What can we do about pain?

What can we do about pain?

1. Learn about pain: read (David Butler, Patrick Wall, Ronald Melzack, Lorimer Moseley), search the web (aptei.ca, bettermovement.org), talk to professionals!

2. Become aware of your body:

– sometimes tissues repair but associated protective patterns may not, and that may be creating the persisting pain. Have you developed protective, but harmful, movement patterns? Are there areas of tension, tightness, weakness, compensation, that are not allowing your body to function normally as it once did?

– some tissues don’t repair as well as we would want, so have you learned how to stabilize, support, mobilize, or strengthen the area to make it as healthy as possible?

3. Understand that disc bulges, diagnosis of arthritis, DDD, tendon tears, are a normal part of ageing processes and that 90% of people with no pain will have at least one of these findings. It takes away a lot of fear of those nasty reports.

4. Learn to breathe and be mindful.

5. Sleep well, eat well, and drink lots of water.

6. Become more active, especially in the outdoors, and have fun/hobby in your life to take focus off of your pain.

7. Become aware of emotional and physical stressors and change those that you can.

8. Be hopeful. The brain, spinal cord, nerves, and tissues are constantly changing. The brain is always looking for more information. Adding new movements and exercises that are painfree helps with new patterns of movement and decreases painful avoidance patterns, and increase blood flow to help heal tissues.  It is never too late for change.

9. Set goals, have something to strive for!