There, chronic pain, unlike the acute variety, was treated as a malfunction in perception, whether or not an ongoing physical cause had been identified. The brain becomes addicted to dramatizing pain, they said; and the more you feed it, the stronger the addiction. So don’t dwell on the pain, and don’t try to fix it — no props, no pills. But the more I learned about chronic pain, the more sense it made. For me, buying into the Mayo pain program meant giving up my braces and straps and, with the greatest reluctance, my sitting cushion.

Source: New York Times August 01, 2017 09:50 UTC