Everyday pain management ideas

As discussed previously, there are many diets for pain related health conditions...we've looked at the ant-inflammatory diet, gout diet, dietary restrictions for fibromyalgia, etc. over the course of this blog. Mint leaves..one example of a natural pain reliever! Cherries have analgesic properties too! In today's post I want to share a video from WISN TV in Milwaukee.  In the video the pain relieving properties of some of the foods we eat are discussed.  This is interesting stuff.  If you like the idea of natural pain relief but don't want to be dedicated to a whole diet, try one or more of these.  It just might offer you unexpected relief.  Nothing ventured, nothing gained! You can view the video by clicking here. Sources: WISN TV; Wikimedia

In many situations, it's of great benefit for one to have someone who has been through a given situation and knows what worked and what didn't work for them.  They offer a beacon of hope, a promise that just maybe things can be better in the future than at the present moment.  For chronic pain sufferers, this is a possibility.  In the past we've explored some ideas like this, including support groups and online classes that are available to us. Today, I would like to share another mentoring option.  Leading into this, I would like to ask you if you've ever heard of a doula. Most commonly, the doula is a person hired by an expectant mother to coach her through the labor and birthing process of pregnancy.  Taking a moment to stop and think about this--pregnancy and childbirth have been around as long as the human race.  There is plenty of experience about this for a woman to draw upon another woman's experience to get through the process. Now tha

  Most of us have some familiarity with the idea that pain is usually something that is  self reported; health care providers may ask a patient to rate the discomfort on a scale of 1 to 10, use the smiley face pain index, or some similar scale to gauge how comfortable or uncomfortable a patient may feel.  The trouble is, this is all subjective.  There is no way to actually measure the pain.   A few years ago, there was a research paper published in the New England Journal of Medicine about measuring chronic pain. The method that was discussed is something new and interesting, and really does attempt to measure pain in an objective way.  The study authors used fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) to identify a "pain signature" within the patients brain.  Most of the study is too technical for the purposes of this blog...but the exciting thing is that confirmation of  a patient's self report of pain could actually exist in the future of medicine!  

I have been posting to this blog regularly for about eighteen months now.  Recently I have had many positive comments to my posts, and I hope there are many more readers out there who haven't commented...but benefit from the information I share here. Today's post is a little different..most of the posts are about living with chronic pain once you have it. But, what if you could prevent chronic pain?  As the old saying goes, "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure."  This applies to chronic pain and many other chronic health conditions as it applies to all kinds of things in daily life.   I came across a newspaper article about this very topic, and I am going to share their tips for prevention of chronic pain with you today Even though there is not a 100% guarantee that following all these tips to the letter will spare the reader from all physical pain, the advice is very good.  I have previously discussed many of these ideas in prior blo

Have you ever seen anyone wearing a back brace...similar to the image above?  Such devices provide support to the spine.  These devices help to heal a back injury and provide support in a preventive way.  You can purchase such a device at many medical supply stores and pharmacies. What if you could achieve the same kind of support using your own muscle tissue?  There are many advantages to this: 1) You never have to worry over whether or not the fit is correct. 2) You don't have to put it on or take it off. 3)  It works 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. 4)  It's 100% natural. 5)  Your body shape will change in appearance...for the better! Looking better helps one to feel       better. If this sounds good to you...I have good news for you.  It is possible to achieve this goal!  I wrote a post about this concept (known as core training) last year, if you are interested click here to read more. There is a brief description of core training and also there are a couple

I am very excited to tell you about an all natural method of pain management for all types of chronic pain.  It's called the MELT method, and it is based on the theory that exacerbation of chronic pain can be attributed to dehydration of connective tissues in our bodies. According to Sue Hitzman, author of The MELT Method,  all people are subject to dehydration of body connective tissues.  She asserts that this dehydration process lead to "stuck stress" and inflammation over the course of time.  The MELT method is a way to address the "stuck stress" and help to disrupt the chronic pain cycle. She theorizes that the body's connective tissue is a network throughout the body, so all body parts are interconnected in a way...and her self-help technique is thus useful for chronic pain no matter what the source. If you'd like to know more about the MELT method, here is a link to the author's post from a Dr. Oz episode.  You can also find her book

The Role of Positive Traits and Pain Catastrophizing in Pain Perception Scholarly studies are done all the time to look at cause and effect relationships between various things.  A report in a 2013 issue of Current Pain and Headache Reports , authored by Kim Pulvers and Anna Hood is one such article.  These two authors did a review of scholarly articles and reported on how two distinct personality traits--Optimism and Pain Catastrophizing--impacted pain perception in the human population. For purposes of discussion, the authors define optimism as "a generalized expectancy for positive outcomes." They surveyed populations with various painful conditions, including, cancer, sickle cell disease, osteoarthritis, and facial pain.  The general trend that they discovered was that optimism was a protective mechanism against pain. They go on to say that hope, a goal directed form of thought, can be associated with a higher threshold for pain. Self-efficacy, or be