Do you suffer from chronic pain in places like your knees and your back? Are you looking for a way to relieve pain that interferes with your ability to complete simple, everyday tasks? Are you dealing with pain in the aftermath of a major surgery?
The harsh truth of it is that millions of folks (about 1.5 billion) suffer every day from some kind of chronic pain, whether it’s fibromyalgia, rheumatoid arthritis, neuropathy or any number of other chronic aliments such as back pain (which Americans spend $50 billion a year getting treated for).
As debilitating as pain can be, it’s very subjective and varies from person to person. It’s all dependent on the interactions of a person’s nerves and brain. It’s seems too often that people in constant and chronic pain are treated subjectively when it comes to pain thresholds, especially when describing how bad their pain is.
When you feel pain in your knee, your neck, your back or anywhere else, you’re feeling it because nerves are sending signals to your brain through the spine. Your brain interprets those signals as a sign of pain and sends impulses to set off the protective reflexes in your body. Think about when you touch something that’s very hot. When that happens, your brain automatically gets signals indicating that what you’re touching is hot and in turn you feel pain.
Whether you’re recovering from surgery or dealing with chronic pain, there are main tools available that can help. One is an algometer, which can objectively measure pain. The pain measurement is done by testing levels of tenderness via pressure threshold measurement and pain sensitivity.
A test with an algometer can provide a summary of results, which in turn can help a doctor create treatment plans for people dealing with chronic pain or recovery from surgery. It can be used to measure pain in many different areas of the body and provide summaries for your muscles, joints and other key areas where pain manifests.
When determining a person’s pain tolerance, many factors come into play such as stress, family history, age, sex and a person’s past experiences. In fact, there are many things a person can do to increase their pain tolerance, even as chronic pain conditions vary from person to person:
- Aerobics: Physical activity can do a lot to raise a person’s pain tolerance and lower their pain perception. If you’re recovering from surgery, there are many rehab tools and systems you can use. Depending on what kind of aerobics you’re doing, rehab tools and systems such as flex bands, stability balls and cushions can be of great help in your recovery.
- Vocalization: When someone experiences pain, they tend to vocalize or say something out loud like “ouch.” Whether you know it or not, that can have an effect on the way pain is perceived. Studies have indicated that people who vocalize their pain seem to have a higher pain tolerance.
- Mentality: How someone envisions pain in their mind can effect pain tolerance as well. When it comes to managing pain, thinking of relaxing things in as much detail as possible can help someone increase their pain tolerance.
- Yoga: One of the most effective rehab tools and systems for managing pain and dealing with post-surgery rehab is to practice yoga. Whether you’re an expert who can do any pose with ease or a novice who’s had it recommended to them, yoga is a great way for managing pain and increasing pain tolerance because it combines breathing techniques with meditation, mental training and physical postures. Practicing yoga on a regular basis can help a person tolerate more pain.
The bottom line is this: pain can be an extremely complex thing and there’s no one right way to manage it. That being said, find the right rehab tools and systems as well as having the appropriate tests done can test the real severity of your pain and open up options for how to treat it. Finding the right rehab tools and systems can help you increase your pain tolerance and help you function better in everyday life instead of being a slave to your chronic pain.