1 in 5 adults has chronic pain—here’s how you can get relief naturally

Pain is your body’s way of telling you that something’s wrong. Acute pain begins suddenly and catches your attention immediately, letting you know that you’ve been hurt. Chronic pain, on the other hand, is long-term pain that lasts more than 12 weeks. It can feel like anything from a dull ache to a burning or stinging sensation, and often comes from an injury, like nerve root compression from a herniated disc, or from health conditions like osteoarthritis and fibromyalgia.

Chronic pain can be debilitating. According to a November 2020 report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), it affects one in five adults in the United States, or more than 52 million Americans. More than 19 million adults (7.4 percent) experience high-impact pain that frequently limits the ability to perform daily tasks, like grocery shopping and getting to work. Anyone can experience lasting discomfort, but older adults, women, people in rural areas, and adults living in poverty are at a higher risk.

This pain is often treated with medications, like opioids, which are highly addictive drugs that have led to an epidemic of abuse and overdoses. According to the CDC, more than 16,000 people died from overdosing on prescription opioids in 2020 alone.

That's one of the reasons you may want to try to reduce chronic pain naturally. Even though you may not get ease it completely, you can lessen its effects. “Physicians and patients should be having discussions not about the elimination of pain, but rather improving pain to improve a functional goal in their life,” says Scott Joy, MD, an internist in Englewood, Colorado.