When Childhood Pain Echoes - Adverse Childhood Experiences & Chronic Pain
- Edward Walsh
- Jul 16
- 2 min read
What are ACE's?
Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE's) are harmful experiences that happen to a person during their childhood or as a teenager. An ACE score can be calculated out of ten, with one point scored for each lived experience a person has from the image below.
What does all this have to do with pain? Recent research now tells us that what happened to us before age 18 can influence how likely we are to develop chronic pain.
The Science – What 826,000 Adults Taught Us
A 2023 systematic review pooled data from 85 studies and 826,452 participants to ask a simple question: Do adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) raise the risk of chronic pain? The answer was a resounding yes.
Key numbers:
Any direct ACE (physical, sexual, emotional abuse or neglect) raised the odds of adult chronic pain by 45 % (adjusted odds ratio [aOR] 1.45) .
The relationship is dose‑responsive. One ACE bumps risk by 29 %; four or more nearly doubles it (aOR 1.95) .
Specific abuse types matter:
Physical abuse – aOR 1.50 for pain and 1.46 for pain‑related disability
Emotional abuse – aOR 1.56
Sexual abuse – aOR 1.37
The pattern holds across pain conditions: arthritis, spine pain, fibromyalgia, migraine, irritable bowel syndrome, even chronic pelvic pain .
Why does early threat matter?
In short, childhood adversity can leave a neuro‑immune fingerprint that lowers the threshold for persistent pain decades later.
Remember: Your pain is real, and your nervous system is plastic. What was wired by adversity can be rewired by safety and skillful practice.
More Than a Memory
Chronic pain is not just a story of joints, discs, or nerves; it is influenced by the biography of the brain. The largest study to date confirms what clinicians have long sensed: early adversity can turn up the pain dial – but not irreversibly.
If you’re living with pain: reflect on whether childhood stress might be part of your puzzle, then explore the evidence‑based tools available to reduce the present day pain impact.
References
Bussières, A., Hancock, M. J., Elklit, A., Ferreira, M. L., Ferreira, P. H., Stone, L. S., Wideman, T. H., Boruff, J. T., Al Zoubi, F., Chaudhry, F., Tolentino, R., & Hartvigsen, J. (2023). Adverse childhood experience is associated with an increased risk of reporting chronic pain in adulthood: a stystematic review and meta-analysis. European journal of psychotraumatology, 14(2), 2284025. https://doi.org/10.1080/20008066.2023.2284025
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