It clearly hurts. And there is a temporary respite from the pain in that bottle. But there is also a decrease in the life of your liver, and a serious potential for chemical dependency. The shocking number and severity of side effects listed on the bottle should be enough to make you think twice about adding those symptoms to the pain you already have.
Those tantalizing pills that are oh, so close at hand have limitations. They will only address the pain and not the whole problem. If you have been suffering from chronic pain for a while, you might also be suffering from situational depression. The one tends to follow close behind the other. You might also be dealing with sleeplessness, irritability, and anxiety. These are not minor issues that are easy to ignore. They are life-altering conditions those narcotics are not going to help, and will most likely exacerbate the problem.
What you need is another option, a more holistic way of dealing with your pain.
Check for Successful Treatments
Before trying other solutions, you should just be sure that there are no medical breakthroughs that might directly address your problem. It is easy to forget that there are underlying causes to chronic pain. We can easily become convinced that the pain is all there is, and all there ever will be. Often times, the sufferer will never have a clear diagnosis of the underlying cause.
But there are medical breakthroughs every day. Good doctors continue to study and learn about new treatments. There are other doctors besides yours, and they may have discovered more effective ways of treating a particular issue. A good example of this would be advanced trigeminal neuralgia treatment.
Trigeminal neuralgia is considered one of the most painful conditions known to adults, and effects thousands of Americans each year. Your best treatment is a direct treatment for your specific problem if one exists. Don’t stop looking for word of a cure or effective treatment. It is only a matter of time.
Eat Food with Pain Relieving Properties
It’s true, certain foods have pain relieving properties. It is hard to find a health-related site that doesn’t have a pain-relieving diet. Fox News provides a handy list of pains, and the foods that address them:
- Cherries for achy joints
- Ginger for soar muscles
- Beans for heartburn
- Pepperoni or coconut for digestive pain
- Nuts for PMS cramps
- Coffee for headaches
That’s right, coffee for the win! Interestingly enough, coffee has also been associated with the prevention of certain types of cancer. Alone, none of these things are magic cures. But as a part of a holistic solution, they can lessen your dependency on pills.
Exercise for Pain Relief
It is difficult to take exercise as a serious remedy for pain when the motto of exercise gurus is, “No pain, no gain!” But if we tune out the shouting of our red-faced coach long enough to listen to medical professionals like those quoted in this WebMD article, we might get a more valuable perspective:
“Exercise improves your pain threshold,” says Trent Nessler, PT, DPT, MPT, a vice president with Champion Sports Medicine in Birmingham, Ala. “With chronic pain, your pain threshold drops — in other words, it takes less pain to make you feel more uncomfortable. With cardiovascular, strengthening, and flexibility exercise, you can improve that pain threshold.”
There is no gain in chronic pain, and a regimen of healthy exercise can make a huge difference.
Manage Pain Through Meditation
It is believed that in some cases, a holistic approach to pain can eliminate the need for narcotics. It is even said that incorporating meditating into regular treatment might significantly cut healthcare costs. The extent to which this is true will vary from person to person. Your mileage may vary. But it certainly couldn’t hurt to get your mind involved in the pain management process.
This is backed up by scientific research that not only shows that meditation can reduce pain, but it can do it in a reasonably short period of time. It was effective even for beginners. One explanation for the effect is that meditation reduces stress, a leading contributor to the pain condition.
There are no magic bullets, and at times, it is still going to hurt. But it doesn’t have to hurt as much or as often with a more holistic approach. You might even find that you do not need to fill that prescription after all.
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