As if chronic back pain wasn’t bad enough, the preliminary results of a small study presented at an American Pain Society meeting last week showed a possible link between chronic back pain and brain shrinkage.
While the study, comparing 10 people with chronic back pain to 20 people without back pain, relied on only a small sampling, researchers indicated that there was a measurable difference found in the quantity and density of the grey matter in the chronic back pain sufferers and the group without back pain.
According to a Reuter’s Health article, the subjects with chronic back pain had less grey matter in parts of the brain that are associated with “emotional assessments”