Chronic Pain: What Helped You Is What Research Needs to Know

Every figure in this guide comes from a published source, linked where it appears and kept in CureCircle's evidence base with the source's own words. It is not medical advice. Read on 7 November 2026.

Living with chronic pain usually means a long list of things tried: physiotherapy, painkillers, antidepressants used for pain, injections, pacing, psychological therapy, a different job. Some help for a while, some not at all, and what works depends on the person. Most of that is never recorded in one place. The person's own account of what helped, joined to their records, is the evidence research on chronic pain needs, and it is the evidence that is hardest to get.

How many people live with it

A 2026 meta-analysis found a pooled prevalence of chronic pain of 26.99% in the general population. In the United States, the CDC estimated that during 2021 20.9% of adults (51.6 million persons) experienced chronic pain, and that new chronic pain arose at 52.4 cases per 1,000 person-years among adults who had been pain-free.

The records worth keeping

NICE's guideline on chronic pain and the CDC's guideline on opioids describe the care that leaves records:

• A care and support plan from a person-centred assessment, which NICE says to review if a person has a flare-up.
• Medicine for chronic primary pain: NICE suggests considering an antidepressant such as amitriptyline or duloxetine. Your prescription history shows everything tried.
• A short pain questionnaire: for people on long-term opioids, the CDC suggests regular reassessment, with a suggested interval of every 3 months, using the three-item PEG scale of pain and function.

A pain diary, how bad each day was, what you did, what eased it, shows the pattern no appointment can. If you do not have your letters or prescriptions, ask your practice for a copy.

What sharing it is worth

CureCircle values every contribution with a public benchmark built from what health data has sold for. A complete chronic pain story with the records the guidelines list comes to about $123 per licence on the benchmark today. With 60 days of pain diary entries added, it comes to about $308 per licence, because a day-by-day record linked to what was tried is evidence research rarely gets. Every line and its source is on the chronic pain page.

A licence is not a one-off sale: the same de-identified story can be licensed to several research teams, and you earn a share each time.

How to share it

You start by writing what you live with in your own words; a few quick questions follow, then an AI interviewer asks about the details only you know, and you rate every treatment you tried. You can add clinic letters, prescriptions and pages of a pain diary as PDFs or photos, and the AI reads them into your own medical file. Before anything is shared, you read the de-identified summary and decide.

Start your story, or read what your health data is worth first.