Most of us have dealt with short-term, or acute, pain. It’s hard to go through life without feeling pain from a scrape, cut, strain or sprain. However, if your pain has been affecting you for months, it’s likely you’re dealing with long-term, or chronic, pain.
Individuals with chronic pain are by no means alone. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that 50 million Americans suffer from some form of chronic pain. Our physical therapists can help you learn several tips that can help treat your chronic pain, but there are three tips that can be particularly helpful.
These three tips can help you treat chronic pain
Dealing with pain every day can have a hugely negative impact on your life. Walking your dog can be a lot less fun when you feel pain with every step. Playing with your grandchildren, doing chores and gardening all become much harder if you have chronic pain.
Chronic pain treatments can take many forms, and their effectiveness can depend on what is causing your pain. However, there are three tips in particular that are generally helpful for most forms of chronic pain. These tips are:
- Learn relaxation techniques — Chronic pain tends to cause people to tense up their muscles and other soft tissue. But this increased tension can increase your level of pain or trigger flare-ups. Learning deep breathing, yoga and other relaxation techniques can help reduce your physical and mental tension. In turn, this can reduce your level of pain.
- Exercise more — People with chronic pain often assume that exercising will increase their pain. This may be true if you’re doing high-impact exercises, like running. However, low-impact exercises can help reduce chronic pain. One study on fibromyalgia patients found that strength training led to a more than 30% reduction in pain.
- Attend physical therapy — Many conditions that cause chronic pain can benefit from physical therapy. One study reveals that knee osteoarthritis patients who used a multimethod therapy plan had a 52% decrease in their pain scores.
SOL Physical Therapy can help you better manage chronic pain
Want to find chronic pain treatment that really helps? Our therapy specialists at SOL Physical Therapy are ready and willing to assist you. We’ll start by performing an initial screening. This allows us to learn as much as possible about the source of your pain and how it’s affecting you. Then, our team will build you an individualized therapy plan intended to reduce your pain.
In addition to in-clinic physical therapy, our team is offering virtual therapy that allow you to get effective therapy without even leaving your home. You can even skip getting a doctor’s referral because we don’t require one for any of our services.
Contact our team today for more chronic pain treatment information or to schedule an initial appointment.
