Treatments That Might Help Manage And Relieve Chronic Pain

Chronic pain has many causes, but the end result is that you're left with frequent or constant pain that interferes with your life. Chronic pain affects your ability to work, sleep, and have an active life. There are a variety of chronic pain treatments your doctor might try. They may start with medications and add other treatments when needed. Here's a look at some treatments besides medications that might be worth trying.

Make Lifestyle Changes 

Your lifestyle could be contributing to your pain. Things like improving your diet, getting more exercise, improving sleep, losing weight, meditating, doing yoga, practicing stress reduction, working ergonomically, and being more social might help with your pain and the depression and frustration that come along with it.

Try Alternative Medicine

You might want to talk to your pain doctor about trying alternative and complementary treatments. These might include acupuncture, massage, aromatherapy, and mind-body treatments such as visualization, biofeedback, energy healing, and hypnosis. If you go to a chronic pain clinic, the clinic may provide some of these services. If not, consider asking your doctor if seeking out these treatments on your own would be beneficial.

Use Medical Therapies

Your doctor might try prescribing a TENS unit for you to use at home. This device sends a low-voltage current through your skin that interferes with pain signals. The device makes it harder for your brain to interpret the signals as pain, so you can get some relief. You might wear the unit all the time so you can manage pain or use it to give yourself treatments when your pain flares.

Bioelectric therapy is similar to TENS treatments, but the therapy is given by your doctor in a clinical setting. The electrical stimulation interrupts pain signals and is helpful for temporary relief of pain. You may need several treatments to get the most benefit.

When your pain is severe, your doctor might even consider a surgical implant that you can control with a remote. The implant delivers low-voltage stimulation whenever you need it. Other types of surgery might also be considered for chronic pain treatment.

However, the surgery used is determined by the cause of pain and might be done to relieve nerve compression, stimulate your brain, destroy part of a nerve, or perform some other procedure that can help with severe chronic pain.

Chiropractic treatments might be another way to manage your pain. This might be done by adjusting your spine to relieve pressure on a compressed nerve. Counseling might also help since depression and chronic pain are often linked. Learning how to deal with pain, especially through cognitive behavioral therapy, could make the pain easier to manage and live with.

Botulinum toxin injection might also be tried. These are the same injections used to treat wrinkles on your face. If they work for your pain, you might have the injections done every few months to keep your pain under control.

Get in touch with a medical representative to learn about chronic pain treatments


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