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Pain Relief - Pain Management

By Stephanie Mwangaza Brown

I treat a lot of people with various aches and pains. There are certain myths and misunderstandings which cause more intense pain for a longer time. Below are some common examples: Do you “hit the gym” when you have a muscle strain in order to “work it out” like the pros? Or do you move around on a sore joint until you can’t stand the pain any more? Though exercise is key to muscle rehabilitation, the wrong type of exercise at the wrong time in the healing process can be very damaging. Overworking a muscle can cause more injury, irritation, pain and suffering-- turning a minor injury into a major one.

On the other hand, when we ignore pain, the muscles surrounding the sore area tighten causing more pain in an attempt to support the area. This recruitment process continues to involve more surrounding muscle until the sore area is several times larger than the original injury. Sometimes we have muscle aches, swelling, numbness and pain in joints for seemingly no reason. Overindulging in sugar, starch, alcohol, dairy products, meats and cold foods can make maintaining a healthy, internal environment difficult. Unhealthy fluids or substances are deposited in joints and muscles causing pain. Poor diet and a sedentary lifestyle can also lead to chronic disease. You may be tempted to apply heat to a sore joint or muscle. Before you do, see if it feels hot, looks red, or if there is sharp pain to the touch or a burning sensation. If yes, then there is already a lot of heat in the area. Adding heat will increase the excess in the area, which can mean more pain.

Another dimension to body heat is water intake. Dehydration can cause severe aches and pains or increase the pain we feel from an injury. Some of the signs of dehydration are: constipation, dry skin or dry hair, thirst or dry mouth, dark urine, dizziness or headaches and sometimes unexplained fatigue.

Some of the circumstances that cause dehydration are:

Not drinking enough water (no, sodas and coffee do not count),
Eating a lot of dried fruits and foods (yes, that water you drank will re-hydrate the food and not you),
Chugging large amounts of water at one time resulting in an urgent bathroom visit,
Performing work that causes you to sweat periodically or be on the verge of sweating,
Being in artificial air (e.g. airplane air or building ventilated air, that is, <12% humidity) or Having diarrhea or loose bowels.

These are some of the don’ts when nursing injured muscles and joints. Let’s consider some of the do’s:

Emotion Is Energy-in-Motion

Energy in motion One of my clients is an athlete and almost became unemployed when he injured himself in the gym. For no apparent reason, his regular workout had caused excruciating hip pain. He couldn’t workout at all. Pain was radiating up his back and down his legs.

I also happened to be friends with his wife. Though my client never a word; his wife told me that once his hip pain resolved they had had a long conversation in which he said that he wanted to leave their marriage! Long story short, within a week they had talked about the issues and concerns and had a much stronger union.

My client was so unhappy that he was ready to leave his marriage and his spouse didn’t even know it. He “pushed” that secret down so deeply inside of himself that it set him up for an injury.

Don’t believe it? It happens all the time. People have headaches, have stomachaches, have loose bowels, lose their appetite, lose their food, have cramps, etc. because of something that they ARE feeling or experiencing. Because of something they SHOULD say, but won’t. Because they are afraid to challenge the people or the environment in order to do what they NEED to do. Sometimes, these hidden needs go unattended for years leading to chronic pain or even major health crises. To tell the truth, the majority of our pain can be traced to an emotional cause.

Last Updated on Tuesday, 23 June 2009 18:25

NIH Panel Endorses Acupuncture Therapy

A federal panel yesterday concluded for the first time that the ancient Chinese art of acupuncture is an effective treatment for certain kinds of pain and nausea and shows promise for a variety of other conditions, providing an unprecedented endorsement by the Western medical establishment.

The panel, convened by the National Institutes of Health, has no binding power over doctors or insurers. But health policy experts said it would almost certainly increase the number of patients opting for treatment by the nation's 10,000 acupuncturists, and could eventually lead to greater coverage of acupuncture by insurance companies and government programs such as Medicare and Medicaid.

More generally, the statement represents a landmark expression of open-mindedness to the possibility that medical systems completely alien to scientific convention -- including the Chinese medical model, which posits the existence of invisible "energy meridians" in the body -- may have something to offer Western patients.

"It's a very difficult task to take a completely different system of medicine, transplant it to a system of Western medicine, and ask, `Does it work?' " said David J. Ramsay, president of the University of Maryland at Baltimore and chairman of the NIH panel. "But we did decide that in a number of situations, it really does work."