Tag Archives: chronic pain

Food Cures for Chronic Pain

Diet & Nutrition, , , ,

Chronic pain can be worsened or made better depending on the foods you choose to eat. Discover the food and pain connection, and start feeling better.

You may have heard the expression, “One man’s food is another man’s poison” and the statement is never truer than for those living with chronic pain. If you’re like millions struggling with chronic disease, you may take one or more prescription medications. Opiates, steroids, and narcotics often cause terrible side effects if used over long periods of time. These food cures for chronic pain can help reduce or completely eliminate your need for them.

The Food and Pain Connection

You may have never given much thought to how food might affect your pain levels but it has a lot more effect than you think. Highly processed foods like soda, candy, boxed cereals, instant soups, and fast-food burgers contain little nutritional value and a dangerous amount of chemicals that make chronic pain worse.

Read on alignlife.com

We hear it all the time, but it can’t hurt to revisit it again because I know this is one area I need to begin paying closer attention. It doesn’t seem that long ago when I was juicing or blending at least once per day and found it fairly easy to stay on track with my dietary requirements. I also really enjoyed it. I haven’t been finding this so easy to maintain anymore…for various reasons. The biggest probably being lack of energy and just sheer poor planning on my part. I found it much easier to eat for health when I was healthy – ironically enough because it’s that much more important now.

I have no doubt that there is a close connection between the food we consume and how we feel. And that this is even more true for those of us that live with chronic pain. There has been a lot of research to show the inflammatory properties of certain foods and the healing qualities of others.

We can’t go wrong with eating lots of colourful fresh fruits and vegetables and fiber in our diet. Are there any foods in particular you have found that help reduce your pain, or foods that you avoid because you find they aggrevate your pain? Please share them with us below.

Blessings,
Jacqui

 

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Empowering Self Management of Pain, Part IV: Q&A on Part III, Poll, and Discussion

Community & Events, , ,

workshop written on chalkboardWednesday, May 22, 2013, 11:30am – 12:30pm
This workshop is a webinar and occurs online.

PART IV: In this, our last session, we will spend 25 mins on a Q&A regarding Part III and then we’ll end the webinar series with a poll and discussion. We want to hear from you whether you feel that the workshop has helped you better understand your pain? Was it practical information that was helpful to you in controlling your pain and returning you to function? Will the sessions change how you approach activity? We want to hear what in particular you got out of the sessions and how you feel we can improve our programming. Time permitting, Neil will also be taking your questions on pain self-management.

with Neil Pearson, Life Is Now
Find out more and register at PainBC

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The benefits of acute stress for people in pain

Resources & Research, , ,

Image of hippocampus

by Neil Pearson, Life Is Now

The stigma of chronic pain can lead us to persevere and try to push through the pain, only stopping when we cannot carry on. Then the pain flares up and we pay the price!

If you have read my blogs or listened to the pain education I provide, you will have heard me suggest that this technique may be good for ‘getting the job done’, and it may be helpful in acute pain, but it is actually counter-productive to regaining greater ease of movement in the face of persistent pain. The theory we have for this includes two key ideas. First, if your protection systems are producing pain in order to get you to stop, but you do not even yield, the system will start to function as if the alarms are not loud enough. Second, your nervous system will learn to get better at whatever it practices. The more it practices creating intense pain, the better it gets at producing intense pain.

This idea may have merit, but for many people it is in direct conflict with the idea that our body will grow stronger if we continue to stress it. Actually, this is much more than an idea. It is normal reality. If you want to make a muscle stronger, use it more. If you want to grow more tolerant of an irritating or bothersome sensation or experience, step up to it. Face it. In time, it will bother you less. Try playing a string instrument for the first time, and feel the intense pain from pushing down strings with your fingertips. Keep doing it and your body will adapt, even creating a callous as a protective response, just like woodworkers and carpenters have on their hands and dancers have on their feet. In other words, when you stress your body, typically it responds by being better able to tolerate that stress next time.

So why does this positive adaptation not occur in many people with persistent pain conditions? New research provides some clues. It also provides support for what we can do to create positive adaptations in our sensitized nervous systems.

Scientists know that there is one part of the brain that is highly important for learning – the hippocampus. They also know that the persistent high levels of stress hormones from chronic stress inhibits activity in the hippocampus. Recently, studies have shown that this area of the brain is one of the few to be able to produce new brain cells. These same chronic stress hormones inhibit new cell formation, and this likely has a detrimental effect on learning new things. So chronic stress is bad, but what about acute stress?

At the University of California, Kirby and colleagues* studied the effects of acute stress on the formation of new cells in the hippocampus, and on learning. They used rats, knowing that there are enough similarities in brain functions to make some generalizations from the studies to humans. The rats were stressed over a short period with inactivity. (Yup, this is a stressor.) This temporary stress doubled their stress hormones, and the researchers measured up to twice as many new brain cells in the hippocampus. New brain cells should lead to improved brain function, and that’s exactly what they found. They were able to put markers on these new cells and show that once the cells matured two weeks later, these same cells were used by the rats in a learning task to out-perform other rats that had not undergone the acute stress.

What does this all mean?

Continue reading on YogaHub Blog

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How to Understand Someone With Chronic Pain

Intimacy & Relationships,

Chronic pain changes many things in life, most are invisible. Many people do not seem to understand chronic pain and its effects. Many people do not seem to understand that chronic pain sufferers have attempted numerous alternative therapies and know what therapies have worked or not worked for them. Some people have been misinformed or merely misunderstand.

In the spirit of informing those who wish to understand: These are some things that can help you to understand, and help, people who suffer from often debilitating, chronic pain.

 

  1. Remember that being sick does not mean that the sufferer is no longer a human being. Chronic pain sufferers spend the majority of their day in considerable pain. If one visits or lives with a chronic pain sufferer, the chronic pain sufferer may be unable to enjoy things they used to enjoy. The chronic pain sufferer remains aware, and desires to do what they used to perform. The chronic pain sufferer feels as if they are stuck inside a body they have little or no control. They want to enjoy work, family, friends, and leisure activities.
  2. Learn the code. Chronic pain sufferers will often talk differently from people free of constant pain. [1] A numeric pain scale is used as a quantitative measure for identification of intensity for pain so the doctors can measure effects of treatments. Description of pain on a scale measuring from 1 to 10, the 1 is “no pain at all, feel wonderful” and 10 is the “worst pain ever felt”. Do not assume the chronic pain sufferer is not experiencing pain when they say that they are fine. The chronic pain sufferer attempts to hide the pain due to lack of understanding in others. Accept that words may be inadequate to describe how the sufferer is feeling. Recall a time when you experienced pain, then multiply the intensity and attempt to imagine the pain present twenty-four hours everyday without relief. It’s hard to find the words for that sort of pain.
  3. Recognize the difference between “happiness” and “healthy”. When you have the flu, you probably have felt miserable. Chronic pain sufferers have experienced pain from 6 months to many years. Pain has caused them to adopt coping mechanisms that are not necessarily reflecting the real level of pain they feel. –
    – Respect that the person who is in pain is trying their best. When the chronic pain sufferer says they are in pain – they are! They are merely coping; sounding happy and trying to look normal.
  4. – Look for the signs of pain: grimacing, restlessness, irritability, mood swings, wringing of hands, moaning,sleep disturbance, teeth grinding, poor concentration, decreased activity, and perhaps even writing down suicidal thoughts or language.[2]
  5. Listen. The previous two steps made it clear that chronic pain sufferers can speak in code or make light of their pain than is the reality. The next best thing that you can do is to listen to them properly, and to make it clear that you both want to hear what they have to say and that you really have heard it. Use your listening skills to decode what they’re hiding or minimizing.
    – Don’t be put off by the sufferer’s attempts at distracting you; be persistentListen. The previous two steps made it clear that chronic pain sufferers can speak in code or make light of their pain than is the reality. The next best thing that you can do is to listen to them properly, and to make it clear that you both want to hear what they have to say and that you really have heard it. Use your listening skills to decode what they’re hiding or minimizing. Read How to be a good listener for more details on being a great listener.
  6. Understand and respect the chronic pain sufferer’s physical limitations. Being able to stand up for ten minutes doesn’t necessarily mean that the sufferer can stand up for twenty minutes, or an hour, or give you a repeat performance whenever. Just because the person managed to stand up for thirty minutes yesterday doesn’t imply that they will be able to do the same today. With a lot of diseases, a person may exhibit obvious signs of immobility, such as paralysis, or total immobilization due to weakness, etc. With chronic pain however, it is confusing to both the sufferer and the onlooker, and their ability to cope with movement can be like a yo-yo. The sufferer may not know, from day-to-day, how they are going to feel when they wake up and each day has to be taken as it comes. In many cases, they don’t know from minute to minute. That is one of the hardest and most frustrating components of chronic pain.

Continue on www.wikihow.com

Jacqueline Goguen‘s insight:
“My pain blooms everywhere; please try to understand…” I really like this article and wanted to share it with everyone I know!

Blessings,
Jacqui

 

National Fibromyalgia & Chronic Pain Day, May 12th

Community & Events, , , , , ,

National Fibromyalgia & Chronic Pain Association (NFMCPA) Launches National “CARE & Make Fibromyalgia Visible” Campaign, May 2013

The National Fibromyalgia & Chronic Pain Association (NFMCPA), a global community supporting individuals living with fibromyalgia (FM) and other chronic pain illnesses, announces the kick-off of its national awareness campaign “CARE & Make Fibromyalgia Visible,” Fibromyalgia Awareness Day, Sunday, May 12, 2013 — and throughout the month of May. NFMCPA calls upon individuals living with FM and their friends, family and caregivers to contribute, advocate, participate in research, as well as to educate others about fibromyalgia, a common illness involving long-term, body-wide pain, fatigue, sleep disturbances, memory problems and impaired functionality.

“We have had an overwhelmingly positive response to this campaign — with thousands of people participating in events across the country — validating our conviction that chronic pain, including fibromyalgia, is a public health crisis,” says Jan Favero Chambers, president and founder, NFMCPA. “It’s critical that those living with chronic pain raise their collective voices in order to turn the tide against the often devastating impact of chronic pain on individuals, families, communities and the nation.”

While there is no cure for fibromyalgia (FM), interdisciplinary team approaches that include medications, alternative therapies and lifestyle changes can help manage symptoms. Women are much more likely than men to develop FM, according to the Mayo Clinic. Appropriately, Fibromyalgia Awareness Day takes place over Mother’s Day weekend and includes:

  • Thunderclap, Midnight, May 11, 2013: individuals worldwide will concurrently post the “CARE & Make Fibromyalgia Visible” logo via Facebook and Twitter.
  • The Walk to CURE FM: numerous walks throughout the country.
  • Fibromyalgia Proclamations & Declarations: outreach program encourages officials to declare May 12 Fibromyalgia Awareness Day in their jurisdiction. To address controversies, prejudices and the life-altering effect of fibromyalgia, NFMCPA offers:
  • FM patient education, including symptom management
  • Coordinated advocacy for research for new treatments

Continue reading on online.wsj.com

Jacqueline Goguen‘s insight:

Fibromyalgia Awareness Day, Sunday, May 12, 2013 and throughout the month of May http://www.fmcpaware.org/

Blessings,
Jacqui

See on online.wsj.com

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