The Problem With Painkillers

A variety of over-the-counter and prescription medications promise to ease pain and inflammation temporarily. Steroids do this by suppressing the immune system for people suffering from painful auto-immune disorders (such as rheumatoid arthritis). That same immune-suppressing power, however, also makes the body more vulnerable to infection. Long-term steroid use has also been associated with cataracts, glaucoma, hypertension, water retention, acne, high blood sugar and osteoporosis. NSAIDs (non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs) block the production of inflammatory chemicals in the body. These drugs aren’t necessarily safe, either. NSAIDs can cause stomach bleeding and kidney damage in some individuals. They have also been associated with elevated heart attack and stroke risks.

Perhaps the most ominous danger comes from opioid drugs. Opioids can deaden more than just pain. These powerful drugs caused over 70,000 fatal overdoses in 2017 alone. Some of these deaths may have been related to recreational drug use, but over 60 percent of the deceased were chronic pain sufferers.

Physical Therapy for All-Natural Pain Management

Physical therapy offers numerous advantages as a safe, effective, all-natural pain management tool. A physical therapist takes each individual’s symptoms (and those symptoms’ underlying causes) into account when devising a physical therapy plan for pain management. Your plan might include modalities such as:

• Aerobic exercises to get the blood flowing and encourage joint lubrication
• Resistance training exercises to strengthen muscles, making physical actions less of a strain
• Cold laser therapy and/or massage therapy to boost circulation, relax tissues and reduce inflammation
• Electrical nerve stimulation to interrupt pain signals
• Chiropractic adjustment to help joints move more freely and correct painful musculoskeletal imbalances
• A soothing combination of heat therapy and cryotherapy

Physical therapy appears to have one more major contribution to make toward freeing pain sufferers from their symptoms. Some physical therapists have adopted “brain-rewiring” techniques such as graded motor imagery to help patients develop a new perception of their pain — one that allows them to master and minimize their responses to it. This form of physical therapy seeks to give individuals more control over their pain so that they can tolerate more exercise, which then reduces the pain even more.

Physical therapy can do more than just help you feel better. By providing you with non-pharmaceutical pain control measures, this form of care can help you steer clear of the side effects of prescription and non-prescription drugs. Better yet, you’re going beyond the temporary numbing of your symptoms by actually treating the underlying causes of those symptoms. Why settle for the illusion of relief when you can have the real thing — and improve your health and functionality in the process?

Looking for Answers to Your Pain? Talk to Our Physical Therapist

Our physical therapist will be happy to create a pain management program just for you. Contact Next Level Physio today for a consultation!

Source:

• https://www.choosept.com/DidYouKnow/Detail.aspx?cid=3f395d5e-adcf-4d23-9f80-30a140f315cb
• https://www.everydayhealth.com/nsaid/guide/
• https://www.arthritis.org/living-with-arthritis/treatments/medication/drug-types/corticosteroids/benefits-risks.php
• https://www.apta.org/PTinMotion/2019/5/Feature/ChronicPain/
• https://www.medpagetoday.com/neurology/painmanagement/75078
• https://www.everydayhealth.com/pain-management/physical-activity-and-therapy.aspx

The post The Drug-Free Path to Pain Relief: Physical Therapy appeared first on Next Level Physio.

Are you tortured by headache pain morning, noon and night, day after day? Does emotional and/or physical stress always seem to trigger a headache? If so, you’re one of the many Americans who suffer from stress-related or tension headaches. These headaches have own distinctive style, and some of their underlying causes may actually surprise you. If you’re ready to tackle those underlying causes so you can relieve your headaches without turning to drugs, physical therapy might hold your answers. Contact Next Level Physio today — our physical therapist will be happy to help you feel better!

What Are Tension Headaches?

The emotional and physical stresses of modern everyday life seem to go hand-in-hand with headache pain. For some people, stress can even serve as a trigger for fearsome migraine attacks, which cause not only blinding headaches but other issues such as vision problems, vomiting, and faintness. But for the majority of us, the word “headache” refers to a tension headache.

Tension headaches are well named, but not always for the reasons you might suspect. They actually begin, not in the head, but in the muscles of the neck or shoulders. If these muscles become chronically tense and tight, they tend to go into spasm. This is bad news for the dura mater, a pain-sensitive membrane attached to certain small muscles near the base of the skull. The tight muscles pull on the dura mater, which causes it to refer pain signals up into the head.

Symptoms and Causes of Tension Headaches

Tension headaches can vary widely in severity, although they’re rarely as debilitating as migraines. They tend to a generalized ache over a broad region of the head, as opposed to attacking a specific area such as the eye (a trademark of another type of headache called a cluster headache). The tension that brings them on may stem from emotional stress (if that emotional stress creates chronic neck tightness), but it may also be caused by:

• Weak neck muscles that become fatigued easily
• “Text neck,” a strain disorder that occurs if you’re always drooping your head forward to look at your smartphone
• Repetitive motion or overuse from work or sports activities
• Secondary pain problems such as arthritis in the cervical spine

Tension headaches that bother you for more than 15 days out of the month for 3 months or more are considered a chronic pain condition.

How Physical Therapy Can Help With Tension Headaches

Over-the-counter pain relievers may reduce the symptoms of stress-related headaches for a few hours, but they do nothing about the stresses and strains that are making those headaches recur day after day. If you want a more lasting solution, physical therapy is a good place to start. Our physical therapist will administer an examination to see whether you’re dealing with tension headaches or with some other type of headache that requires a specialist’s attention. Physical therapy strategies for treating tension headaches include:

• Exercises to strengthen your neck muscles, allowing them to hold the weight of your head more evenly and with less strain
• Postural and ergonomic advice to help you get rid of any bad habits that might be causing “text neck”
• Flexibility exercises, manual therapy, heat therapy and/or ice therapy
• Stress reduction measures such as yoga, lifestyle changes, and advice on how to reduce common stress triggers in your life.

Take action to stop those stress-related headaches from taking over your life. Call Next Level Physio today and schedule an appointment with our skilled physical therapist!

The post Say Goodbye to Your Stress-Related Headaches, Once and For All appeared first on Next Level Physio.