Nov 2, 2023
Chronic pain can adversely affect your quality of life and your ability to engage in daily activities. It also has repercussions on your family life, work environment, and social life. It is important to emphasize the need for a comprehensive and multidisciplinary approach to improve patient’s function.
Research shows that the ability to live a meaningful life with chronic pain depends on you taking a leading role in your life.
With this in mind, here are some tips to get you started on making your life more meaningful despite living in chronic pain.
Managing Life with Chronic Pain
Developing Some Coping Mechanisms
You probably get a grim picture when you think of living life with chronic pain. However, the reality is that you can continue to enjoy a happy, healthy, and productive life. Consider:
- Learning deep breathing mechanisms or meditation to help you relax
- Reducing stressful situations in your life
- Cutting back on alcohol and smoking, which can make the problem worse
- Joining a support group
- Learning biofeedback to decrease tension
Exercise
It’s not a good idea to allow yourself to get lost in chronic pain, but instead, use it to your benefit. When you are in pain, leading a sedentary life can make the pain worse. Talk to your healthcare provider or physical therapist about a safe exercise program that suits your condition.
The program should match your current fitness level and take into account your diagnosis.
Exercise doesn’t have to be in the gym. You can do it from home with streaming videos, or you can join a rehabilitative exercise program in your area. Exercise has a pain-reducing effect because the brain releases some chemicals to block pain signals.
Try Complementary Treatments
Together with getting the proper medications and procedures, you may also want to try other effective alternative treatments that can be powerful tools to help you cope with chronic pain. Common alternatives include:
It can be challenging to manage chronic pain all alone. If you would like more professional help managing chronic pain for a more meaningful life, fill this form to request an appointment with pain management specialists at SDOMG.
Dec 30, 2022
Chronic pain is pain that lasts for more than 12 weeks. It can be constant pain or pain that comes and goes. This can cause physical discomfort as well as mental health issues. You can experience chronic pain due to:
- Arthritis
- Sports injuries
- Chronic back pain
- Accidents
- Surgeries
Conservative Management of Chronic Pain
There are many options for managing chronic pain, including lifestyle changes and medications, like NSAIDs, over-the-counter pain medications, or opioids. These medicines have many shortcomings, but we’ll highlight the most profound:
- They don’t work for some patients.
- They can have side effects and can be toxic to patients with other underlying conditions.
- Sometimes they have reduced effectiveness, necessitating prescriptions of stronger medications.
However, there are other alternatives that you can use to manage pain, and they include:
Cold and Heat Therapies
Cold and heat are practices that many people use to manage chronic pain. The trick to using cold and heat therapy is knowing when to use them.
Cold therapy
Cold therapy reduces blood flow to the injured area, which slows down swelling and inflammation. In addition, you can apply cold compresses for joint and tendon pain.
Heat therapy
It is more useful when dealing with muscle pain. It eases the pain by increasing blood flow to the area and relaxing the muscle. Heat also reduces lactic acid accumulation, which could increase pain.
Exercise
Exercise relieves chronic pain and can improve strength, mobility, and flexibility over time. When you exercise, endorphins are released which act as natural pain killers. Therefore, it’s essential to find a workout that does not worsen your pain. Chronic pain can affect the quality of life, which can be improved by exercising.
Physical therapy
It is a pain management practice that involves strengthening and stretching exercises, massage, and other modalities, to manage chronic pain and other conditions. Physical therapists will teach you a proper comprehensive home exercise program.
Massage
It is a practice that involves soft tissue manipulation to relax muscles and reduce inflammation.
Shockwave therapy
This device uses sound waves to promote tissue healing. This can be use for muscles, tendons, and joints injuries.
Pain management continues to evolve. Pain management doctors use innovative devices and procedures that can wean their patients off medications. These techniques and devices have been used to successfully treat conditions that were previously difficult to treat.
Get Alternative Pain Treatment From SDOMG
Visit our website to learn more about alternative ways to manage chronic pain. We have a team of qualified certified pain management doctors who will give you quality, non-surgical treatment options to relieve your pain. Fill out this form to request an appointment.
