If you suffer from chronic pain, you know just how debilitating it can be and how much it can impact most aspects of daily living. Severe pain can significantly interfere with a person’s quality of life, turning simple daily tasks into seemingly impossible feats. Over 100 million Americans are dealing with some form of chronic pain, and it rises to the top as the No. 1 cause of disability among adults in the U.S. Chronic pain is defined as any pain lasting longer than three to six months; aside from the physical toll it can take on the body in terms of discomfort and loss of productivity, it can also take an emotional, physiologic and cognitive toll.
One common and well-known treatment for chronic pain is opioid medication, and the use of these pain-killing drugs has skyrocketed over the last decade. Opioid medications suppress the body’s perception of pain by blocking signals between the brain and the nervous system. However, over time these medications can also be extremely addictive, and if used long-term, they can lead to tolerance — meaning the person using the medication needs more of it to achieve relief. Aside from tolerance, side effects of these medications include fatigue, drowsiness and loss of motivation, and some patients taking them find themselves stuck in addiction with a serious strain on their productivity, employment status and relationships.
[See: 4 Opioid Drugs Parents Should Have on Their Radar.]
The good news is that mainstream medicine is now embracing a wider variety of treatments than ever before. Physicians who specialize in treating chronic pain now recognize that it’s not merely a sensation, like vision or touch, but rather that chronic pain is strongly influenced by the ways in which the brain processes the pain signals. There are other options, and it’s up to us as physicians to be knowledgeable about alternatives for the long-term benefit of our patients. Sometimes these options can include short-term medication in an acute period of pain, but medication alone is not — and should not be — a blanket treatment recommendation for every patient.
Physical therapy is one of the best choices you can make in the treatment of chronic pain. It works to make the muscles stronger, increases movement and range of motion and improves the quality of the body’s tissues, all of which have been shown to reduce pain. Pain relief exercises target areas where you have pain so you’re stronger and more flexible there, reducing pain and making daily activities much easier. In addition, small lifestyle changes such as following a more nutritious diet and exercising regularly can greatly improve overall health as well as pain levels. Though these changes may seem trivial and unrelated to pain management, they play a key role in achieving wellness from the inside out. For example, someone with chronic knee or back pain may find significant relief by losing weight and, as a result, reducing the stress on their bodies and strengthening muscles. This will also help increase movement and range of motion, setting a positive cycle into motion.
[See: On a Scale From 1 to 10: The Most Painful Medical Conditions.]
Pain management sometimes needs to go beyond the physical, and psychological support to help with pain is another viable option. One promising treatment modality is called “mindfulness meditation,” and its goal is to help the individual gain psychological control over his or her pain. There are two aspects of pain: the electrical signals caused by injury, and the mind’s reaction to those signals — the emotional context. In effect, mindfulness teaches you how to understand these different types of pain and how to control your body’s amplifier to “turn down the volume” on your pain. As you do so, any anxiety, stress and depression that you may be feeling can begin to dissipate, and your body can then relax and begin to heal. Mindfulness meditation has been shown in clinical trials to reduce chronic pain by 57 percent, and some experienced meditators can reduce it by over 90 percent.
In addition to these effective options, there are options for effective treatment of pain that involve neuromodulation. For example, pain treatment involving spinal cord stimulation has proven to provide substantial relief for patients in certain circumstances. A small implantable medical device that sends mild electrical pulses to the spinal cord to alter pain signals traveling to the brain is implanted (after a trial to demonstrate efficacy in that patient), thus reducing pain. Spinal cord stimulation has been around for many years, but major advancements have recently been observed as newer technologies provide pain relief without the use of tingling or prickling that’s seen in traditional spinal cord stimulation. With this treatment, patients are able to feel a significant reduction of pain, and this can help drastically reduce the amount of opioid pain medications needed. In one study, 90 percent of patients were using opioids at the start of the treatment — and that number was reduced to only 12 percent after 36 months. Other forms of neuromodulation involve peripheral nerve stimulator implants and the application of electrical or magnetic stimulation to the scalp (trans-cranial magnetic stimulation and trans-cranial direct current stimulation).
[See: 11 Strategies for Staying Sober While Traveling.]
These alternative treatments prove it’s possible to find relief from chronic pain without the permanent use of opioid medications. Anyone living with chronic pain knows just how important it is to get a handle on the pain and control it, and with new advances in effective non-pharmacologic treatments, you can do it in the healthiest way possible to minimize pain and maximize the quality of your life.
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Chronic Pain: Treat it With Mindfulness Meditation, Not Opioids originally appeared on usnews.com
