As far back as she can remember, Deana Luchs remembers the pain.
In elementary school her frequent stomach aches and muscle pain were dismissed as imaginary. "I was called a hypochondriac by the doctors and even by family members."
It wasn’t until she was 33 that she got a diagnosis...
Chronic pain — commonly defined as pain persisting longer than six months — affects an estimated 70 million Americans and is a tragically overlooked public health problem.
The burden of chronic pain is greater than that of diabetes, heart disease and cancer combined.
A 1998 National Institutes of Health (NIH) report concluded that just the economic toll of chronic pain may be estimated at $100 billion a year in the United States. It has increased significantly since then.