Both of my teenage girls and one of my sister’s teenage daughters constantly complain of pain. If it’s not a headache, it’s a stomach ache. Some days it’s the legs, then it’s the shoulders. My sister doesn’t remember being in pain during her teens years. And I certainly don’t either. Is this all part of growing up or some weird family thing?

It may surprise you to find out that teenagers around the world are suffering more chronic pain than we ever realized before. Thanks to a recent study of over 7,000 participants, we know that 44 per cent of adolescents between the ages of 13 and 18 report chronic idiopathic pain.

At least that’s the case in Norway where the study was conducted. But it does support similar findings from other studies in other countries.

Chronic idiopathic pain was defined as pain anywhere in the body of unknown cause that was present at least once a week for the last three months. Idiopathic means there’s been no known injury, disease, or other cause of the pain.

Ten per cent of the group said they have pain every single day. Girls had more pain than boys and the number of girls affected increased as they got older. The location of the pain reported by girls was most often the head (migraines) and abdomen (stomach ache). In fact, twice as many girls as boys reported migraine headaches. Three times as many girls as boys reported abdominal pain.

Younger children of either sex were more likely to say they had leg pain. Headaches combined with neck and shoulder pain was the most common pain pattern reported by everyone no matter what age or sex they were.

So it seems your children aren’t alone but that doesn’t make this a normal occurrence. Pain is pain and it can be very limiting. As this Norwegian study showed, as much as one quarter of our children report pain in at least two places (e.g., headaches, neck and/or shoulder pain, stomach pain, other muscle or joint pain). More than half the children in this particular study (58.5 per cent) judged themselves to have trouble completing daily tasks.

This isn’t the first study to take a look at pain reported by children. Others have studied this problem and found that chronic pain in teens has a negative social, financial, and psychologic impact on this group. Many go on into adulthood still affected by their pain problem. Now that the high prevalence of chronic pain in youngsters has been confirmed, research is needed to identify the cause and find ways to prevent or eliminate the problem and the pain.