Chronic pain isn’t a fun thing to have to deal with, and yet for many people, it’s just a fact of life. For people that have to live with pain on a daily basis, having some kind of pain management program available is a must.
Getting the right plan for you is important. Making sure that you’re as comfortable as possible in the most comfortable way possible makes a huge difference. Whether you’re at the beginning of your managing pain journey or you’ve been on it for a while, there’s usually a way to make it even better.
That being said, not every method is best for everyone. Different people have different needs, and even two people suffering from similar conditions could need wildly different treatments. That can be because of personal preference, severity, physiological makeup, or a number of other factors.
That being said, there are a few options available for everyone. Let’s take a look at five of them so you can have a better idea of what might or might not work out well for you.
Having an idea of what might work for you can make any consultations that you have to attend go a lot more smoothly in general, whether you’re talking to a nurse, doctor, or other medical professionals about your pain management.
Table of Contents
Massage Therapy
The massage industry is massive. In the United States alone it’s valued at hundreds of millions of dollars yearly. People like getting massages because it helps a lot with stress relief as well as just generally keeping your muscles feeling loosey-goosey.
Relaxation isn’t the only benefit of massage therapy. In fact, there are a lot of benefits from getting massages. These can range from stress relief to improved circulation. It’s well documented that massages can have a lot of benefits. Let’s look at a few of them:
- Improved blood flow
- Lowered blood pressure
- Stress relief
- Heightened immune system
Massages can also help with quite a few issues, for example:
- Anxiety
- Fibromyalgia
- Sports injuries
- Headaches
- Stress-induced insomnia
- Joint pain
- Lower back pain
- Pain caused by many different syndromes
There are a lot of other ways that you could find massages helping you out, but if you’re looking for a good way to manage your pain you could definitely try getting a good massage. There are a lot of types of massage to choose from.
Different types of massage can help with different things. You won’t get the same benefits from a deep tissue massage as you will from a Swedish massage, but what you might need could be different depending on exactly what is bothering you.
Your doctor should be able to help you find out what kind of massage you need and might even be able to point you in the right direction of a good massage therapist that is well prepared to deal with whatever kind of help you might need from taking this approach.
Dietary Changes
Your body is a very complex machine. All of your organs work together to make sure that everything is working smoothly. For example, you pull air in with your lungs and push out carbon dioxide.
Your lungs fill blood up with oxygen and filter out the carbon dioxide. Your heart is the muscle responsible for making sure that the blood travels through the veins and capillaries that run the course of your body.
Your organs each have their own functions, many of those functions have to do with filtering things from your body. It only gets more complicated from there, but trust us when we say that every part of your body is doing its job to keep you alive.
That being said, what you put in your body can make a huge difference. In some cases, the foods that you eat could actually be hurting you.
This can happen for a number of reasons. One of your organs could be working improperly, your blood type could just not agree with the food, or you could even just not have a stomach that’s able to deal with certain foods.
This happens sometimes and that’s ok. Changing your diet could make managing your pain a lot easier. Of course, it probably won’t flat out fix all of your problems, but it can help make your pain a lot easier to handle on a day-to-day basis.
Acupuncture
Acupuncture is a treatment that is thousands of years old. There have been countless studies done on how acupuncture can help with various issues. Here are just a few of those things:
- Dental pain
- Lower back pain
- Neck pain
- Menstrual pain
- Labor Pain
- Many conditions that cause various types of pains
People have been using acupuncture to treat various ailments for a long time at this point in history. In fact, it’s commonly believed to have come from China a few hundred years before the current era.
That’s something with a great deal of history. People all over the world have taken on the tradition of using acupuncture to treat their pain, and it helps a lot of people. In fact, the number one use of acupuncture is pain relief.
If you’re not averse to the concept of being a human pin cushion for a few hours you can definitely find some of these benefits for yourself. The way that acupuncture works is kind of complicated, but we’re going to do our best to describe it for you now.
There are a few theories that scientists around the globe have about how and why acupuncture works. The leading theory is that the points that are used in acupuncture are able to stimulate your central nervous system.
By interacting with these points in the exact right spots, it’s able to change the signals that are sent to your brain from your body. It’s kind of hard to explain but imagine your nervous system as a bunch of power lines and the pressure points being power stations.
That’s not the best metaphor but we’re running low on time for explaining an incredibly complicated topic. If you want to learn more about your nervous system there is a lot of information online.
Rehabilitation Therapy
Rehabilitation therapy can be great for getting your pain under control. It can be hard to get back to 100%, but you can definitely get on the right track and help yourself feel at least marginally better.
This method is especially good for people that sustained major injuries, but it can be used for all sorts of people. Rehabilitation therapy can take weeks, months, or even years to be done to completion.
Let’s say, for example. You were in a car accident that led to your legs being broken. You would go through rehabilitation therapy, or physical therapy, to get back on your feet the way that you were able to before the crash.
This works wonders for all sorts of people and it might be worth talking to your doctor about if you think you could use this kind of therapy. All sorts of people swear by it and most even are able to recover to some degree by the time they’re all finished with their therapy.
Injection Therapy
This one is a little different, and you will need a doctor to do it. There are a lot of different types of injection therapy that can be used, but each one will be able to help you feel a bit of relief from your pain.
The most common way that this is done is by professionals is to inject a local anesthetic and anti-inflammatory substance into the site where the pain is being caused. This process is mostly painless and uncomfortable for the majority of people that get it done.
All it takes is a needle being put into the specific area where the pain is coming from and the substance being put into your muscles. It only takes a moment or two and just feels like a little prick in the problem area.
There are a lot of other ways that people do this same exact procedure, and your doctor would be able to say for sure which one would more than likely be the best one for you.
Just remember that this is an option that you have available to you if you need it. There are plenty of places that would be able to do this kind of thing for you and there are plenty of medical professionals that can help you decide what kind is going to work well for you.
Getting Your Pain Under Control
Living with pain can be difficult, and finding a good way to make it more manageable can feel like a never-ending uphill battle. Millions of people all over the country struggle with the same thing so you are far from alone in this matter.
All you need is a little patience and willingness to try new things and you can be well on your way to finding the best possible strategy to manage your pain in the long run.
A suitcase carrying, also known as the unilateral farmer’s walk is a kind of exercise that is loaded. It involves lifting a dumbbell or kettle bell and walking along with it. Like carrying a suitcase or briefcase to go about your daily life and in everyday life, carrying a suitcase utilizes multiple muscle groups and is simple to carry out. It is a unilateral activity, which means that the weight or resistance can only be put on one side of your body. This means that the opposite part of your body has to be more active to ensure stability and balance.
In the end, this can help increase the strength of the core, back, as well as lower and upper parts of the body. For this to do, you will need a dumbbell or kettle bell you are comfortable using securely. If you are a beginner at exercising you should start by lifting a smaller weight (e.g. five pounds, (or 2.25 kilograms) and then gradually increase the weight load as you increase your muscle. The suitcase carry exercise concentrates on the Quadratus Lumborum and the obliques, as well as the abdominal muscles, as well as the multifidus spinal muscles in the lower back.