STATISTICS

• At least 28 million Americans battle chronic headaches.
• About 18 percent of women experience migraine, compared to 6 percent of men. (However, until puberty, the rates of headaches in boys and girls are about even, with boys experiencing slightly more by some accounts.)
• Up to one-third of women between the ages of 25 and 55 have migraine (with hormones exacerbating the problem during reproductive years).
• However, hormone fluctuations do not fully explain migraine as a “women’s issue,” as 14 percent of post-menopausal women have migraine.

• 4-5 percent of the population has what can be diagnosed as CDH (from various studies, documented in chapter 1).
• .5 percent of the population (like the author) suffers from CDH that is constant.
• 10 percent of women in reproductive years have CDH.
• CDH accounts for a majority of those seeking care at headache clinics
• As with other chronic pain syndromes, the majority of those with CDH are women.
• As with depression and other types of chronic pain, another major variable besides gender for having CDH is socioeconomic status. Those of lower education levels and income have higher incidences of CDH. One reason is that the pain may impair education and earning potential.
• Sufferers of CDH are also likely to have anxiety, depression and/or fatigue, because of a common underlying brain chemistry of all these problems.

• Chronic pain causes more disability than cancer and heart disease combined. Pain is the second most common reason for a doctor visit, after colds and flu.
• Chronic pain is the leading cause of disability in the United States.
• About 86 million Americans have visited a doctor at least once seeking relief from pain that lasted for a month or more. (Source: American Chronic Pain Association, theacpa.org.)
• Of the adults surveyed in a 2000 Gallup poll, 42 percent reported experiencing pain every day, and 89 percent every month. And they seem resigned to the suffering, just living with it; only half said they had seen a doctor in the past three years for their pain.
• This reflects recent statistics from a May 2004 survey by the American Chronic Pain Association that 72 percent of people with chronic pain have lived with itfor more than three years, including a third (34 percent) who have lived with it for more than a decade.∑ 76 percent of those with chronic pain have it daily, including 48 percent who say it is ever-present.
• 89 percent of those with chronic pain use alternative treatments.

• In general, because of neurological differences, women are much more susceptible to chronic-pain disorders of all types, with women constituting a majority of those reporting chronic pain across cultures.
• Women also are more likely to report multiple pain sites, intense pain and frequent pain.
• In addition, women are more likely to have other disorders involving pain and fatigue, including six times the rate for men of fibromyalgia, which affects 2-3 percent of the population.
• Women are about 50 percent more likely than men to have temporomandibular disorders, also known as TMJ, or jaw pain, experienced by 4-12 percent of the population.
• Women are twice as likely as men to suffer from irritable bowel syndrome, experienced by 15-20 percent of the population.
• They are 2.5 times more likely than men to have rheumatoid arthritis, an autoimmune disorder of 1 percent of the population.
• They are .5 to 4 times more likely as men to have osteoarthritis, a disorder typically striking up to 80 percent of the population after age 65.
• And they are 9 times more likely to develop interstitial cystitis, a chronic and often painful inflammation of the bladder, affecting about .5 percent of the population.

Created on 02/06/2005 04:51 PM by carolsim Updated on 02/10/2005 06:59 PM by carolsim