Ways To Deal With Chronic Pain
Every day, millions of people live with chronic pain. According to recent statistics, up to 25% of adults in America experience chronic pain to one degree of another. Whether it’s from a medical condition or physical injury, it can affect every aspect of your life.
Alongside your doctor’s recommended treatment, there are also a number of techniques and lifestyle changes you can make in order to ease the pain or make it easier to live with.
Here are some you might want to try.
Learn To Relax
When you’re in pain, your body tenses up and produces stress hormones which can make the pain worse. Learning relaxation and meditation practices can teach you to lower your heart rate and relax the tension in your body.
CBD Oil
Many people with chronic pain have turned to CBD oil in order to avoid becoming reliant on prescription opioids or other strong painkillers. Depending on where you live, your doctor may be able to prescribe medical marijuana or you could use CBD which has non of the psychotropic effects. You can buy Delta 9 products which contain CBD or THC.
Keep Moving
A healthy lifestyle includes keeping active. This is even more important if you’re living with chronic pain. The endorphins released by your brain during exercise can reduce your pain levels as well as strengthen your body. Movement is great for keeping your mood up too as well as maintaining a healthy weight.
Discuss which types of exercise are appropriate for you with your doctor or physical therapist. They’ll ensure that you don’t end up trying an exercise that is likely to make the pain worse.
Reduce Your Stress Levels
Your body is not designed to be stressed for long periods. As an evolutionary trait, sudden stress can be vital in the fight or flight response, but over time, it can have a detrimental effect on your health. A stressful lifestyle can also make your body more sensitive to pain, meaning that you may feel the effects of chronic pain more when your body is stressed. This can lead to a vicious cycle of feeling more pain, leading to more stress and on and on.
Taking control of the stress level in your life might not be easy, but you need to try. Adjust your work and home life in order to remove some of the more stressful aspects of these. Many people find mindfulness or mental health apps good for teaching them how to relax in stressful situations.
Try Acupuncture
Accupuncture has been practiced for thousands of years, and is still used widely today. In western cultures, it is based around using fine needles to stimulate the nerves and muscles beneath the skin. The aim is to provoke the body into releasing natural painkillers.
A course of treatments is typically necessary to fully harness the benefits of acupuncture, emphasizing the importance of seeking care from a qualified acupuncturist. At Augusta Acupuncture Clinic, practitioners prioritize restoring balance and promoting wellness through this ancient holistic approach to healing. From alleviating chronic pain to enhancing overall vitality, acupuncture offers promising results as a complementary therapy in modern healthcare..
Change Your Diet
What you eat can have a huge impact on your health. Moving towards a healthy diet can benefit you in a number of ways. Firstly, a diet rich in all the vital nutrients and fibre can boost your immune system, give you energy and contribute to maintaining a healthy weight.
If you’re a chronic pain sufferer, you probably also have high levels of inflammation in your body. A poor diet can make this inflammation worse. Avoid processed and fatty foods and try to restrict alcohol consumption. While alcohol may dull your pain initially, it can make it worse in the longer term.
Join A Chronic Pain Support Group
Chronic pain isn’t just a physical thing, it can greatly affect your mental health too. Talking to people who truly understand what you’re going through can be very beneficial. You will feel supported and could potentially find new ways to cope. There are different types of support groups. Some are led by medical professionals or therapists and others are set up by chronic pain sufferers themselves.
Final Thoughts
Learning to live with chronic pain can be extremely difficult. It may mean that you need to completely change your way of life to try and lessen the effects of it. There are many techniques you can use and some may work better for you than others. It’s a case of working with your doctor to find the right combination of medical treatment and alternative therapies to give yourself as much relief as possible.