Pain Management – How a Balanced Lifestyle Helps!

Chronic pain can have a severe impact on daily life, and those who deal with it know how many different remedies they’ve tried to tamper their pain. It can quickly become very tiring to try a new strategy every few months.

Dealing with chronic pain should start with a healthy, balanced lifestyle. This is the foundation you need to make any additional remedies as effective as possible. Here are a few simple lifestyle tips that will help you manage chronic pain:

Deep Breathing or Meditation

Practicing deep breathing or meditation is an easy way to get your body, and your mind, to relax. Giving your body the consistent message to relax helps to ease pain as tension and tightness leaves the muscles and your focus turns solely to your breath.

There are many techniques for meditation, but many center on the soothing power of repetition. Thinking purposefully about the breath, letting thoughts pass gently by, and repeating your personal mantra is a very natural way to help your body relax.

Deep breathing is also very effective at reducing chronic pain by helping the body relax. Deep breathing simply requires a quiet location, comfortable body position, and the will power to block out distracting thoughts. It may help to picture the spot just below your navel and focus on breathing into that spot and filling your entire abdomen with air. Let the air flow in from the abdomen up, then let it flow gently out, and repeat. 

Stress Management

Persistent negative emotions, such as depression, anxiety, anger, and stress, can significantly increase the body sensitivity to pain. While your overall level of pain may be quite consistent, elevated stress levels can heighten these feelings of pain intensely.

Learning to control, and even reduce, your stress level can help you more effectively manage chronic pain. Listening to soothing, calming music can alter your mood and help to make pain more bearable. You may even find luck with relaxation tapes or CDs designed specifically for pain management. If you experience chronic tension in many muscles throughout your body, you may find progressive muscle relaxation techniques to be rather effective. 

Exercise to Boost Endorphins

The release of endorphins helps to improve your mood while also working to block pain signals. Regular exercise stimulates the release of endorphins while also helping to strengthen muscles, which will prove effective in preventing further pain as a result of re-injury.

Exercise also helps to keep your weight down, reduces risk of heart disease, and helps regulate blood sugar levels in the body, which is especially important if you’ve been diagnosed with diabetes. However, you should stay away from jumping into doing too much too fast.

Always consult your doctor to help you design an exercise routine that is right for you. Depending on your health condition, you should be careful not to engage in certain activities, but your doctor should be able to advise you on the best forms of exercise for you.

If you struggle to deal with chronic pain, you should make sure to consider a few small lifestyle changes that will help you manage pain. If you’d like to speak with a Crowfoot pharmacist about dealing with your chronic pain, please don’t hesitate to give us a call at 1-403-455-9939 today!