Are the 20,000 Acupuncturists ready for 100 Million Americans with Chronic Pain?

Escape from the Chronic Pain Trap

More than 100 million American adults live with chronic pain—most of them women. What will it take to bring them relief?

By Judy Foreman

Jan. 31, 2014

Several years ago, my neck suddenly went bonkers—bone spurs and a long-lurking arthritic problem probably exacerbated by too many hours spent hunching over a new laptop. On a subjective scale of zero to 10 (unfortunately, there is no simple objective test for pain), even the slightest wrong move—turning my head too fast or picking up a pen from the floor—would send my pain zooming from a zero to a gasping 10.

Sitting in a restaurant was agony if the table was too high; it forced my arms and shoulders up. So was sitting in the movies, looking up to see the screen. Shifting from sitting to lying down in bed was excruciating; there is simply no way to do it with a bad neck. Even stupid little things like bending forward to paint my toenails became impossible.

I had been inducted, apparently, into the growing army of American adults living in chronic pain. I discovered that there are 100 million of us, according to the Institute of Medicine. That was surprise No. 1. Surprise No. 2 was that most of us are women. Nobody really knows why.

There are cultural factors, to be sure. Women are "allowed" to be emotional about their pain, and men often aren't, so perhaps women's pain gets noticed more. There are complicated hormonal factors too. There are research biases at work as well, including the absurd fact that most basic neuroscience work on pain pathways is done not only in rats but in male rats. Go figure.

What is clear is that women and men can react so differently to both pain and pain medications that, as the McGill University pain geneticist Jeffrey Mogil only half-jokingly puts it, we may someday have pink pills for women and blue pills for men.

Here's what we do know. Clinically, women are both more likely to get chronic painful conditions that can afflict either sex and to report greater pain than men with the same condition, according to studies over the past 15 years. (Women also have more acute pain than men even after the same surgeries, such as wisdom tooth extraction, gall bladder removal, hernia repair and hip and knee surgery.)

For the full report, click here.