Vox: 100 million Americans have chronic pain. Very few use one of the best tools to treat it.
Chronic pain often has no physical cause. Psychotherapy can reduce the suffering. By Brian Resnick@B_resnick brian@vox.com May 17, 2018, 9:00am EDT When pain settled into Blair Golson’s hands, it didn’t let go. What started off as light throbbing in one wrist 10 years ago quickly engulfed the other. The discomfort then spread, producing a pain much “like slapping your hands against a concrete wall,” he says. He was constantly stretching them, constantly shaking them, while looking for hot or cold surfaces to lay them on for relief. But worse was the deep sense of catastrophe that accompanied the pain. Working [...]
The Brain and Opioids
Learn how opioid receptors regulate pain signals, how the body releases natural painkillers called endorphins, and how prescription opioid analgesics can lead to dependency and a cycle of addiction.
Overcome Your Pain and You Will Regain Hope
The objective of getting through each day is to continue to live past the pain. Take steps that bring happiness and quality of life forward above the pain. You may have lost the support of friends and family while suffering under debilitating pain. This loss elicits feelings of unwarranted shame. Make pain management your number one priority and those around you will see how serious of a condition you are coping with. This action, may bring those people back to you that had written you off as a chronic complainer. Regardless of where your close relations stand you will benefit [...]
Ways to Treat Chronic Pain
There are many ways to treat and manage chronic pain. An interesting way is to adopt an anti-inflammatory diet. What we put into our bodies often dictates how we function. Maintaining the right diet can be crucial in reducing pain. Excess weight, adipose tissue is metabolically alive producing hormones and sustaining continual inflammation. Decreasing this soft tissue can produce dramatic effects on reducing pain. One thing that I learned from my sports injury and illness lectures, is that inflammation equals pain whether you are an elite athlete suffering from an acute injury or a working adult with chronic backpain, migraines, [...]
How I Have Experienced Pain
I had begun working at a juice bar as a fun temporary summer job. All my coworkers were lovely people and to welcome me to the job, they insisted that we all go dancing. At the start of the night I skipped the last step to the dance floor and landed squarely on my ankle, inversion injury, ankle sprain. Ignoring my pain and discarding the seriousness of the mechanism of injury, I proceeded to dance the night away. I have experienced many instances of acute pain, accompanying tissue damage. After a short period of healing life returns to normal and [...]
