If you’re experiencing chronic pain, it can be hard to know how best to manage your symptoms. There are many different treatments and options available, but most of them come with side effects that may not be desirable for someone who is already dealing with a lot. That’s why we want to share 8 tips that will help you self-manage the pain without medication or surgery!
Educate Yourself On Your Symptoms
By understanding your symptoms, you can better self-manage pain. This doesn’t mean that you need to know every disease and its cure or all of the side effects of each medication out there – but it does mean that you should be able to recognize a pattern in how your body responds when things happen (e.g., stress, lack of sleep). Knowing what is going on will help with keeping track of any possible reasons for increased pain levels as well as knowing which treatments work best for you and why they might not have been working recently.
Supplements
It’s very common for us to suffer from deficiencies that could be causing some of our symptoms. This is why many people will start taking supplements like fish oil, magnesium, vitamin D, etc., to help with pain relief. These are all known nutrients that most people don’t get enough of in their daily diet and it can mean the difference between tolerating certain treatments or not.
If you want to find out if there might be any nutrient deficiencies then you should talk to your doctor about ordering a blood test before beginning on supplementation (because too much of one thing is just as bad as too little). If they feel that something like magnesium or supplements like these would work well for you but say that you need more than what you get in a multivitamin, then they will be able to order the exact dosage and type of magnesium that you need. There are also websites like WebMD that can help give an idea about what kind of symptoms could arise from certain deficiencies so this might be something worth looking into as well!
Try Meditation
There is a reason why meditation has grown so popular in recent years. Meditation helps you to be more focused and thus better able to self-manage your pain levels by being aware of what your body is going through at any given time. This awareness will help improve the effectiveness of things like medication, physical therapy, etc., because you know when it’s working or not working for you (and need to make adjustments).
Simple free apps like Breathe can help you to reduce your stress levels. Stress is a common trigger for increased pain and it’s not always easy to get rid of the life situations that might be causing you added anxiety or stress to prevent flare-ups. Sometimes this isn’t an option either – so using something like Breathe could work very well instead by helping with relaxation techniques when things start getting out of control.
Practice Good Sleep Hygiene
Sleep is very important for your body to be able to heal itself. When you are in chronic pain, it becomes even more vital that you make sure that the time when your eyes close and you slip into a deep sleep is as restful as possible because this could mean the difference between dealing with increased or decreased levels of pain during waking hours. It also ensures optimal cognitive function, which will help with daily activities like work, exercise, etc.
The problem here lies in whether or not something like poor sleep hygiene might be causing some of your symptoms. If getting out of bed every morning feels impossible due to stiffness/swelling/numbness – then there may well need to be adjustments made so that making it through each day isn’t going to be a struggle for you.
You can start by looking at what is known as your sleep hygiene and how it affects the quality of sleep that you get each night. If your quality of sleep isn’t great, then some easy things might help like turning off electronics before bed, using blackout curtains/blinds to keep light out during sleeping hours, etc. There will often be an app available on iTunes or Google Play so feel free to search around if needed!
Exercise To Reduce Pain
There are many different ways to exercise and it comes down to finding what works best for you. In some cases, a physical therapist might be the one who helps with determining which type of exercise is going to work out best – but once they have done this then making sure that all your exercises get completed each day will make a big difference overall because the movement can help reduce pain levels if performed correctly.
It’s not always easy knowing where/how exactly to begin exercising so it’s important here too that you do whatever feels right for it to become something sustainable over time rather than just another thing on the list that gets forgotten about by week two or three!
Avoid Stress
Stress is a common trigger for increased pain and it’s not always easy to get rid of the life situations that might be causing you added anxiety or stress to prevent flare-ups. Sometimes this isn’t an option either – so using something like Breathe could work very well instead by helping with relaxation techniques when things start getting out of control.
You can also try implementing some meditation into your daily routine as mentioned previously, which will have similar positive effects on self-managing stress levels throughout the day!
Get Enough Vitamin D
You can get vitamin D from foods like fatty fish, mushrooms, etc., or also through supplements if needed. Vitamin D plays a key role in the body because it helps with so many different functions and is incredibly important for bone health as well as helping to regulate pain levels throughout your entire system!
If you’re not yet getting enough vitamin D then you might want to try adding some more of these into your diet (or taking them in supplement form) to start seeing benefits that will help when self-managing chronic pain symptoms over time!
Join A Support Group
Another way to self-manage chronic pain is by joining a support group. This can be done through your doctor or even online with things like Facebook groups where you might find others who are going through something similar and want to connect over ideas for coping strategies, etc.
It’s also worth noting that there may well be some times when it feels impossible to continue as usual but having the help of other people will make this easier because they understand what is happening inside each day – which makes reaching out more achievable if needed!
Self-management is important in situations where you have chronic pain. Poor self-management can lead to worse health and emotional problems later on in life. We hope that these tips will help you manage your condition better!
