Everyday pain management ideas

What Is Biofeedback And When Is It Used For Pain?    August 18, 2008 Joshua Prager, M.D., M.S., Director, Center for the Rehabilitation of Pain Syndromes (CRPS) at UCLA Medical Plaza Question: What Is Biofeedback And When Is It Used To Relieve Pain? Answer: In the chronic pain patient, we often need many different tools to treat the patient. Biofeedback is one of these tools that helps the patient to modulate their pain or tune it down. Pain is often associated with anxiety, and anxiety can certainly be managed with biofeedback. There are various forms of biofeedback. Biofeedback can be measuring muscle tension; it can measure skin temperature; it can measure sweating; or the most sophisticated forms of biofeedback now measure brainwaves that are associated with the pain. This type of biofeedback is called brainwave biofeedback or EEG biofeedback, for electro-encephalography or EEG. Brainwave biofeedbac

Getting a handle on everyday stress can help you better manage the pain you're experiencing. By Juhie Bhatia Medically reviewed by Niya Jones, MD, MPH     It's easy to get stressed out when the pressures of work, family, and everyday life are weighing on you. These stresses can have not only an emotional impact, they can cause physical pain as well. Stress and pain are often closely linked. Each one can have an impact on the other, creating a vicious cycle that sets the stage for chronic pain and chronic stress. So, part of getting pain relief is learning how to better manage stress. "Lots of studies support the conclusion that what happens in the brain — depression , anxiety , being stressed out — can increase pain. At the same time, if you have more pain, you may be more stressed," says Jennifer Schneider, MD, PhD, a chronic-pain specialist and author of the book Living With Chronic Pain . "Each makes the other worse, so if you d

Perhaps on this day we should reflect on the ability to feel pain...is it a blessing or a curse? There is a rare sensory disorder known as Congenital Insensitivity to Pain .  Those who are afflicted never experience pain.  Therefore, they do not get a "warning bell" like the rest of us to when something is wrong.  They may have no indication that something is seriously wrong, perhaps until it is too late. The pain experience is one of those things on life's journey that is unpleasant-but without it life would certainly not be the same.  Many of our negative experiences have positive counterparts and because of that, we appreciate the positives much more.  For instance, how could those who never know sorry truly know joy? Could someone who never knows hunger understand satiety? I cannot answer as to whether or not pain is a blessing or a curse for anyone else but myself. If I had to tell you my own thoughts right now, I would say that it is a little bit of both

Walking program eased chemo-related joint pain By: DOUG BRUNK, Family Practice News Digital Network 11/26/13 SAN DIEGO – A 6-week, low-impact walking program relieved joint pain and stiffness and increased the number of minutes per week walking among elderly breast cancer survivors on aromatase inhibitors. "A breast cancer diagnosis can be an ‘a-ha’ moment for women," Kirsten A. Nyrop, Ph.D, said during a press briefing at the annual meeting of the American College of Rheumatology. "Some of the women with whom we spoke said: ‘My cardiologist told me to walk and my general practitioner told me to walk, but when my oncologist asked me to walk, I started walking.’ " Doug Brunk/IMNG Medical Media Kirsten A. Nyrop, Ph.D. Dr. Nyrop, of the Thurston Arthritis Research Center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and her associates studied 20 patients who were taking an aromatase inhibitor for stage I-III breast cancer an

By: BRUCE JANCIN, Family Practice News Digital Network 11/22/13  SAN DIEGO – ‘Fibrofog’ – the cognitive dysfunction experienced by up to 80% of fibromyalgia patients – is not an early harbinger of Alzheimer’s disease, Dr. Robert S. Katz asserted at the annual meeting of the American College of Rheumatology.  The problems with memory, concentration, language, and thinking, collectively known as fibrofog, affect fibromyalgia patients in their 20s-50s. The onset is typically more sudden and dramatic than with classic forms of dementia. As fibrofog becomes chronic, many affected fibromyalgia patients – fearing the worst – worry they are on a road to Alzheimer’s disease in middle age. Not so, according to Dr. Katz, professor of medicine at Rush Medical College, Chicago.  He presented a cross-sectional study involving two cohorts. One comprised 69 fibromyalgia patients with symptoms of cognitive dysfunction of 12 months duration or less. The other consisted of 39 fibromyalgia p

Does Vitamin C play a role in pain management? Recent years have seen the new and important roles for vitamin C in the world of pain management: most notably as a way to lessen the impact of periperal neuropathy related to shingles.   In addition a double blind study conducted by Zollinger et. all showed reduced pain sensitivity to painful stimuli and reduced risk of developing complex regional pain syndrome in patients given vitamin C pre/post surgery in wrist and ankle surgeries.   There is also suggestion that vitamin C plays a role in reducing incidence of migraine.  It is proposed that the antioxidant properties of this vitamin are the key to this role; it has also been found to increase the pain threshhold in patients with chronic pancreatitis.  Studies suggest that the additon of B-carotene and methionine further enhance the benefits of vitamin C when all three are taken together. Reference: Vitamin C and Its Emerging Role in Pain Management: Benef

Chemical commonly found in plastics makes migraines worse, researchers show November 12, 2013 By C.J. Janovy Lydia Vermeer, Ph.D. Researchers at the University of Kansas Medical Center have shown that a compound frequently found in plastics, Bisphenol A (BPA), can worsen migraine headache-related symptoms. The findings suggest that migraine sufferers might be able to reduce the frequency and severity of their headaches by changing their diets. Nancy Berman, Ph.D., a professor of anatomy and cell biology at KU Medical Center, is one of the country's leading experts on migraine . Building on her previous research showing a connection between migraines and the hormone estrogen, Berman developed a way to test potential headache drugs in laboratory rats. The discovery was significant because, while potential treatments are frequently tested first in animals, there had been no definitive test to determine whether a rat had a headache. "Curren