Chronic Pain Management and the Role of Smoking

You see it in the media all the time now—the “evils” of smoking. If you review research from credible sources e.g., The American Heart Association, The Food and Drug Administration, or maybe WebMD you will find information that states—“Tobacco addiction, the second-leading cause of death in the world, is a culprit for approximately 5 million deaths each year or 1 in 10 adult deaths.” For many who smoke it is much more than “just a habit.”

You can also go to the National Institute on Drug Abuse and check out their Research Report Series: Tobacco Addiction and review current scientific up-to-date research about the true nature of nicotine addiction.

What I haven’t seen very much concerns how smoking impacts chronic pain management. Today I ran across a Blog site “Skills for Healthy Living: A Blog for Health Providers.” One posting I saw was titled “Smoking and Pain” that was posted on June 19, 2008 by adiemusfree. I want to include a few excerpts from that posting. If you want to read the entire posting go to Smoking and Pain.

A large national study published in 2006, specifically looking at tobacco smoking and pain in the general population - quite different from our hospital patients, or those directly seeking treatment. Quoting directly from the abstract: “Former and current heavy smokers had higher odds for greater numbers of pain locations and for moderate and intense pain than never smokers after adjustment for analgesic medicament use and behavior-related risk factors.”

The findings suggest that former and current heavy smokers are more likely to report more pain locations and more intense pain than never smokers. Well, that’s quite high odds! And sadly, it doesn’t seem to make a lot of difference whether you’ve stopped smoking or continue to smoke - the odds are still high.

Curious - some very strong pointers that smoking increases the risk of persistent pain and poorer recovery from acute pain, yet I’m not sure that I’ve ever heard that in public health messages about smoking, and I’ve not yet heard of quitting smoking efforts targeting people with chronic pain. Time for action? I think so.

To read more about my views about smoking please go to my article Smoking and Recovery Just Don't Mix that you can download for free on our Ariticles page.

You can learn more about the Addiction-Free Pain Management® System at our website www.addiction-free.com. If you are working with people undergoing chronic pain management and want to learn how to develop a plan for managing their chronic pain and coexisting psychological disorders; including depression, addiction and other coexisting psychological disorders effectively; please consider my book Managing Pain and Coexisting Disorders: Using the Addiction-Free Pain Management® System. To purchase this book please Click Here.

To learn about my upcoming trainings you can check out our Calendar page.