Scientists Link Long-Lasting Pain Back Pain With Shrinking of the Brain
A study published in The Journal of Neuroscience has revealed that people who suffer from chronic back pain for one year may experience a reduction in the brain's gray matter equivalent to the amount lost by the average person in 10 to 20 years of normal aging.
Gray matter is considered by many to be the "thinking" center of the brain, and is responsible for functions such as memory and information processing.
Patient's pain was primarily localized to the lumbosacral region including buttocks and thighs, with or without pain radiating to the leg.
The normal person had a decrease in gray matter at about 0.5% per year while in the Back Pain patients they lost 11 percent. Patients with sciatica had the largest decrease in gray matter. In addition, the more years someone had chronic back pain, the more loss of gray matter they suffered.
"The role of the brain in chronic pain conditions remains speculative.
"Our studies show that Chronic Low Back Pain for six months is accompanied by abnormal brain chemistry mainly in the prefrontal cortex, implying neuronal loss or dysfunction in this region and reduced cognitive abilities on a task that implies abnormal prefrontal processing.
"Given that normal whole-brain gray matter shrinking is 0.5% per year of aging and that shrinking caused by Chronic Low Back Pain is 5-11%, the magnitude of brain gray matter shrinking caused by Chronic Low Back Pain is equivalent to 10-20 years of aging. However, this analogy only holds for the overall magnitude, because the regional specificity of shrinking in Chronic Low Back Pain is distinct from that seen with aging."
In my opinion one reason why this might happen is because the less the spine moves the less sensory information goes to the brain, ( Brain Building) the less the brain is stimulated. Just like a muscle, if you dont't use it it will get smalller, now we have scientific evidence that the brain gets smaller with chronic low back pain.
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