Living with chronic pain can be a challenging and overwhelming experience, affecting every aspect of your life. Whether it's joint pain, back pain, migraines, or arthritis, the pain can make even the simplest activities feel like a struggle. While over-the-counter medications can provide some short-term relief, truly managing chronic pain requires a comprehensive, multipoint approach that addresses the symptoms and the cause. In this blog, we'll explore how comprehensive chronic pain management can provide relief and improve your quality of life faster.
Chronic Pain: What is it?
What is chronic pain?
To understand chronic pain, we need to understand what pain is. Pain is an unpleasant experience, which may be sensory or emotional. When we talk about chronic pain, we mean that this experience persists for more than three months.
What are common causes of chronic pain?
Some common causes of chronic pain include injury, surgery, cancer, side effects of cancer treatment, diabetes, various diseases like kidney stones, and other ailments. All of these conditions, even though they may be temporary, may result in chronic pain in some patients. Sometimes chronic pain, for example, chronic migraines, some other headaches, or fibromyalgia, happens for no reason.
Treating Chronic Pain
Is all chronic pain managed (or treated) the same way?
No. It shouldn't be. It's a personal experience, and the treatment should be individualized. If you expect good results, you have to have a very unique, specific treatment package for an individual's particular experience of pain.
Are there effective, non-prescription management and/or treatment methods?
Many people suffering from chronic pain believe that effective treatment must include opioids or medical marijuana. Though these can be a part of an effective, comprehensive treatment plan for people with pain, they aren't the only effective treatments, and certainly aren't a required part of a person's individualized treatment plan.
To get the best outcomes, you usually have to combine a few different types of treatment, especially for patients with pain that persists for many years. These might include things like chiropractic adjustments and acupuncture. Ultimately, there is no miracle cure-all, but with a combination of various individualized treatments, the patient outcomes are exciting and a lot of patients are happy with the pain relief they experience.
Determining the Right Treatment for You
Determining the right treatment for anyone experiencing chronic pain starts with a thorough examination, including imaging x-rays, diagnostic ultrasonography, or an MRI, if indicated. Then, we use additional diagnostic techniques to figure out what exactly is going on. That allows us to determine how to help a patient in the most efficient way.
When we begin applying treatments, we typically explore various options and medications (including non-narcotic pain medications, opioids, and even medical marijuana if appropriate). There are some pretty advanced options available for chronic pain patients, including newer medicines with fewer side effects. Sometimes, medicine wouldn't be the preferred initial option, and sometimes it would be.
Interventions
We'll also consider interventions as a part of treatment. In medicine, we use the term ‘intervention’ to apply to any activity undertaken with the goal of improving human health by preventing disease, curing or reducing the severity or duration of an existing disease, or by restoring function lost through disease or injury.
Put more simply, imagine that you want to get from point A to point B. You can walk and you’ll get to point B eventually, or you can get in a car and get to point B much more quickly. Interventions are the car - patients get results much faster in a more efficient way.
The types of interventions we might employ vary widely. They include regenerative or blood-based interventions (focused on healing tissues and organs and restoring function lost due to aging, disease, damage, or defects), neuromodulation (where the pathways of the nervous systems are altered), injections, physical rehabilitation or physical therapy, and psychological interventions (like behavioral therapy or cognitive behavioral therapy).
Are there side effects or complications of medical treatment for chronic pain?
Yes and no. There is no way to guarantee that a person won't experience some challenges or side effects throughout the course of treatment; however, most of the time the treatment goes smoothly as most treatments are relatively benign.
Overall, even if there are setbacks, they are usually small and don't significantly impede treatment.
How quickly might a patient feel relief?
It's difficult to say definitively when a person might begin feeling pain relief; generally, it takes a few months for chronic pain patients to notice meaningful pain reduction. That said, when undergoing comprehensive, multi-point treatment that is individualized to your particular experience of pain, most patients start to feel better sooner.
Even patients who don't get complete relief experience a significant enough reduction that they can learn how to adapt, re-activate, and ultimately re-ignite joy in their lives. This is essentially the goal of patients with chronic, persistent pain. They've been suffering for years and tried most conventional treatments without success but there are additional techniques available for them.
Pain Medicine at Western Reserve Hospital - 100% Patient Centered Pain Treatment
You don’t have to suffer with unbearable chronic pain or headaches. At the Center for Pain Medicine at Western Reserve Hospital we provide the latest innovations in comprehensive pain treatment.
When chronic pain sets in, your life shrinks to fit your pain. Your health, work, and relationships suffer. You become less active. Often, you cannot sleep or suffer from depression. Living with chronic pain is hard, and the anxiety, stress, and anger that accompany it can make the pain even worse. The pain specialists at the Center for Pain Medicine at Western Reserve Hospital can help you conquer your pain with sophisticated new treatments and compassionate, professional care. Contact us at (330) 971-7256 to schedule an appointment and begin the journey to pain relief today.