleeping. It is the body and the subconscious trying to adapt to the pain. This causes exhaustion, depression, forgetfulness, lack of concentration, and sensitivity to extremes of hot, cold, noise, light, crowds, extended physical activity, and emotional stress. It wears on your nerves and makes everything else in life MUCH more difficult than it is for a healthy person. Another proof that "If you have your health, you have everything", because when you are healthy, you can work yourself out of any problem, and can accomplish almost anything you want. I have wondered why I have changed so much, in so many ways, I guess this explains it. I saw other articles about actual brain damage from pain, because the brain cells that stay active 24/7 for years eventually burn themselves out. Now I see why I can't do as much as I used to and why I need more help just for daily living.

You're all in my prayers.

Blessings

Chronic pain seen altering how brain works

CHICAGO (Reuters) – Brain scans of people in chronic pain show a state of constant activity in areas that should be at rest, U.S. researchers said on Tuesday, a finding that could help explain why pain patients have higher rates of exhaustion, lack of concentration (often called pain fog), depression, anxiety and other disorders. They said chronic pain seems to alter the way people process information that is unrelated to pain.

Chronic Pain Harms Brain's Wiring

FRIDAY, Feb. 8 (HealthDay News) -- Chronic pain can disrupt brain function and cause problems such as disturbed sleep, depression, anxiety and difficulty making simple decisions, a U.S. study finds.

Researchers at Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago used functional MRI to scan brain activity in people with chronic low back pain while they tracked a moving bar on a computer screen. They did the same thing with a control group of people with no pain.

In those with no pain, the brain regions displayed a state of equilibrium. When one region was active, the other regions calmed down. But in people with chronic pain, the front region of the cortex mostly associated with emotion "never shuts up," study author Dante Chialvo, an associate research professor of physiology, said in a prepared statement.

This region remains highly active, which wears out neurons and alters their connections to each other. This constant firing of neurons could cause permanent damage.

"We know when neurons fire too much they may change their connections with other neurons or even die, because they can't sustain high activity for so long," Chialvo said.

"If you are a chronic pain patient, you have pain 24 hours a day, seven days a week, every minute of your life. That permanent perception of pain in your brain makes these areas in your brain continuously active. This continuous dysfunction in the equilibrium of the brain can change the wiring forever and could hurt the brain," Chialvo explained.

These changes "may make it harder for you to make a decision or be in a good mood to get up in the morning. It could be that pain produces depression and the other reported abnormalities, because it disturbs the balance of the brain as a whole," he said.

The study was published in the Feb. 6 issue of The Journal of Neuroscience.

Chialvo said the findings show that, along with finding new ways to treat pain, it's also important to develop methods to evaluate and prevent disruption of brain function caused by chronic pain.

More information

The American Academy of Family Physicians has more about chronic pain.

Sources:
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/health/20080206-0500-health.html

http://www.marshallnewsmessenger.com/health/content/shared-auto/healthnews/brai/612365.html

Posted by Bluebirdy at 11:54

2 comments:

Hi Sheila,
It's fine that you added me to your blog roll. Also, the call has been in the right column since I posted the submissions. It is right under my about me stuff.
Leslie

Leslie said... Sun Jul 13, 07:06:00 am GMT-6

Hi Sheila,
Thanks for all of your comments. Wow! That's a lot of questions you have for me. Hopefully earlier posts of my blog will help you find the answers, otherwise I'll attempt to answer them myself. As always, thanks for reading!
Leslie

Leslie said... Mon Jul 14, 05:12:00 am GMT-6