What are the chronic pain relief methods?

Currently, for the relief of chronic pain, clinical and daily practice generally uses a combination of drug intervention, lifestyle behavior adjustment, and physical and mental adjustment. There is no omnipotent "magic method". The most effective method is to identify the cause of the disease and adapt to the individual situation.

Aunt Zhang, who lives downstairs in my house, has suffered from chronic back pain for almost 6 years due to a sudden lumbar spurt. In the past few years, she took ibuprofen when the pain arose. Later, her stomach became pantothenic and her stomach hurt when she ate something cold. However, she still suffered from back pain two or three times a month. She went to the pain department for more than half a year to have her condition stabilized, and she no longer had to rely on painkillers every day.

Many people’s first reaction to chronic pain is to take analgesics, which is indeed the first-line clinical intervention. Nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, pregabalin for neuropathic pain, and opioids each have their own pain types. However, there have always been different views on the boundaries of the use of analgesics: some physicians It is believed that as long as the doctor's instructions are strictly followed to control the dosage, the risks of long-term low-dose use are controllable. Many pain doctors will repeatedly advise patients that it is best not to take ordinary over-the-counter painkillers for more than 2 weeks continuously. It is best to use gastric mucosal protectants to avoid damage to the digestive tract. You must not take more when you feel pain.

In addition to taking medicine, many people ignore the details of life adjustment, which are actually much more cost-effective than taking medicine. The first thing Aunt Zhang changed was her sedentary habit. In the past, she loved to sit and play mahjong for three or four hours. Later, she changed to standing up and taking two steps every 40 minutes. The hard bench was replaced by an ergonomic chair with a lumbar support. Even the cloth bags she usually used to buy groceries were replaced by small carts. Just by changing these habits, the frequency of her back pain dropped by nearly one-third in the first month. There are now different opinions on exercise intervention for chronic pain. Some rehabilitation practitioners advocate strengthening core muscle strength and relying on muscle support to reduce compression on nerves and joints. Some clinicians also remind people who are in the acute stage of pain or have poor tolerance to exercise hard. For example, Aunt Zhang followed the trend of Xiao Yanfei before, but stretched her muscles to the point of pain for a week. It is better to start by avoiding the triggers, and then gradually increase the amount of exercise after the body tolerates it.

Another method that many people think is “mysterious” but is indeed proven effective by evidence-based medicine is mindfulness-based physical and mental regulation. I previously met a post-00s girl suffering from fibromyalgia. She had traveling pain all over her body and went to the hospital to find out no organic problem. She followed the doctor for three months of breathing scan exercises. When she felt pain, she didn’t need to grit her teeth and hold on, just focus on her breathing and slowly “bring” her breath to the painful location. She didn’t need to deliberately convince herself that “it didn’t hurt.” She just observed the changes in pain. Now the number of days she has pain every month has dropped from more than 20 days to less than a week. Controversy has always existed about this type of method. Some scholars believe that the essence is psychological suggestion. Some recent brain research shows that long-term mindfulness practice can regulate the pain perception pathways of the brain. For pain without clear organic lesions such as fibromyalgia and chronic tension headache, the relief effect is no less than that of low-dose analgesics.

Commonly used home or traditional Chinese medicine intervention methods such as hot compresses, fascial gun relaxation, and acupuncture and massage are also useful. They just need to be targeted to the symptoms. For example, for chronic pain caused by cold legs or muscle strain, hot compresses can indeed relax the muscles and relieve discomfort. If there is a gout attack or local redness, swelling, heat and pain, applying hot compresses will aggravate the symptoms. There was an old gout patient before who used a hot water bag to apply the pain in the chronic phase. As a result, the pain was so painful that he could not walk.

After all, chronic pain is a long-term signal sent by the body. It cannot be completely solved by a certain method. The miraculous prescriptions used by others may not work for you. It is best to go to the pain department to find out the source of the pain, and then slowly adjust a plan that suits you. Don’t take it hard or take medicine randomly. Slowly adjusting can mostly be controlled to a level that does not affect your life.