Hope for chronic pain patients

I've previously written about how chronic pain changes the brain and especially effects memory centers of the brain. Now new research has shown that not only is this pain treatable, but these changes in the brain can actually be reversed, I read a great post on Bad Boy Science, here is an excerpt:


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"... chronic pain is often defined as pain that lasts longer than the expected time of healing.

One of the reasons pain persists is that the brain re-wires itself to change pain perception. This is known as ‘Central Sensitization’. The changes are actually significant enough that they can be detected through brain imaging! ¹

It’s almost like a ‘pain memory’. Like an over-reaction of your brains job to protect you from danger by giving you pain. It can make safely moving in a certain way cause pain, because your brain remembers that being a painful movement before.

But don’t let this worry you. Fascinating (and exciting) new research has shown that not only is this pain treatable, but these changes in the brain can actually be reversed!

(...)

Hope for People with Chronic Pain

This is good news for people who used to think: “well <insert pain treatment here> only works temporarily and then the pain comes back, so what’s the point?” There is a point! It can eventually become permanent relief.

The message is this: hang in there. The worlds scientists are hard at work figuring out the brain. People are beginning to appreciate pain and it’s complexity.

For now, do whatever you find helpful for your pain.

Don’t be afraid of pain. Keep moving stay active. Reduce stress and anxiety in any way you can. Don’t let pain be the first thing on your mind. Enjoy your life.

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Read the whole article here!

No pills!

Wow!!! I just had one of those "A-ha" moments... I looked at a box of ibuprofen and realized that ... I haven't had to take any painkillers for quite a while, at least four or five days!? That may be a new record since my straight edge experiment in september... which ended shortly after I wrote about how well it was working - having gone 5 weeks with low pain and no meds.

The last months have been tougher, and I've had to take painkillers almost daily again. Scandinavia winters will never be easy for my body I guess, and moving right in the coldest part of the year may not have been a good idea. But now something is helping, even though it's been freezing cold and I've been working quite a lot. I have a little pain but not above 5 on the VAS scale... Hoorrayy :D

The funny part is when I realize this without even having thought about whether I was taking medicine or not. The pain simply hasn't been so bad... out of body, out of mind: Yay!!!

Reboot...

...and enter 2011!!! It's been two weeks already, 12 days of which I have been a mostly horizontal, feverish and sniffling mess - trying to reason with a cold that turned nasty.

I have a little message for my readers and fellow pain survivors here at 365 pain-free days, and just because technology is so fun, I decided to do it in video:

New year, new challenges, right? Well I have decided to turn a leaf on my blogging, and start living as I learn. By implementing gradual change and focusing on one thing at a time, I wonder just how healthy I can become...

#365 Make gradual changes

When you allow yourself to begin dreaming of a healthy, pain-free future and start setting goals, it's easy to get carried away.


"This year I'm gonna get in shape, lose 30 pounds, get well and get a great life" for example, is an oh so common New Years resolution that doesn't lead to much other than a really bad conscience, a sneaking feeling of failure and a lowered sense of accomplishment.

Some smart person once said that "Rome wasn't built in a day" ... I'd like to say that neither is a healthy life and a pain-free body.

The best way to accomplish a better life is by making gradual changes. My mentors Marcus and Stefan at Universe Imagine recommend breaking up a larger goal (like "having a healthy life") into smaller parts and specific activities, and then focusing on making one small change every week.

On my way to a healthy and mostly pain-free life I must have made hundreds of changes, and none of them have been hugely dramatic. People keep asking me what I've done to get so well, and when I say that there hasn't been any one specific superfantastic mega-miracle drug or treatment that suddenly cured my chronic pain, but rather the combination of all the little things I've learned to do... that seems to open people's eyes to the impact of making gradual changes.

I could never have gotten to where I am today if I hadn't kept on believing it was possible, feeding my dream and slowly but steadily doing the little things that led me in the right direction. That's why I've chosen to let "Make gradual changes" be my

pain-free tip number 365!!

.... wow... 

The blog project is done... 

time to celebrate!!!

#296 Resolve worries

Worry increases pain. Just imagine the difference in how you experience a stomachache if you:

1. Have been told you might have stomach cancer and you're waiting for test results.
2. If you know it's because you have eaten too much ice cream.

Same stomachache, very different situation.


I read about a study where doctors induced stomachache in test subjects, by inflating a plastic tube in the gut. Separated into two groups, patients in one group were told "No problem, this is normal, you should be feeling better soon." and the other group were told things like "Oh. That does look strange. I don't know what that could be." Patients in the second group reported much stronger levels of pain than in the first group, under the exact same circumstances. That may be because negative emotions strongly increase pain perception.

Incessant worry drags us down, feeds negative emotions and thus fuels pain. We have a choice to do something about it. Resolving worries doesn't mean we need to fix our lives and make them perfect and worry-free, rather we need to change the way we think.

I recommend this book by dr. Marty Rossman, The Worry Solution. A pioneer in mind-body medicine, he has some good techniques on just how to overcome worry-thinking.

#116 Avoid the pain pitfalls

Ooooooh, I wish someone had told me about the most common pain pitfalls in the beginning of my patient career... This article on Today health MSNBC says exactly what I wanted to say, so I'm just reposting part of the text and adding the link:

"One major shift in thinking is that chronic pain is now believed to be a disease, not a symptom, and that treating pain is about not simply targeting the source but treating the whole person. Like heart disease or other chronic conditions, there’s no magic bullet, so you need to draw on a number of approaches, from exercise and medication to relaxation techniques and talk therapy."

The common pitfalls are: Toughing it out without medication (this letts the pain "stick" and conditions the neural pathways), avoiding physical movement, having many doctors for the same problems, seeing different specialists, preferring surgery to therapy, not considering natural therapies and not discussing depression.

Read more here.

#114 Learn about pain

Following yesterday's topic about seeing beyond your diagnosis; what very many chronic diseases have in common is... you guessed it: PAIN.

When all has been said and done after onset of chronic disease or a traumatic injury, tests and scans have been carried out, possible surgical procedures evaluated or done, all types of medication has been tried with varying effect (sometimes it really works well, other times... not so well), sooner or later you have to accept a new status quo, and what you are left with is the foundation for your new life.

If you have the same pain for more than 3 months it is generally categorized as chronic pain.


What is Chronic Pain?
(From National Institutes of Health:) While acute pain is a normal sensation triggered in the nervous system to alert you to possible injury and the need to take care of yourself, chronic pain is different. Chronic pain persists. Pain signals keep firing in the nervous system for weeks, months, even years. There may have been an initial mishap -- sprained back, serious infection, or there may be an ongoing cause of pain -- arthritis, cancer, ear infection, but some people suffer chronic pain in the absence of any past injury or evidence of body damage. 

The problem with chronic pain is that it tends to intensify, as the neural pathways are heavily trafficked with pain signals, the actual nerves tend to become hyper-sensitivized. It's like turning up the volume of the pain, the longer it persists the stronger it gets.

While initially - when the pain is labeled as acute - pain medication like NSAIDS and opiods provide temporary relief, but after regular usage for longer periods of time pain medication can actually make the pain worse. You need a really good doctor, preferably a pain specialist, to be able to set a plan for correct medication of chronic pain.

Chronic pain also has other effects than just making your life miserable. It sets off a stress reaction in the brain, which makes patients more prone to hypertension, stress & burn out, and can affect cognition over long term. A study done at Northwestern University of Illinois in 2004 showed that chronic back pain shrank the brain by up to 11% brain, with memory loss being a common side-effect.

Learning about your specific diagnosis is very important, but learning about what pain does to you is equally important if you live with it over longer periods of time.

#113 See beyond your diagnosis

When we are relatively new to our diagnosis or health problem, we have a tendency to identify strongly with the actual diagnosis, we want it treated, we want it cured, we want to go back to living our life the way it was before we got sick.


I hear people saying; "I have Arthritis.", "I have Migraine." "I have RSD." or "I have Fibromyalgia." thus defining themselves by their disease, which is a natural part in the process of accepting and coping with a new reality. The diagnosis becomes a part of your identity in your new life, and you identify with others who share the same diagnosis and limit yourself from healthy people and patients with other problems because "they don't understand what it's like..."
There are countless support groups, organizations and forums for each diagnosis, and sometimes it is easy to focus on the differences, instead of what brings us all together.

I believe that all of us who suffer chronic health problems of any kind have a natural interest in seeing beyond our different diagnoses and working to improve the understanding, scientifically and socially of human health and what it means to live with chronic health problems and disease.

After 15 yrs as a professional patient my experience is this: We have more in common than we think!

See beyond your own diagnosis, talk to other patients, focus on what you have in common, what you can learn from each other and how the other person's experience can help you and vice versa.

Because we are stronger together:)

#75 Start taking Vitamin D

If you suffer from chronic pain, you may have a Vitamin D deficiency. Simply getting enough Vitamin D through sunlight exposure, diet or dietary supplements, may relieve your pain a great deal.

None of my doctors ever told me about this... maybe it's because the science is quite recent? Another reason to see a pain specialist maybe...

Mayo Clinic researchers reported their findings from clinical research linking chronic pain to vitamin D deficiency in March 2009. This Medscape article cites scientific research that concludes that inadequate Vitamin D may even create or sustain pain.

According to the patient brochure from pain topics.org, patients suffering from migraines, osteoarthritis, rheumatoid arthritis, fibromyalgia, myalgia, diabetic neuropathy, chronic fatigue syndrome, seasonal affective disorder (SAD) can potentially benefit a great deal from Vitamin D treatment. Read more about this here.

#73 Maintain an Attitude of Gratitude

I am very happy to introduce our very special new guest blogger Nicole Hemmenway today, with her first tip for the readers of the 365 pain-free days:

As we all know, chronic pain has the ability to change our lives forever. It did for me. I remember being seventeen and a senior in high school with many aspirations for my future. Then, in a span of seconds, the life path I believed I would be embarking on vanished. Immediately, my entire world, my entire identity, was crushed. I wondered if life would ever be the same, or if I somehow lost my chance to be happy. 

Chronic pain affects every aspect of our lives. Too often on our recovery journeys, we feel alone, frustrated, or defeated. These are normal responses to the pain, and yet if we let these feelings consume us, the pain wins. During my nine-year battle with complex regional pain syndrome, I had moments when the doubt, shame and guilt became unbearable. I had times when I wanted to curl up in a ball and say, “I’m done.” But I refused to give up. I refused to believe I would be sick forever, and I adamantly refused to let the pain control me.

Since I knew I needed to find a constructive way to release the emotional and mental angst, I contacted my spiritualist and mentor. She explained the concept of an “Attitude of Gratitude” journal, and encouraged me to begin my own.
It was imperative that I begin concentrating on the positives in my life. Although I was dealing with disabling full-body pain, had lost complete mobility of my right hand, and relied on my family for all my most basic needs, there was still light and happiness in my life. She told me I had to focus on the joy: the moments of meaning and purpose.
  
While I no longer had use of my writing hand and was too sick to write full journal entries, I jotted down simple phrases in my “Attitude of Gratitude” diary that I personally named “Waiting for my Miracle.” For every struggle and frustration I recorded, I wrote three encouraging and optimistic points. While this was difficult to do at first, I soon saw its significance. I realized where I focused my attention was what thrived in my life.
  
I invite each of you to start your own “Attitude of Gratitude” journal and see what you discover about yourself. For me, keeping a record of my highs and lows made a considerable difference in my overall healing. Not only was I more equipped to cope with the flare-ups, but I also had a new tool that helped me gain insight and perspective. It made me realize that although my life might not be the same, I was still living. I soon understood that I needed to hold onto hope for a brighter future while finding a way to live in the present; because in reality, that is the only moment we are truly guaranteed.  Even though I had faith that I would someday find my answers, I had to look at this day and find pleasure. I had to find meaning in the darkness ... and I did. I hope you do too.
  
Remember to continue to believe in the unimaginable, and you are never alone on this journey. I am sending each of you healing thoughts.

Believing in Miracles,
Nicole

#72 Take a weekend course

Learning new stuff is fun. Whether it's work related, sports, a hobby or pure self development, taking a course gives new insight, knowledge and inspiration. AND you get to meet new interesting people!

I try to attend a weekend course in something fun that is not directly work-related at least 3 times a year. NLP, photography, juggling, surfing, diving, kung fu saber form and Acro Yoga have been part of my "fun-curriculum" the last few years. Ok, so I can't necessarily do all of those things very well, but I tried, learnt a little, practiced and got better, and had a lot of fun in doing so...

This weekend I'm attending a weekend course at the institute for medicinal yoga in Stockholm. It's part two in a "yoga against stress & burnout" series, and it's pretty awesome.

I've found it easier to fit in a weekend course than a regular evening class, because the pain can often make it difficult to follow a regular activity every week. Even if the topic isn't specifically health-related (or maybe especially when it isn't...it's nice to get a break from that and just focus on something entirely different once in a while) I find it to be really beneficial to my overall health and pain level.

So that's today's tip: Is there some thing you've always wanted to learn but never got round to, or thought wasn't possible?

What kind of course can you take to start moving towards your dream? How about Chinese calligraphy? Or french cooking? Or book making?

When and where can you start? Why not sign up today?

#69 Acknowledge ALL of yourself

It's natural when we have pain that we want to pinpoint the cause as exactly as possible, and then get that problem treated, so that we can live happy and pain free lives without having to deal with health problems.

But for very many pain patients out there, it just doesn't work that way.

Many painful conditions are incurable. Many injuries lead to secondary problems, which again lead to others, which in time affects the whole body. What affects the body will at some point start to affect your state of mind. It's difficult to be happy, joyful and exuberant when you are dealing with pain and limitations every day.

Like many of you out there, I have met doctors who questioned and even ridiculed my symptoms and said it was "all in my mind". And that's with my quite simple, well defined diagnoses: spinal fracture due to a traffic accident, and rheumatoid arthritis. It's pretty crazy how someone can say that it's "in your mind" when your back has been broken and it hurts, isn't it? Well, imagine what it's like for those suffering RSD, fibromyalgia and many horribly painful syndroms that aren't properly researched and understood yet!?

I feel insulted and angry if anyone, doctor, teacher, friend or family member implies that the pain is in my head and "I need to deal with it". Part of me will shout back: "The pain is in my BODY and I need it treated!"

But at the same time, today I can choose to see myself as a whole.

I am not a random mass of cells put together for no apparent reason. There is a complicated system controlling how those cells interact and change, that neither I nor the doctors fully understand. If we did, there would be no more disease.

What happens to my body affects my mind, and what happens to my mind affects my body.

Choosing to see it this way is empowering me to be in charge of my own healing process. This way, no judgment made by any other person, be they a friend, a colleague, a doctor or other professional health practitioner, can block or stop me on my way towards a pain-free life.

#33 Weatherproof your pain

Humidity, temperature & barometric pressure affects joint pain, migraines and muscle pain (for example in fibromyalgia). 

What can you do about it? 

Well, apart from moving to the Sahara desert, or a similarly dry and exciting place, you can buy a good hygrometer and barometer, and notice how your pain scale is affected by the changes in weather.

Once you have some basic understanding of how your aches and pains respond to changes in the weather, you may be able to implement different strategies at an earlier time. Instead of being hit with the surprise super-migraine every time the pressure drops dramatically, and feeling like a giant failure for not being able to cope with your responsibilities that day, cut yourself some slack. Grant yourself a soft "stay-at-home-and-be-kind-to-yourself-day" - maybe using some of the other tips in this blog - when you see the telltale signs of a painful weather alignment coming on.

Bring out the dark chocolate, ointment, woolly clothes (or furry friend) and call your friends.

That way, the pain may still come, but you can limit how much it wears on you, and you won't necessarily feel so bad about it.

#7 Envision your future

Did you dare to dream lately?

If not, then I think it's time we did a little exercise...

If someone told you ten years from now that they could not believe you ever had any health problems, because you look and seem so wonderfully fit, how would that affect you?

Can you see yourself in that future? What do you look like? How do you move your body? How do you speak? Try closing your eyes and make that image as vivid as possible.

Then look at your life today and just notice the differences. Now, what do you imagine you need to do in order to get closer to that future?

Can you even imagine a life without health problems?

Let's just pretend that it's this easy that if you can dream it, you can have it.
So it's time to start practicing dreaming. Just how healthy do you want to be? Just how happy do you want to be? See beyond the doctor's appointments and the new treatment you're trying out. Try to imagine yourself 100% well, fit, energetic and bursting with vitality. What are you going to look like then, and how will you feel?


6 years ago I was pretty much horizontal all the time, and could hardly leave my appartment. Today I practice acro-yoga and kung fu, and people I meet do not believe that I ever had a health problem. I still have pain, but it hardly ever shows (and only to people who know me well). I remember laying on my bed one evening about 7 years ago dreading another night of excruciating back pain and just being so tired of it all I didn't know what to do with myself. That's when I got this image, like a dream I saw myself in a healthy future, laughing, dancing, surrounded by friends and family, where health wasn't even an issue for me. That image gave me strength, and somehow it lit my way and helped me make the right decisions in the years that came, and one day I looked at my life and and saw I was actually living that dream, only it was even better than I imagined it....

I believe that to go where you want, you need to know where you're going. Haha, that's a tricky one. It means you have to sit down and define what you want, put it in words and create pictures that go with it. Start creating the road map, don't drift along. Problems you have now won't necessarily be there for ever.

#1 Get Physical!

Aerobic exercise is definately not something you're up for when you've been in serious pain for a long time, and that's why I got pretty pissed off at the doctor who told me this...

Back in 2003, I'd been through hell with my whiplash injury, when several months of waiting and getting sent from one place to the other brought me to this supposedly specialized neurologist who simply said: "There's nothing we can do for you, but you should try getting your blood pumping by doing aerobic exercise 20 minutes a day."

I was getting my blood pumping right there and then, but maybe not in a very healthy way. "Who the %&$/ is HE to tell me to exercise?? Doesn't he know what kind of hell I'm going through, I can hardly walk to the kitchen and back, and here this guy is telling me to get fit?" etc etc etc...

But a while later I got to try it out, inadvertently of course, as I would never dream of actually following the advice of a doctor I didn't get along with... but I had a good day and was walking up a steep hill, first it was just really tough and my breath was labored, but after a while I noticed that I reached that level where my breath sort of evened out and got calmer, I got more energy and the pain was completely gone, my body was warm and just felt great for the first time in a looong while. Afterwards my pain was significantly lowered for the rest of the day, very noticably so, and I came to remember that doctor and his advice...

I did some reading up and found out that getting your breath going like that maximizes the amount of oxygen in your blood. Your heart beats faster, and increases blood flow to your muscles and at the same time your body releases endorphins, natural painkillers that make you feel good for a long time afterwards. All natural and even builds some muscle.

It will always be difficult to motivate yourself to move much at all when you're feeling awful, but it's definitely worth a try. Specially since it's free and it feels great.

Yayy:D

Welcome!

This blog is a feel good zone for anyone who has to deal with physical pain on a daily basis.

The blog will be opened on the first of January, and every day through 2010 I will post a new entry with ideas of things you can do to relieve or minimize your pain to have the best day possible.

Wishing you all a pain free day!

- Anna