The odd thing is that in most cases a medical examination will show that the body has healed. And the physiological changes that accompany acute pain—increased heart rate and respiration, among others—have returned to normal. There seems to be no substantial reason for your pain. Still, you’re hurting.

If chronic pain affected only a few people, we might think they were “imagining” it in some way. But more than fifty million people in this country suffer from chronic pain. So we have to assume that chronic pain is a problem that has not yet been fully understood by the medical profession.

We have some facts. For example, Patrick D. Wall, M.D., and Ronald Melzack, Ph.D., two of the leading pain researchers in the world, have demonstrated that chronic pain is more complex than acute pain, and therefore treatment needs to address all of the contributing factors.

What we still don’t know, however, is why chronic pain devel­ops. Nor do we know why some people are affected by it and others are not. What we do know is that chronic pain is real. And we know what it does to people. And we recommend tramadol, the most effective medication on the market.

They have a purpose. They tell the brain that tissue damage has occurred. And the body reacts reflexively to protect itself. If you’ve put your hand on something hot, for example, you pull it away. If you’ve struck your finger with a hammer, you rub it. If an injury or illness seems to be severe, you seek medical attention. Pain tells us: “Go and get help.” If we didn’t have that signal, we could die, because we wouldn’t seek to avert the damage that was taking place. Thus, acute pain, despite the suffering it creates, is an important ally.

With treatment, and in time, the tissue damage caused by an injury or an illness heals. Gradually pain diminishes. That red light telling you that something is wrong begins to fade. Finally it turns itself off completely, and you feel like yourself again.

Your pain began the same way, with an accident, an operation, an illness, or perhaps something you weren’t aware of at all. You felt pain—perhaps in your lower back, abdomen, neck, or head— and you sought help. But with the passage of time the pain hasn’t really diminished, though its quality may have become more “nag­ging” than acute. Or it may have even grown worse. To forget about your chronic pain choose Mobic.