Everyday pain management ideas

For today's post I am sharing an article from WebMD on physical therapy for pain management.  If you think physical therapy may be helpful to you, discuss it with your health care team!   Pain Management and Physical Therapy Sometimes pain treatment can be accomplished through physical therapy. Physical therapy (PT), also known as physiotherapy, involves the treatment, healing, and prevention of injuries or disabilities. PT helps to relieve pain, promote healing, and restore function and movement. PT is practiced by a professionally trained physical therapist under the referral of a doctor. A physical therapist is a specialist skilled and educated specifically in proper rehabilitation. How Is Physical Therapy Used to Treat Pain? A therapist may focus on decreasing pain with either passive or active therapy. Examples of passive physical therapy include: Heat/ice packs TENS units Ultrasound Examples of active physical therapy include: Stretchi

Play activities come readily to small children, but as adults we don't think about them too much.  Can you remember the last time you got so engaged in an activity that you escaped from reality for a while?  There are numerous simple pleasures that can help us to pass the time in a satisfying way...away from all those daily aches and pains if only for a while!  If you haven't done so for a while, maybe it's time to revisit your inner child!  Here are a few suggestions to help you get started: Drawing Painting Jigsaw puzzles Coloring Arts and Crafts Play Dough or Modeling Clay Card Games Board Games 

Going hand in hand with yesterday's post is the concept of living within your limitations.  Pacing yourself is part of this concept; another part of it is learning to function within our physical limitations. When my daughter was young (about 5 years old), I was diagnosed with osteoarthritis in a knee joint.  I was forced to accept that I could no longer play jump rope with her, but we could go for a long walk or a hike.  I could not jump into the shallow end of a pool because the impact on landing was painful-so when she and I went to the pool in the summer, we would go to the deep end to jump in.  I could give you many more examples of this concept, but I think you can get the picture from what I have already said. The hardest part of this is acceptance.  It comes with time.  It comes easier if we spend more time focusing on the things we CAN do and minimizing our focus on the things we have to give up.

Once you have identified your pain triggers, you can explore the idea of pacing yourself. By knowing what activities/ weather patterns/foods/ medications etc. serve to help or hurt your comfort level, you can develop strategies to keep yourself pain free or at reduced pain levels more of the time. Here are some examples: If you are just starting an exercise program, try to ease yourself into it.  You can accomplish this by starting slowly and gradually increasing your tolerance to an exercise activity slowly and steadily.  If the activity is too painful, it is possible that you've reached your upper limit for that activity, or maybe a different exercise activity is better suited for your health condition. You can also vary your workout activities if doing the same thing all the time is problematic. Try to plan your day(s) so that you have a good balance of activity and rest.  Don't try to clean out your whole house in one day, for example.  Break a big activity into sev

The practice of yoga can be traced back to the Stone Age.  It began as a communal form of spiritual meditation.  Since its inception, Yoga has come a long way.  There are a number of different styles of Yoga practice that formed over time, and in recent years it has become an exercise phenomenon...you may have heard of the practices of Power Yoga and Hot Yoga. When you are in pain on a chronic basis, you might be thinking that exercise is the last thing you really want to do.  However, yoga is a unique practice and it may offer you benefits that other forms of exercise cannot.  Here are a few excerpts from the Everyday Health article below that explain some of the benefits for pain relief: ~~ Recent studies have indicated that practicing yoga for pain can cause physical changes in the body to promote healing, says Maureen McBeth, a physical therapist at Mercy Medical Center in Baltimore. "There has been research to measure cytokines, which are markers in the body that i

Please donate to:  Magnetic Therapy Other common name(s): magnetic field therapy, magnet therapy, bioenergy therapy Scientific/medical name(s): none Description Magnetic therapy involves placing magnets of varying sizes and strengths on the body to try to relieve pain or treat disease. Overview Although there are reports of individuals being healed by magnetic therapy, available scientific evidence does not support these claims. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) considers these magnets harmless and of no use for medical purposes. How is it promoted for use? Many claims about magnetic therapy are based on the fact that some cells and tissues in the human body give off electromagnetic impulses. Some practitioners think the presence of illness or injury disrupts these fields. Magnets produce energy fields of different strengths, which proponents believe can penetrate the human body, correcting disturbances and restoring

How to be happy despite pain (Click above to go to the blog) Today I am simply sharing another blog with you...It's written by someone who is a psychiatrist and also a sufferer of chronic pain.  Lots of feedback here from other chronic pain patients as well.  I hope you will find some pearls of wisdom in reading this blog...thanks to the blogger and commentators for their great advice!