How To Manage Pain?

Physical pain can be very different - chronic or periodic, headache or toothache. There are many types of pain, and treatment methods too. However, the essence of treatment is the same - to cope with pain. Even the simplest pain already disrupts the rhythm of our life and makes it completely unbearable. 

Some doctors are convinced that pain can be controlled, and not only by medication. If this is true and what methods exist, we will figure it out in our article.

What Is Pain?

Pain is a symptom that accompanies every disease in all areas of medicine. There is pain that is impossible to bear. And in general, tolerating pain, even mild, is harmful to health. Some people force themselves to bear pain, believing that this is how they fight the disease, and that pain is completely normal. Although permanent, chronic pain is not just a symptom, it is a diagnosis. So everything is not so rosy.

If a person has pain, then at this time the vessels are loaded, nerve endings are destroyed and brain cells die. Pain is serious. Especially with headaches or migraines. Modern medicine adheres to the main principle - treatment "without pain". That is, the patient should not suffer from pain, and it must be fought.

Causes Of Pain

Pain is like an alarm in the body. A kind of red code. It appears as the body's response to damage to the body, to emotional or physical discomfort. If the pain cannot be cured, a person can fall into depression, and at the very least, he will have a bad life. In general, there are three main causes of pain in medicine:

●        Injuries

●        Various diseases and

●        Surgical interventions

The main types are acute and chronic. Acute pain occurs suddenly, like a flare-up in response to damage in the body. Most often, it is easily treated and goes away quickly. But with chronic pain, everything is more complicated - even the most experienced doctors cannot always figure out its causes, and it is even more difficult to cope with.

Of course, the most unpleasant is chronic pain. Chronic pain management is an integral part of oncology. When patients in the late stages of cancer suffer every minute, helping them cope with the pain is the main task of doctors.

Any pathology, be it inflammation or injury, triggers pain. Well, for example, you cut your finger. This is how it happens in the body: the injury affects the pain receptors, which are located in the organs, they transmit signals through the nervous system to the brain.

Modern research has shown that the brain has its own systems that change the perception of pain. And the more these systems secrete endorphin or serotonin, the weaker the pain is felt. But if external factors are included - fear, anxiety, or depression, then even with the slightest cut you will experience severe pain.

So our brain has two modes of pain control - to make it stronger or weaker, and it regulates them itself. Sometimes the stronger the pain, the stronger the protection created by our brain. This can be seen in people with severe injuries and burns. Often in the first minutes after receiving a serious injury, a person behaves as if he does not feel pain - continues to move or even run.

Pain Management Techniques

It is unbearable to endure pain. Especially at night, in complete silence, it seems that the pain pulsates even more. And you want to do anything, just to relieve it. And it is important to understand that pain is always subjective. Each person perceives it in their own way, depending on age, gender, genetics, and psychological factors.

What Makes The Pain Worse?

The perception of pain is influenced by the environment around a person. We cannot be thrown out of society, so even minimal influence will still exist. Psychological and social factors play almost the most important role in the perception of pain.

Chronic stress, lack of sleep, obesity, depression, anxiety, social isolation are like gates. They open the passage of pain, making a person more vulnerable to it. Even a lack of understanding from loved ones can intensify the pain. Doctors take these factors into account to help their patients cope with the suffering faster.

Sometimes even a behavior pattern can change the perception of pain. If you are prone to catastrophizing, the pain will become unbearable. It will seem that everything will collapse because of this feeling: relationships with loved ones, work. Nothing has happened yet, but anxiety in this state grows, therefore, internal tension sets the nervous system into action, and the pain becomes stronger.

How To Reduce Pain?

The gates of pain can be closed, or at least covered. You just need to know how to do it. If a person has pain, he immediately tries to take pills or make a blockade. But this method also has a minus, a significant one.

Imagine that all your life you have been used to taking an analgin pill at the slightest feeling of pain. But then you don’t have a pill or it doesn’t help. You will start to panic, and worry, and the pain will intensify, becoming unbearable. And you will begin to think that nothing will help to cope with it.

Modern research shows that there are non-drug ways to influence the brain to close the hated gates of pain and reduce it. Of course, such methods do not exclude medical diagnosis. Positive emotions do not just affect our state, they change the work of the brain and protect us from pain.

Some doctors recommend moving every day for 45 minutes in their recommendations for non-drug pain management, and the most important thing is to do it continuously. Why 45? This is because endorphins, which suppress pain, are activated only after thirty minutes of physical activity.

The most interesting thing is that when muscles move, special anti-inflammatory molecules are gradually released, which protect us from pain and hypertension during exercise.

Meditation Against Pain

The latest study by some physiologists has shown that meditation can reduce pain. Scientists have proven that pain not only decreases, but the brain’s perception of it changes. Meditation increases the volume of neurons in the brain, especially in those parts that are responsible for controlling situations, emotions, and painful sensations.

However, the problem is that with the modern pace of life, when people have no time for themselves, no one is ready to spend a lot of time on long meditations in order to thicken the cortex of their brain and not feel pain.

But it is not necessary to meditate for hours to achieve the desired effect. It turns out that twenty minutes a day is enough to help your body cope with pain. In a state of meditation, our brain begins to work differently.

The parts of the brain that are responsible for controlling attention processes function especially quickly. As a result, even strong pain sensations, which in a normal state are almost impossible to bear, in an altered state of consciousness can cause only weak sensations.

So, according to scientists, it is only a matter of time before meditation becomes a way to manage pain.