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Chronic pain is more prevalent in seniors that live in institutions than those who live in private households. Photo: Kevin Connors/Morguefile

A Statistics Canada study released Thursday suggests chronic pain affects more than one-quarter of seniors living in private households and even more in institutions.

About four out of every 10 seniors living in institutions experience pain on a regular basis, limiting mobility and dexterity.

John Arthur Murphy, of Antigonish, N.S., has been living with chronic pain caused by arthritis for most of his life. Now, almost a senior, he says the pain is the most tolerable it’s ever been, since he had surgery to help relieve his sleep apnea.

A better, more complete sleep helps him cope with the pain he experiences on a daily basis.

He says chronic pain dominated most of his life and it’s the single most significant factor influencing the way he lived.

“I couldn’t plan activities or even a career without taking it into consideration,” Murphy says.

He says the pain would change continually, making it difficult for him to find a strategy to cope.

“The arthritis had its own life – it lived separated from what I was trying to do.”

Dr. Mary Lynch, the director at the pain management unit at the Queen Elizabeth II Health Sciences Centre, hopes the study will help people understand that chronic pain is very common.

“If up until now, you had a tendency to think that pain only happens to other people, well you better wake up,” she says.

Everyone has a 25 – 33 per cent chance of ending up with chronic pain.

“We also need increased education, awareness and treatment at the community level,” Lynch says. “People have to be aware that they have to live a very healthy lifestyle, and maintain good physical activity, good nutrition and do not smoke.”

Murphy says he remained active all his life, which was against the medical advice offered to him when he first developed arthritis in his teens.

He believes staying active prevented the arthritis from settling deeper in his body.

Beating the odds

The study says chronic pain can make life miserable for seniors, stating, “Seniors who experienced an increase in pain over a two-year period had greater odds of being unhappy, regardless of illness or other factors that would contribute to unhappiness.”

It seems Murphy doesn’t fall in with the majority of chronic pain suffers.

“The more optimistic I am, the happier, the pain is lessened. It’s always been the humorous, happy time when the pain was less,” he says.

The study also concluded that seniors experiencing increases in pain were more likely to have a negative impression of their general health.

Murphy says he was always in denial about his arthritis.

“One of the things that seemed to counter it was that I refused to accept I had a disease,” he says. “The prognosis wasn’t good but I always thought I would get better.”

However, Lynch says a positive attitude and good health still don’t prevent chronic pain completely.

“After many common surgical procedures there is roughly a 10 per cent chance that you will be left with chronic pain,” she says.

And, if you develop chronic pain today, there is a two - three-year wait for services from a pain centre in Nova Scotia.

Women more likely to report pain

The study say women were consistently more likely to report chronic pain than men, no matter what their age.

For seniors living in private households, 31 per cent of women reported chronic pain, while 21 per cent of men said they were sufferers.

“There has been a lot of work to show that women do suffer more chronic pain then men,” Lynch says.

“The question is, is it because they are more likely to report or is it because they do have higher levels of pain?”

She believes there are factors showing women do suffer chronic pain more often then men.

“Women in advanced age do a lot of the work. They still have the homemaking responsibilities to continue with,” she says. “So that may be reflected in some of these statistics, that they continue to work hard even after so-called retirement age.”