Coping with Pain
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/ Categories: WELLNESS, 2022

Coping with Pain

The Journal of the International Association for the Study of Pain estimates as many as 18 million Americans suffer from chronic pain on most days. It can be caused by headache, surgery, cancer, trauma, arthritis, nerve damage, and neck or back injury. Sometimes the cause is unknown or continues long after the initial cause of the pain has healed. The pain can go on for months or years and can lead to anxiety, depression, fatigue, insomnia, mood swings, irritability, and other difficult psychological conditions.

Once you have worked with your primary care provider and specialists to identify and treat the cause of the pain, you can try these options for coping with the pain in any order that makes the best sense to you and your provider.

Medical Approaches

Each of the many medications used to help with pain come with side effects. 

  • Acetaminophen can harm the liver if used excessively or improperly.
  • Ibuprofen and other nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) can cause kidney damage in certain patients.
  • Muscle relaxers can provide relief in some cases, but they may cause drowsiness, dizziness, headache, and other side effects.
  • It’s best to develop a system that includes these medications when needed.
  • Antidepressants are being prescribed for those with chronic pain. Often, the benefits outweigh the side effects.

SPECIAL NOTE:

A few of the drugs often turned to for pain come with major concerns and should only be used with careful supervision from a medical provider.

  • Opioids come with a great risk of addiction, tolerance, dependence, and a paradoxical increase in pain. This factor alone makes them undesirable for many patients, even for short-term use.
  • Cannabis is not approved by the Food and Drug Administration. It is associated with acute adverse effects including anxiety, nausea, panic, disorientation, impaired attention, short-term memory, and driving performance.

Physical and occupational therapy can be a great drug-free way to cope with chronic pain. Movement can help restore strength and confidence. Often, the symptoms of chronic pain are reduced. Therapy is a safe, even fun, way to navigate pain.

Similarly, mental health counseling can help patients think more positively, process past events, and implement helpful changes. Through talk therapy people often come to understand how unconscious forces contribute to their pain.

Pain Management Programs combine imaging and anesthesiology technologies to target the source of pain and relieve it.  Services offered include joint injections, nerve blocks, spinal cord stimulation, and others.

Do-it-Yourself Ideas

Many people find that concentrating on improving their overall health is a great way to make progress against chronic pain.

Many people find it beneficial to focus on relaxation.

  • Don’t try to do too much. Create a daily schedule that includes a few priorities and time for rest and self-care.
  • Create the conditions for good sleep.
  • Learn stress management techniques that work for you, including deep breathing, yoga, meditation, listening to music, walking in nature, playing with kids or pets, and others.
  • Getting interested in a new hobby can also be beneficial. More than a distraction, hobbies and interests get us thinking positively about the future.
  • Strong relationships help us cope with pain too. Meet up with friends and family or join a pain management support group.

Complementary Medicine

Complementary medicine can be as simple as treating the site of your pain with heat or cold or enjoying a cup of restorative tea. If you are receptive, you can also try massage, reiki, acupuncture, biofeedback, guided imagery, or hypnosis. Each has been shown to be an all-natural method for achieving pain relief.

It is unlikely that any one of the tips above will resolve your pain entirely. A personalized system of pain-management habits you do on a routine basis will be most powerful in helping you live a healthy and fulfilling life.

Joshua Tobe, MD, is an anesthesiologist and interventional pain management specialist at SVMC Anesthesiology, part of Southwestern Vermont Medical Center and Southwestern Vermont Health Care in Bennington.

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How to Maintain a Healthy Immune System

There are so many things that we have little control over. We can't control what genes we get, how old we are, or what viruses are circulating in our environment, but there is a lot we can do to prevent illness. Remarkably, many of the same habits that protect you from diseases like diabetes, cancer, and heart disease also help your immune system fight infections.

Most viruses can't hurt you until they get inside your body. So, we can help our immune system if we avoid viruses and cut off the ways they travel. Viruses can spread through the air, but not usually for very far. Keep your distance—at least 6 feet—from others, and be a good neighbor by wearing a mask in all public areas.

Viruses that cause the most common illnesses—respiratory infections, including the common cold, flu, and the new COVID-19—travel into the body through your mouth, nose, and eyes and make their way to the areas they infect, like the lungs. The best way to break this chain is to clean your hands frequently, and don't touch your face with hands that have touched anything else. In addition, you can reduce the number of viruses in your environment by cleaning frequently touched objects with a bleach- or alcohol-based cleaner.

Vaccinations are your next line of defense. Immunizations, like the flu shot, introduce a small and harmless part of a virus or bacteria. The vaccine gives your immune system an opportunity to make antibodies against the virus. A vaccinated immune system responds more quickly and effectively when illnesses are introduced. What's more, when we all get vaccinated, we decrease the likelihood that anyone will get sick. If you are unsure about whether you or your children are up to date on their vaccinations, call your primary care provider’s office.

Your third line of defense is living a healthy lifestyle. It is clear that the same things that help the rest of our bodies function also improve the strength of our immune response. Likewise, things that hinder our bodies' ability to function compromise the immune system.

Regular exercise might be the most powerful way to maintain a healthy immune system. By increasing heart rate and blood flow, we allow the cells and substances of the immune system to move through the body freely and do their job efficiently. Similarly, things that slow the movement of cells and substances, like smoking or drinking alcohol in excess, may decrease the body’s ability to function and decreases the immune response, as well.

Getting adequate sleep may also positively affect the immune response. Chronic sleep deprivation has been shown to decrease the beneficial boost in immunity from vaccinations.

Our emotional state, too—whether we are stressed, lonely, or depressed, for instance—affects our immune response so much that a relatively new specialty called psychoneuroimmunology now studies the connection. One pioneering study, conducted in the early 1980s, found that college students operating within a stressful 3-day exam period had fewer of the cells that fight tumors and viral infections. In simple terms, the students almost stopped producing immunity boosters and infection fighters.

Finally, physicians have concluded that eating a mostly plant-based diet—including fruits, vegetables, beans, nuts, whole grains, and lean protein—supports overall health and may also support immunity. Nutritious foods include important vitamins that the immune system needs to function, such as beta carotene, vitamin C, vitamin D, and zinc. Note, however, that supplements that claim to improve immune function have not yet been shown to do so to the extent necessary to protect against infection and disease. It is better to eat whole foods that are rich in vitamins rather than take supplements.

Always consult with your provider before making changes to your exercise plan or trying a new supplement and if you have any medical concerns. Physicians and the other professionals working in their offices also provide help for developing a plan for a healthier life. Call your primary care office or 802-447-5007 to find a primary care provider.

Healthy habits, like those that protect your body from disease and infection, are not always easy to adopt or maintain. Perhaps knowing just how important they are to maintaining a healthy immune response will provide the extra motivation necessary to make them a priority.

Kim Fodor, MD, is an internal medicine physician at SVMC Internal Medicine.

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