Everyday pain management ideas

Acetaminophen, aka Tylenol, has been America's favorite pain reliever for decades.  It is one of the safest and most effective products on the market for as long as I can remember.  Many of us are aware that this medicine is generally safe to take. There have been a few problems with this drug and related products over the years...I remember the early 80s when some Tylenol products on store shelves were found to be tainted with a poison and great strides were made to make the product line tamper proof.  We found out that there is such a thing as "too much" when it comes to acetaminophen.  There were recommendations put in place reduce the risk of liver toxicity.   To this day, acetaminophen products are a large sector of the over-the counter medication market, and many combination products that are RX only contain acetaminophen as well.  If that doesn't make a statement, I don't know what does. Fast forward to 2015.  A small study at Ohio State

Current research suggests that there is a connection between the brain and the GI tract in the human body.  This connection is in the form of communication that goes in both directions--from brain to gut and vice versa--and it is modulated (via neurohormones) by the microbes that live within our GI tract, known as normal flora. Gut Brain Illustration This connection is a hot research topic these days.  There is evidence that the connectivity between the two plays a role in conditions such as anxiety and irritable bowel syndrome.  It also appears that when the normal flora is out of balance--perhaps due to a course of antibiotics or an illness--that the gut brain axis is affected, causing a disturbance to the bidirectional communications across the gut brain axis. That is why probiotics have entered the marketplace; they claim to restore normal colonization to a disturbed GI microbiota. Now some research is focusing on the role of the gut brain axis in chronic pain syndro

When I recently wrote a post about pain coaching services, I mentioned the term "functional restoration program."  I realized after the fact that this is something I've never mentioned before in my blog..so in today's post I would like to give you a little introduction to that concept. When researching for this topic, I noticed that I could not find a strict definition for a functional restoration program.  What I can tell you is that a functional restoration program is a multi-disciplinary approach to problems such a chronic pain.  The treatment team may involve physical therapists, psychologists, occupational therapists, and other specialties, depending on the individual program. As an example of this, here is some information from the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Spine Center regarding their functional restoration program: “Our goal is to treat the whole person, recognizing that pain and disability affect all aspects of a person's life. Each patient

I saw a story from last year about former professional football players who took the NFL to court . The players argued that the NFL used poor decision making and mishandled prescription pain killers for during the course of their medical treatments. Over 500 players took part in the suit. According to the article, the DEA raided at least three NFL training rooms to investigate the situation. In light of these issues, many NFL teams have adopted different strategies for pain management issues of professional players.  One such strategy is the use of Rapid Release Technology, or RRT. As per the manufacturer's website, Rapid Release Therapy (TM) is a revolutionary breakthrough in therapeutic technology focused on relief of soft tissue problems affecting nerves, muscles, tendons, and ligaments.  RRT was designed from the ground up to target scar tissue adhesions with a specific frequency.  In addition, this frequency is in a range that is known to relax muscle guarding o

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!