Your emotional wellbeing significantly impacts how you experience pain. Dr. John Huffman in Arlington is a leading physician who uses conventional treatment methods to help patients manage chronic pain. Pain management can either be complex or straightforward, depending on your pain’s cause. Your doctor might only recommend medication or combine medications and physical therapies to help alleviate your symptoms, allowing you to live a comfortable life.
What are the various types of pain you are likely to suffer from?
- Chronic pain- persists for a long period of time and hurts most days
- Acute pain- starts suddenly and lasts for a shorter period
- Bone pain- discomfort, tenderness, or aching in one or several bones you feel whether you are resting or exercising or not
- Nerve pain- a shooting, stabbing or sharp pain resulting from nerve inflammation or damage
- Breakthrough pain- sudden pain you are likely to experience if you are taking medications to relieve you of chronic pain
- Soft tissue pain- discomfort resulting from inflammation or damage of your ligaments, muscles, or tissues
- Referral pain- pain coming from a specific location, usually as a result of inflammation or injury of a different organ or structure
How does pain affect your body?
Your body has pain receptors attached to two danger-detecting nerve types. While one nerve type transmits messages quickly, resulting in sudden sharp pains, the other type slowly transmits signals, resulting in throbbing, dull pain. When you activate your skin’s pain receptors by touching a dangerous thing, your nerves alert your spinal cord, which alerts your brain (thalamus). At times your spinal cord may respond by sending an instant signal back to your muscles, forcing them to contract, moving your affected part away from the danger source.
Once your thalamus analyzes the information, it considers your past experiences, culture, beliefs, and social norms before sending the signal to parts of your pain associated with pain, emotion, and physical response. Since your thalamus contributes to arousal and mood, it is likely to interpret pain depending on your state of mind.
How can you manage pain without depending on medication?
There are several non-medicine treatments you can adopt to help in pain management. However, your therapies might suggest a combination of therapies and treatments for optimal results. Non-medicine options include:
- Physical therapies
- Massage
- Relaxation techniques
- Cognitive behavior therapy
- Acupuncture
- Transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation therapy
How do you manage unresponsive pain?
It is natural for you to feel sad, worried, or fearful when you are in pain and medication fails to relieve your symptoms. In such an instance, your doctor may advise you to:
- Accept that you might stay with the pain longer
- Focus on daily improvements
- Find ways to avoid or minimize depression
- Eat healthy, exercise, and get enough rest
- Do not let pain prevent you from doing the things you adore
- Avoid increasing the dosage of your prescription medicine without consulting your doctor
- Find activities likely to worsen your pain
Pain can deny you the fun to take part in your favorite activities. Get advice on coping strategies from your physician to help manage your pain.
