Pain can make you feel sad, worried, or fearful. The symptoms will affect how you sleep at night and concentrate during the day. Fortunately, a pain clinic can help. Your reliable pain management specialist in Clark, Didier Demesmin, MD, MBA, asserts that management strategies teach you how to cope with chronic pain, increasing your ability to function. There are different approaches to addressing pain. However, the option your therapist will choose depends on various factors, including its severity, how it affects you, the cause, and the frequency of dealing with the symptoms. Most often, the medical expert aims at reducing the pain’s intensity, making you feel relieved.
What are the pain management approaches your doctor might suggest?
Your emotional well-being significantly impacts your pain experience. Knowing your pain’s cause and learning how to cope with the debilitating symptoms can enhance your life quality. The various approaches your healthcare professional might suggest to alleviate your symptoms include:
- Pain medications
- Mind and body techniques
- Psychological therapies like cognitive behavior therapy. Such non-medicine options change your perception of pain. Psychological therapies might be beneficial, especially if training to self-manage long-term pain.
- Physical therapies like hydrotherapy and cold packs. The exercises help minimize your symptoms, enhance mobility and heighten your mood. Your therapist might advise you to increase your workouts gradually to prevent overdoing them, thus over-engaging your affected muscles.
- Massage. Since the treatment is ideal for soft tissue injuries, your physical therapist might not recommend it for joint injuries. Though massages are effective, you cannot use the therapy as a long-term option.
- Acupuncture. The treatment that entails using fine needles on your treatment areas helps restore your body balance, encouraging your body to heal independently by releasing endorphins.
How does pain affect your system?
Pain is a vital part of your everyday life, protecting you from harm and danger. Your system has pain receptors attached to two primary danger-detecting nerves. While one of the nerves instantly relays messages, resulting in sharp and sudden pain, the other slowly relays the message, causing a dull throb. Unfortunately, not all body parts have the same number of pain receptors. Areas with more pain receptors like the skin make it easy to locate the pain and type, unlike your gut, where it might be challenging to locate the precise pain location because of fewer receptors.
For instance, if you activate the receptors in your skin when you touch something hot or sharp, the nerves send signals to your spinal cord, then to your thalamus. Once the signal reaches your pain, your thalamus analyzes the received information and responds depending on your previous reactions, beliefs, and expectations (the reason why people react to pain differently). Your thalamus, in return, transmits the signals to the parts of your brain responsible for thought, emotion, and physical response.
In other cases, the spinal cord responds immediately, signaling your muscles to contract. As a result, your affected body part moves away from the source of pain. The reflex reaction that mainly happens before you feel pain minimizes the risk of further damage, saving you from danger.
Pain can disable your system, preventing you from functioning as you should. It might also prevent you from enjoying a satisfying life. Contact your physician to know how pain can affect you and how to manage the symptoms.
Johnson