Sports Injuries etc.

Having chronic pain hurts more than just your physical body. A slipped disc in your back will affect more than just your back. You have to adjust your lifestyle to accommodate the pain. There are several different aspects to your life that are affected by chronic pain. An effective pain management plan will take these aspects into consideration.

The Physical Effects

Chronic pain can wreak havoc on your body. It can affect your sleep patterns. Chronic pain will keep you up at night. You can’t get comfortable. You wake up often because you’re hurting. You end up feeling fatigued throughout the day.

This fatigue in turn will affect your ability to concentrate. Simple tasks aren’t that simple anymore. You’ll find yourself withdrawing from activities that you normally enjoy, but you can’t participate in them anymore because you’re either too tired or it hurts too much to do.

Chronic pain not only affects your sleep patterns, but it affects your appetite, as well. Research has discovered that the neurons that signal a sense of being full can be activated by chronic pain. In other words, you hurt so much that your body thinks it’s full. Loss of appetite can be serious if it’s prolonged. You can experience dangerous weight loss, not to mention you’re losing out on an energy source that will exacerbate your fatigue.

In addition to interrupted sleep and loss of appetite, chronic pain can lower your immune system. With a weakened immunes system, you’ll find yourself susceptible to other illnesses such as viral infections. These additional illnesses will worsen the effects of chronic pain that you are already experiencing.

The Psychological Effects

All of these physical effects that you are feeling will in turn create psychological effects such as depression, anxiety, moodiness, or fear. Negative emotions will affect your relationships. You may feel frustration because you don’t feel up to spending time with loved ones. Chronic pain can also cause you to feel isolated and lonely because of the decrease in your social interaction. When you can’t participate in your normal activities, you may feel dejected. Your sense of self-worth takes a hit, as well. This is especially true if your job performance suffers because of pain. It’s hard to feel good about yourself when you can’t even complete daily tasks such as cleaning your house.

Pain Affects Your Whole Life

Pain doesn’t just affect the body part experiencing the pain. It affects your whole being. Chronic pain is a drain on you physically, emotionally, and socially. Chronic pain isn’t an isolated symptom.

Chronic Pain Can Be Managed

You may think that the picture of chronic pain that has been painted looks bleak and hopeless. It doesn’t have to be so. Chronic pain can be managed. If you’re experiencing chronic pain, talk to your healthcare provided. An effective pain management plan can be implemented that will alleviate this pain so that your quality of life can be restored.

An effective pain management plan will take all of the effects that have been mentioned into consideration. Yes, pain management will address the actual pain, but it will also address the effects, as well. It will address the physical, psychological, and social effects of chronic pain.

Getting It All Back

An effective pain management plan will restore what has been lost. You will get a good night’s rest. When you wake up in the morning, you’ll have a healthy appetite. You’ll embrace the day ready to spend it in the ways that you enjoy. You’ll want to spend it with the people that you care about.

Proper pain management will give you back the life you had before the chronic pain took it away. That is the goal of pain management: controlling the pain so that you can live life the way you choose to. Chronic pain can have adverse effects on your life, but this doesn’t have to be your reality. Choose a pain management plan that takes your quality of life into consideration. Get the help that you need because of your chronic pain, and make sure that the help you do get addresses all of the ways in which chronic pain has hindered your life. Manage your chronic pain, and don’t let it manage you.

Experiencing pain after a major surgery is quite common as well as extremely bothering. It also hampers one’s lifestyle, day to day activities thus delaying and hampering one’s post-operative recovery tremendously and makes it much more difficult.

Pain management after having a major surgery is one of the biggest concern one can have and experiencing post-operative pain is inevitable. Hence, the pain control measures comes into the scenario.

Here, in today’s article, we will look into some available and effective pain control and pain management options for the post-operative patients. These include the well-known medications that can be bought over the counter at most drugstores as well as pain-busting opiates.

1. Over the counter drugs: This is one of the common hassle free options for pain control for the patients who have recently undergone surgery. These medications are perfect for alleviating pains that are minor to moderate in terms of their intensity. These drugs include, analgesics, NSAIDS and anti-allergic OTC drugs.

Systemic over the counter drugs are also a good way to control pain after surgery and are often prescribed by the physician in order to eliminate any risk of allergy or side effects based on the patient’s medical history. But if you get a serious pain issued, these medications are not going to do the job and you will find yourself reaching for something stronger to help you recover an active lifestyle.

2. Prescription drugs: These includes- morphine, used in case of severe pain after surgery and other similar forms of drugs acts in a similar way as morphine and gives pain relief from low to moderate type of pains post-surgery

3. Opioids: These are also excellent medication for pain control post-surgery and are only to be consumed if prescribed by a physician. But although you cannot get these over the counter, you can at lease buy these medication online, at least in the UK. In fact in many EU countries, doctors are allowed to prescribe opiates without a personal examination so you can buy codeine or  Co-Codamol online.

4. Non drug pain control ways: If the pain is not that severe but mild to moderate, then often various forms of exercises, including easy free hand and yoga postures are recommended to the patients by the physicians themselves.

Regular exercise, brisk walking combined with regular meditation also acts as an excellent and effective way of pain control and recovery for the post-operative patients.

5. Injections and other analgesic mode of pain control: In case of severe ailments and major surgery where post-operative pain is inevitable and the intensity of the pain is too severe for the patient to bear analgesics are often injected into the patients in a regular interval in order to control the severe pain.

Intravenous analgesics where the patient controls the dosage according to their own need and requirement, patient controlled epidural, nerve blocking medications are few examples of this type of pain control methods.

Apart from these, home remedies like heat and cold compression, music therapy also works wonders in controlling the pain post-surgery in patients and in some hospitals, they even have an in department relaxation chamber for the post-operative patient to help the to cope with their post-surgical pain.

What causes chronic pain?

1. Autoimmunity
2. Chronic Inflammation
3. ‘Misbehaving’ Nerves

AUTOIMMUNITY:

Autoimmunity is when your body loses its ability to accurately distinguish between ‘self’ and ‘non-self’. Your white blood cells begin to attack specific tissues.

Examples of autoimmune conditions are:

• ME/CFS/SEID
• Fibromyalgia
• rheumatoid arthritis
• lupus
• MS
• Graves disease.

Many of these are painful conditions. However, as we address the pain itself, we should be asking: is there anything we can do to help the body ‘recognize’ its own tissues again? The answer may be in immunomodulators.

Immunomodulators are herbs that help balance the immune system. Classically, pharmacological drugs either suppress the immune system or encourage it; either can be very detrimental.

The function of an immunomodulator is to increase immune response when it is stressed, and decrease the immune response when it is overexcited.

Immunomodulators include mushrooms like Reishi and Maitake, as well as Astragalus and Liquorice root.

While these will not cure autoimmune conditions like RA and fibromyalgia, they can make a big difference in the progress of the disease and the pain experienced.

INFLAMMATION:

Inflammation is caused in part through the action of chemical messengers called cytokines. These chemicals are important to human health, but when they are elevated they may lead to pain and discomfort.

Herbal anti-inflammatories work systemically, and over time may decrease the overall inflammation in the body.

For joints and the body as a whole, turmeric, black cohosh, arnica, and essential fatty acids (EFAs) are generally helpful. There is a commercial product ‘Curamin’ that is an extract of turmeric that many have found helpful as an antiinflammatory. For immune issues that specifically relate to the gut, chamomile, liquorice, marshmallow and witch hazel may be of service. Those taking cortisol supplements should not take liquorice, however, as it has glucocorticoid-like chemicals and activity.

Issues in the gut can cause widespread issues throughout the system, including issues with pain management and pain control. A person who unknowingly consumes food to which they are sensitive or allergic can set up an inflammatory cascade with far-reaching implications. Therefore, someone with systemic pain and inflammation should certainly get a food allergies/sensitivities panel completed before moving forward. Again, this is not a ‘fix’ for an inflammatory condition, but many patients feel far better and experience less pain when they do not eat or drink foods that excite a cytokine cascade!

NERVE PAIN:

Neuralgia can actually be caused/triggered by a muscle spasm, in which case try the muscle-relaxing herbs we referred to earlier. Increased mineral intake may help with muscle spasm as well, particularly calcium and magnesium.

Nerve pain may also be caused by inflamed tissues pressing up against a nerve, in which case anti-inflammatory chemicals may be of use as painkillers.

Otherwise, there are specific herbs that seem to regulate neural impulses, such as St. John’s Wort (it shines here, as well as in depressive disorders), scullcap, California poppy, and Withania. However, before attempting to use any herbs for this condition, it is reasonable to try to affect nerve pain through affecting muscle spasm and overall inflammation.