How A Pain Management Specialist Can Help You

Pain is a natural part of life, but for many Americans, its role daily becomes unmanageable and consistently excruciating. From illnesses like fibromyalgia, to injury-related long-term nerve damage, there are many ways for pain to become a chronic element in a person’s life, and beyond the usual avenues of prevention and cure, many Americans turn to a pain management specialist to help with pain management.

A pain management specialist exists to help patients cope with chronic pain and all its facets, relieving pain through physical and mental therapy, and responsible medication.

4 Ways a Pain Management Specialist Can Help

Professionals today understand the nature of pain better than ever before. We can help patients find joy and comfort in living life again. These pain doctors have a wide array of knowledge, and can help assist you with multiple types of pain. These include:

• Chronic Pain
• Cancer Pain
• Joint Pain
• Pregnancy Pain

Depending on the type of pain you suffer from, your pain management plan will vary. Your pain doctor will help you to create such a plan after initial meetings.

Here are a few examples of what a pain management specialist can offer you.

Providing Help with Chronic Pain

Chronic pain sets itself apart from acute pain by duration. When a painful sensation regularly reoccurs, or lingers for more than 3 months (12 weeks), then it is a chronic pain. Causes for chronic pain are typically nerve-related. This includes nerve trauma, to a pinched nerve, an oversight in surgery, accumulated damage from years of injuries and recoveries, arthritis, infections, certain illnesses and more.

Because of the many causes of chronic pain, and because of the countless forms it can take – from a constant, dull headache, to stiff joints, or a sharp pinch in your wrist – every case and complaint of chronic pain requires an intense investigation, and personalized care.

Trained pain management specialists work with physicians and experts to determine the cause of your pain. Together, they focus on relieving it in the best and least invasive manner.

While pain management is known for the use of strong medication like opiates (including morphine, and less potent prescription drugs), these substances can be dangerous due to their addictiveness and are highly regulated, and not lightly prescribed. Instead, several alternatives are offered, including major lifestyle changes, changes in diet and exercise, and alternative treatments such as acupuncture and hypnotherapy.

Help You Fight Cancer-Related Pain

Cancer can be painful – not just emotionally, but physically. The deterioration of organ tissue, alongside the unpleasantness that accompanies tumor growth pushing against nerves and bones, is the cause for much pain over the course of cancer treatment, both acute and chronic. Chemotherapy, while often necessary for treatment, can also come with serious side-effects that deteriorate quality of life and introduce pain in the form of burning sensations and more.

A pain management specialist can help you find solutions to your cancer pain problems, either through carefully-prescribed painkillers that won’t interfere with your treatment, or through integrative medicine – a relatively new technique in patient care that aims to tackle problems with a patient’s health through a combination of alternative treatments and traditional Western treatments, seeking to find a solution to the pain, rather than masking it.

Also known as a “holistic approach”, a pain specialist may introduce you to methods such as swimming and strength training to strengthen the muscles surrounding a tumor and prevent cramping, acupuncture to relieve nerve pain, stretching to relieve soreness, nutrition to improve your overall health, and other activities to stimulate your body’s natural painkiller responses.

Deal with Joint Pain

Joint pain is a common complaint, especially with an advancing age. The joints are particularly vulnerable due to their role in storing excess uric acid, and their constant usage. While all joints deteriorate with time, some do faster than others. This can be due to injury, larger amounts of stress, or inflammation from an aging immune system or poor health.

While joint pain might seem like a natural part of aging, it does not have to become an excruciating fact of life. A pain management specialist can help you address the causes of your own joint pain. They also formulate a plan to reduce and control swelling and inflammation, and help you put yourself back on track for a life without constant pain and discomfort.

Over-the-counter painkillers and nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory medication, such as aspirin and the newer Celebrex, can reduce swelling and inflammation acutely. However, these are not a good long-term solution.

Eliminating certain foods and introducing more anti-inflammatory foods into your life can help your body address swelling and inflammation in the joints, as well as general pain. Ginger, for example, is a cheap and efficient supplemental food. It’s also easy to implement into your diet through freshly-made teas, low-sugar or sugar-free desserts, and Asian cuisine.

Regular exercise to warm up the muscles and stretch the ligaments greatly helps the body cope with joint pain. Exercise even goes so far as to massively reduce the pain and stiffness introduced by arthritis. However, without proper supervision and a careful exercise plan, or excessive stress, working out can make certain pain much worse. A pain management specialist can help you create an exercise and diet plan to help you deal with your pain. They focus on doing this without breaking the bank or messing up your work schedule.

Address Pregnancy Pains

Pregnancy is not an easy period in a woman’s life. Aside from the uncomfortable experience of obstetric pain and labor-related discomfort, the weight and size of a growing fetus can contribute to considerable back pain. It can also lead to neuropathic pain from pinched or pressured nerves, and cramping or swollen muscles and joints.

Pain management during pregnancy is more sensitive than in most other cases. This is because pain management specialists have a limited toolset to work with to avoid causing damage to the child. Certain painkillers are out of question. Similarly, to ensure the child’s safety, exercise if often limited. Dietary recommendations are completely different since mothers must avoid certain supplements to ensure a healthy birth.

However, in certain cases, a comprehensive approach to intolerable chronic pain may require the use of medication that is not 100% safe. Studies have concluded that a humane approach requires a specialist to consider both the fetus and the mother. This is because untreated chronic pain may lead to hypertension, anxiety or depression after and before birth. Chronic pain can endanger both the mother and the child.

Because of this, pain management during pregnancy is incredibly complicated. It requires the use of non-dangerous, non-opioid analgesics, and the consideration of opioid analgesics such as codeine and meperidine.

Pain management requires more than a cookie-cutter approach. Like any other medical discipline, a patient must be thoroughly and efficiently examined to determine what’s gone wrong. After examining what is wrong, we can then determine how to help fix it.

Pain management specialists take the long-term into consideration, battling chronic pain with a focus on a patient’s longevity, the potential side-effects or harmful consequences of certain therapies or medication, and much more. Be sure to choose the very best when looking for help regarding pain management.