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Chronic pain is commonplace in America.
Around 50 million adults suffer from it! That means over 20% of the US population lives with persistent and incapacitating pain at any given time.
Worse still, the go-to treatment leaves much to be desired.
Doctors often prescribe pain-relieving opioid medication to dull the discomfort. Those meds prove effective in the short-term, but they’re also highly addictive. Countless people with chronic pain develop a full-blown dependency on it.
In other words, the cure can be just as bad as the disease. Those factors collide, leading many to wonder how to deal with constant pain in a more natural way.
Have you been on the hunt for a more natural solution to the pain in your body? Let us help.
Keep reading for a selection of top tips for dealing with constant pain
Practice Meditation and Breathing Exercises
Meditation might be the last thing on your mind when pain-levels are at a crescendo point.
All you probably want to do is scream, escape, and do whatever you can to rid yourself of the crippling discomfort. Being still, present, and focused on a sensory experience might seem an unlikely way to ease the pain.
Nevertheless, meditation, mindfulness, and deep breathing are well-known means of doing exactly that. They’ll help to calm you down, bring your physiological response to pain under control, and direct your attention to something altogether easier to handle.
That newfound state of relaxation can also dispel any mental and muscular tension that so often exacerbates pain levels. Any sense of overwhelm will dissipate. You stand to feel soothed, settled, and able to cope better all-around.
See a Physical Therapist
Physical therapists are trained practitioners who work specifically to support patients with pain.
The severity, location, and type of pain don’t matter! You could be struggling with a dull ache in your shoulder from an old injury, or a sharp, shooting pain in your neck from a recent car accident.
Whatever the case, your physical therapist would evaluate the situation and design a personalized regime to help. They’d employ a diverse and wide-ranging set of approaches. Expect everything from stretches and massage to light cardiovascular exercise and even cold/heat treatment.
You’d also be given a physical therapy pain management exercise plan to do at home between each session and following the cessation of treatment. All told, you could experience a significant, swift, and restorative reduction in pain that enables you to get back to normality.
Destress However and Whenever Possible
High stress as kryptonite to any attempt at pain-reduction. It simply creates the perfect storm for worsening symptomology.
You’ll feel more tense, anxious, and less in control of your experience. Worse still, the cortisol that’s released into your system will cause and/or exacerbate inflammation. The result?
Even more pain!
That’s why it’s so important to steer clear from stress wherever and however you can. Interestingly, meditation and breathing exercises help here as well. Yet there’s really no end to the strategies you can employ to destress.
Exercise (where your physical health and pain-levels allow it), calming music, art, therapy, reading, escaping into a good book…they’re all effective means of reducing stress.
Try Taking Cannabidiol (CBD)
CBD is a natural derivative of the Cannabis Sativa plant.
But don’t worry, we’re not telling you to turn to drugs in your bid to naturally manage pain! CBD may come from the same plant as marijuana, but it’s both legal and contains no psychoactive components. In other words, it won’t get your high or in trouble with the law.
In fact, CBD has exploded in popularity in recent years with people looking for a natural alternative to traditional medication. This incredible compound boasts a host of wellbeing-boosting effects.
It’s true that more scientific research on CBD is required. Nevertheless, it’s widely reported to support everything from anxiety and depression to insomnia, epileptic seizures, and, you guessed it, pain.
You never know. If nothing else is working and your pain is becoming unbearable, then CBD might be a worthwhile option to consider.
Find a Chronic Pain Support Group
Having chronic pain is bad enough. Dealing with pain by yourself, without support, and with nobody around who understands the struggle adds insult to debilitating injury.
This is where joining a support group can prove so worthwhile. Suddenly, you’re surrounded by other people who know exactly what you’re experiencing. They’ll be able to relate, encourage, and cajole you into persevering.
The pain itself may not dissipate as a result of being there. But you’ll come away with a newfound network of empathic people to help you get by. Equally, they might have suggestions and ideas from their first-hand experience that could make a tangible difference to your condition.
Experiment With Essential Oils
All manner of essential oils are said to facilitate pain-reduction too.
For example, the healing qualities of lavender, peppermint, rosemary, and eucalyptus oils are all supposed to help. As you might expect, these kinds of homeopathic remedies aren’t a go-to treatment prescribed by practicing doctors; most aren’t regulated by the FDA either.
Nevertheless, they’ve been used through the ages and some people swear by their utility.
Depending on the oil you choose, you could benefit from natural pain-relieving, relaxing, and anti-inflammatory properties. Many, such as lavender, are known anti-oxidants as well.
Essential oils might not get rid of your pain entirely. In the hunt for anything natural that may take the edge off, though, they’re well-worth mentioning.
Exactly How to Deal with Constant Pain
Learning how to deal with constant pain is all-but essential when you’re one of the millions of chronic pain sufferers in America. Don’t, and life can become intolerable.
Strong pain medication from the doctor can make a significant difference. But the risk of nasty side-effects and opioid addiction makes them a less than ideal means of managing pain.
Thankfully, a significant number of natural pain-relieving remedies and approaches exist too. We hope this article has highlighted a few of the most effective ones!
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