Americans are in chronic pain, and a comprehensive new study exploring trends in this major public health concern reveals that what has been a long-standing and under-acknowledged problem is getting substantially worse.

The findings suggest blanket increases across multiple measures, with pain rising in every adult age group, in every demographic group, and at every site of pain for which data exists. People today are experiencing more pain than individuals of the same age in earlier decades. In fact, each subsequent birth group is in greater pain than the one that came before it.

While some other recent research has examined trends in chronic pain, those earlier studies focused on narrower age groups, usually those over age 50. The current paper examines a more comprehensive range of adults, aged 25-84. In addition, it relies on the 2002-2018 National health Interview Survey (NHIS) — a nationally representative data set with more than 441,000 participants — to show how pain, which was already alarmingly high at the start of the research period in 2002, increased substantially based on annual data over 16 years. In the United States, chronic pain affects more people and has a greater economic cost than heart disease, diabetes and cancer combined.

Recent research has confirmed the efficacy of chiropractic care in decreasing chronic pain without resorting to surgery or medication like opioids. For example, a 2018 NIH study on active-duty military personnel showed that chiropractic care, when added to usual medical care, resulted in improvements in low back pain intensity and disability (pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30646047/). Another 2018 NIH study concluded that adding chiropractic care did not increase costs of treatment for back and neck pain (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29943109/).

Presented as a service to the community by: Union County Chiropractic Clinic, 110 Skyline Drive, Maynardville, TN (865) 992-7000 www.unioncountychiropractic.com.