The 7 Most Common Pain Disorders

Pain disorders can manifest themselves in a wide variety of ways. They range from headaches to rheumatic pain to neuropathic pain and can cause permanent damage to your health. Here we show you the 7 most common chronic pain disorders and how they are caused.

1. headaches

Headaches are among the most common pain syndromes. In the course of a year, the majority of all Germans experience one or more headache attacks. The comforting news is that the frequency of headaches decreases with increasing age in both men and women.

Two groups of headaches are distinguished:

2. back pain

Back pain is one of the leading health problems in Germany. This is evidenced by several studies in recent years. Every second to third German suffers from back pain today.

Back pain is usually caused by the following triggers:

  • Lack of exercise
  • Incorrect loads on the spine
  • Emotional conflicts
  • Occupational stress

3. osteoporosis

Osteoporosis affects one in four women over the age of 50 and one in six men; in total, an estimated six to eight million Germans are affected.

The altered statics of the bone framework (reduced bone mass and altered bone structure) can lead to pain.

4. rheumatism

An estimated 15 percent of the population seek medical treatment for rheumatic complaints at least once a year, increasingly including young people.

A distinction is made between soft tissue rheumatism (fibromyalgia), with pain in muscles, tendons and ligaments, and articular rheumatism, in which the joints are either inflamed (chronic polyarthritis) or damaged by wear and tear (osteoarthritis).

5. cancer

Many tumor patients experience severe pain; about 90 percent in the terminal stage. The pain results either from tumor growth/metastasis or from forms of therapy that have side effects.

6. nerve pain

Neuropathic pain results from direct damage to nerve fibers and pathways.

The most common neuropathic pain syndromes include diabetic polyneuropathy (circa 10 percent of all diabetics suffer from it) and postzosteric neuralgia (about 20 percent of all patients have long-term pain after shingles).

7. phantom limb pain

Phantom limb pain affects up to 70 percent of all amputees. Phantom limb pain can occur after amputations when the pain-processing nerve cells of the amputated limb become sensitized by prolonged irritation. They then continue to send signals for months after the procedure.

In most cases, the pain occurs in an attack-like manner and is often also accompanied by severe muscle spasms.