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Activity Versus Exercise

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Activity versus Exercise: How to Cope with Pain Series

 

Exercise, of course, is good for you. Activity is good for you too. Both are helpful for those with chronic pain. Yet, they are different. They are not an equal substitute for the other. Let’s explain.

Activity

Patients often come to providers and, upon evaluation, respond affirmatively after being asked whether they engage in any regular exercise. When asked to describe their exercise routine, some folks go on to report various activities that they pursue through the course of their day. Still other times, they suggest that they get a lot of exercise because their employment involves being on their feet all day, such as with a retail sales associate, or engaged in other activities, such as the case of a carpenter or machinist.

Engaging in activities on a daily basis is important when self-managing chronic pain. It’s important because it fosters improved coping. The following list describes some of the numerous ways that remaining active helps people to cope with chronic pain:

  • It provides a meaningful focus away from pain and focuses attention on other pursuits that have value in life
  • Provides sources of self-esteem, as we tend to feel good about ourselves when we are productive in some way
  • Provides sources of self-definition, as we often define ourselves by our occupation, hobbies, roles in the family
  • Brings a sense of happiness and fulfillment when we pursue activities that we value
  • Dispels the belief that chronic pain is a sign of injury and frailty, and instead reinforces a sense of confidence that remaining active despite pain is appropriate and healthy

The list isn’t exhaustive of all possible benefits of remaining active while living with chronic pain. However, these benefits, along with others like them, stand to reason. Who would argue that chronic rest and inactivity, along with its resultant lack of stimulation, boredom and lack of direction to one’s life, is good for anyone?

Empirical research backs up our rationally derived conclusions about the benefits of activity. Physical activity, along with its concomitant psychological stimulation, seems to change how the brain and spinal cord process signals from nerves in the body that could ordinarily be turned into pain (Naugle, et al., 2017). Those who maintain regular, stimulating physical activity tend to have less pain than those who remain passively inactive.

In another study, Pinto, et al., (2014) similarly found that higher levels of moderate-to-vigorous, leisure time activities were associated with reduced pain and perceived disability 12 months later. In other words, regular activity, rather than persistent rest, inactivity and lack of stimulation, is associated with less pain and improved coping.

Both common sense and science thus determines the truth of a standard maxim in chronic pain rehabilitation: that if you want to cope well with chronic pain, you must get up off the couch and go do something that’s stimulating, pleasurable or meaningful in some way, and preferably outside the house with other people.

Can we, or better yet, should we, count engaging in activities, such as most forms of work and play, as exercise?

Exercise

By exercise, we might define as repetitive bodily movements for the purposes of improving health, or physical and emotional well-being (Cf. Howley, 2001). Common types of exercise are stretching, core strengthening and aerobic exercise. Stretching involves the extension of various muscle groups, whereas core strengthening exercises attempt to increase control of abdominal and trunk muscles over the pelvis, with the goal of stabilizing the position of the spine (Hodges & Richardson, 1996). Aerobic exercise involves continuous use of large muscle groups that increases heart and breath rates (Pollock, et al., 1998).

Of course, everyone should follow the recommendations of their own healthcare providers, as each person’s health conditions can be different. However, a common form of exercise that is typically important for the management of chronic pain is mild, low-impact aerobic exercise.

Examples of gentle, low-impact aerobic exercise are walking, biking on land or on a stationary bike, use of an arm bike, and walking or swimming in a pool. These exercises are typically mild on the joints of the ankles, knees, hips and low back. So, in this sense, they are not rigorous and so most people with chronic pain can begin engaging in one of these types of exercises for at least a limited amount of time. Nonetheless, these exercises elevate the heart rate, which is what’s important and what makes them aerobic in nature. It’s also what makes these activities into a form of exercise.

With typical daily activities, we don’t elevate our heart rate for a continuous amount of time, which is what we do when engaging in aerobic exercise. When walking on land or in a pool or when riding a bicycle, our heart rate increases and continues at this elevated pace until we stop the exercise. This continuous elevated heart rate is what makes exercise an exercise and it’s what makes the difference between activities and exercise. Activities are meaningful and stimulating and engages attention away from pain, which is all well and good, but most activities don’t elevate heart rate in the manner that exercise does.

As such, activities are not exercise.

Some form of aerobic exercise is essential for successfully self-managing pain. When done on a regular basis, it reduces pain (Hauser, et al., 2010; Kroll, 2015; Meng & Yue, 2015). Likely, it does so by the effect that aerobic exercise has on the nervous system.

When we get a good, aerobic workout, our nervous system produces feel-good chemicals that produce a mild sense of euphoria and reduce our reactivity to stimuli that might typicaly affect us. For a period of time following the exercise, we have a sense of feeling mellow and things that normally bug us don’t bug us as much. The same goes for things that might typically cause pain. They don’t cause as much pain as they usually do. In this relaxed state, our nervous system is simply less reactive or sensitive. Runners call this experience a runner’s high. However, you don’t have to run to get it. Simply walking or biking or engaging in pool exercises can also do it.

When done on a repetitive basis, you lower the reactivity of the nervous system and thereby the things that used to cause pain don’t cause as much pain or come to cease causing pain all together. The less reactive nervous system simply doesn’t react to produce pain as it once did. In so doing, you can increase the threshold for what elicits pain through the intervention on the nervous system, which we call mild, aerobic exercise. In other words, you can reduce the degree of pain you have.

There’s a couple of important things to keep in mind.

One, the mild aerobic exercise must be done on a regular basis over time. It doesn’t have the described effect if you just do it once or twice, or if you do it only once in a while. There’s no exact number to quote, but a rough rule of thumb would be to engage in some type of mild aerobic exercise three to four times weekly on a continuous basis and after a number of weeks you’ll come to see some difference in pain levels. It won’t happen, in other words, over night in a dramatic manner. It occurs in a subtle manner over time. You might not even notice it at first, but at some point you’ll have a realization that your pain isn’t as bad as it once was.

Second, when starting out, you can easily do too much and as a result flare up your pain. This experience can be unpleasant and it can come to perform double duty as the perfect rationalization to stop your attempt to begin an exercise routine. It’s common for people to say in clinic that they tried to start an exercise routine, but that it hurt too much so they stopped exercising altogether. In beginning an exercise routine, then, it pays to start out slow and with a limited amount of time for each instance of walking or biking or pool exercise. Again, there’s no hard and fast rule to follow, but a combination of consultation with your healthcare providers and common sense can go a long way. Talk with your pain rehabilitation providers and come up with a modest beginning point and slowly, over time increase the length of time that you engage in the exercise. Perhaps, at first, it’s quite modest, so modest that you might not expect much pain relief. However, you’ve got a starting point from which you can slowly increase the time or rigor of the exercise as you get into shape. Over time, you increase the exercise to a point of rigor that really does provide benefit. So, it pays to consult with your pain rehabilitation providers to find a form of mild, aerobic exercise that works for you and to be patient in getting to a point that will really help you.

As we’ve said, engaging in some type of mild, aerobic exercise on a frequent and regular basis is essential for most people to self-manage chronic pain well.

Summary

In this post, we discussed two important things that most people with chronic pain do if they want to self-manage it well. They engage in meaningful and stimulating activities and they engage in a mild, aerobic exercise on a frequent and repetitive basis. We reviewed that activities and exercise are not the same. They each provide benefit in different ways. We described these benefits and reviewed some basics to get started. We also discussed the importance of seeking consultation with your pain rehabilitation providers when getting started. Along the way, we hopefully also motivated you to do both meaningful activities and some form of mild exercise.

By: Murray J. McAllister, PsyD

 

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Chemotherapy, Nerve Pain Relief, Pain Management, Pain Therapy, Pain Relief

Managing Pain Without Opioids

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Is It Time to Talk About Managing Pain Without Opioids?

Opioids are certainly in the news. The US Surgeon General recently issued a statement on the relationship between their widespread use for chronic pain and the subsequent epidemics of opioid addiction and accidental overdose (US Surgeon General, 2016). The US National Institute for Drug Abuse and Centers for Disease Control have also issued concerns. Mainstream media reports on the problems of opioids appear almost daily.

After a couple of decades of strong proponents and persistent messaging on the benefits of opioids, the tide of public opinion and the opinion of health experts seems to be turning against the widespread use of opioids for chronic pain.

Among people with chronic pain who use opioids, this change in perspective on the use of opioids can be alarming. For about two decades, people with chronic pain have been encouraged to take opioid medications. Many have subsequently come to rely on them. Some may have even come to believe that it is impossible to manage chronic pain well without the use of opioid medications.

We now face a dilemma in the management of chronic pain. We have strong proponents for the use of opioids and strong proponents against the use opioids. Both sides have valid concerns that lead to their respective positions.

Often, the sides in this dilemma seem to get expressed in untenable ways. It’s as if the stakeholders in the field have to choose between two bad options: either you take opioids on a chronic basis and expose yourself to the risks of addiction and accidental overdose, which are actually occurring to people with chronic pain at epidemic proportions; or don’t take opioids, remain safe from addiction and accidental death, but expose yourself to pain, which may be intolerable. Healthcare providers seem to face a corresponding dilemma: either manage patients on chronic opioids while exposing them to addiction and accidental overdose or refrain from opioid management and expose them to what might be intolerable pain. Whether patient or provider, both options seem bad.

Is there a third option?

There is another way, of course. It’s called chronic pain rehabilitation and it effectively shows people how to successfully self-manage chronic pain without the use of opioid medications. Chronic pain rehabilitation clinics have been around for three to four decades. However, it’s hard to get people to go to them. It’s not because they are ineffective. Research over the last four decades shows clearly that they are effective (Gatchel & Okifuji, 2006; Kamper, et al., 2015).

Managing pain without opioids

People who’ve been managing their pain with opioids are often a little leery of recommendations to go to a chronic pain rehabilitation clinic. The recommendations seem to run counter to much of what’s been previously recommended throughout the long course of care for their chronic condition. After years of recommendation and encouragement to take opioids by some providers, it’s hard to understand why other providers might recommend and encourage the exact opposite. Maybe they are recommending learning to self-manage pain without the use of opioids because:

  • They don’t believe my pain is as bad as it is.
  • They think (wrongly) that I’m addicted to opioid medications.
  • They think my pain is all in my head.
  • They just want to make money off their program that they are recommending.
  • They are ignorant of what’s most effective for chronic pain (i.e., they don’t know what they’re talking about).
  • They are not as compassionate as the previous providers who recommended opioid management.

In all these concerns, people become leery of a recommendation to forego opioids because it’s hard to believe that the recommendation is being made in the best interest of the patient. It seems that relief of pain through the use of opioids is what’s best for the patient and anything that runs counter to that recommendation must be in the best interests of someone else.

Moreover, it’s a sensitive topic. Let’s face it, no one feels especially proud of managing their chronic pain with opioids. Rather, people with chronic pain do it because it seems a necessity – they believe that the pain will be intolerable without opioids. The recommendation and encouragement to take opioids by healthcare providers and by society, more generally, is helpful in this regard. Such encouragement supports the decision to use opioids, one in which there’s always been some ambivalence. Again, no one is exactly proud of taking opioids for chronic pain; upon reflection, there is always some degree of doubt or concern about their use that leads to a sense of vulnerability and sensitivity. It’s helpful to have others, especially healthcare providers, recommend and encourage their use.

When, however, other healthcare providers recommend against opioid use and encourage learning to self-manage pain instead, it can sting because it taps right into the inherent sense of vulnerability and sensitivity that occur when taking opioids.

It’s hard to see a healthcare provider as acting in the best interest of patients when they openly question the issue that can be so sensitive. The recommendation to learn to self-manage pain without the use of opioids shines a direct light onto the inherent sense of vulnerability or shame that so many feel when using opioids for the management of chronic pain.

The recommendation inadvertently breaks all the tacit rules that healthcare providers (and pharmaceutical companies) have heretofore been following. The rule up until now has been to reassure patients that it’s okay to take opioids for chronic pain. Over the last two decades, the field has asked patients to trust these assurances that they shouldn’t be ashamed of their need for opioid medications. Now, the field is changing and has begun to question the need for opioids. In so doing, we break the trust of patients who have been on opioids for some time: we expose them to potential pain, but also the shame that heretofore we alleviated with assurances that taking opioids is okay. It’s no wonder that patients are now upset.

In a microcosm, it’s this dynamic that occurs in the offices of chronic pain rehabilitation clinics everyday when, after the initial evaluation and recommendation to participate in the therapies of the clinic occurs, patients leave and refrain from accepting the recommendation to learn to self-manage pain. Such patients are doubtful that it will work and are afraid of the pain that would ensue if it doesn’t. Moreover, though, they tend to leave feeling somewhat ashamed that the provider so openly talked about the fact that they could learn to self-manage pain without the use of opioids. Providers are supposed to provide reassurance that it’s okay to be on opioids, not question their use.

Even when it’s well-informed and done in the best interest of the patient, the recommendation and encouragement to learn to self-manage pain without the use of opioids can be heard as a subtle yet stinging rebuke because of the inherent sensitivity that occurs when taking opioids for chronic pain.

How, then, do we bridge this divide?

The Institute for Chronic Pain has a new content page that may play a small role in such bridge building. When patients come to chronic pain rehabilitation clinics for the first time, they may have never had an experience of a provider talk to them about self-managing pain without the use of opioids. As we’ve seen, it’s a complex and sensitive interaction that occurs under the surface of the words that are spoken. It can be a lot to take in. It can feel like the rules are being broken. As we’ve seen, it can be easy to become angry and accuse the provider of incompetence, ill-will or insensitivity. Oftentimes, people need a little time to reflect on the discussion and talk it over with their loved ones. No one comes lightly to the decision to taper opioids and learn to self-manage pain instead.

The new content page provides assistance with this reflection. The hope is that patients can use the information on the page to further reflect on if and when it may be time to begin learning to self-manage chronic pain. Providers can refer their patients to the page too, ask them to read it, and come back for further discussion.

For countless people over the last four decades, chronic pain rehabilitation has provided hope and a way to take back control of a life with chronic pain. However, it must be approached with sensitivity and compassion. Initially, the idea that one can successfully self-manage chronic pain without the use of opioid medications can be threatening, especially for those who have been managing pain with opioids for some time and for those whose providers have long provided reassurance that it’s okay to take opioids. Nonetheless, if your providers have recently begun to express concerns about the long-term use of opioids or if you yourself have concerns about their long-term use, you might find it helpful to read the new ICP page on the common benefits of learning to self-manage pain without the use of opioid medications.

Article Provided By: Institute For Chronic Pain

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If you would like to discuss what Carolina Pain Scrambler do to help relieve your chronic pain symptoms or receive more information on our treatment process, please do not hesitate to call us at 864-520-5011 or you can email us at info@carolinapainscrambler.com

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Pain Management, Chronic Pain, Nerve Pain Therapy, CRPS, South Carolina

New Payment Model for Pain Rehab Programs

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Minnesota Leads Nation in Developing New Payment Model for Pain Rehab Programs

This past summer, Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton signed into law an omnibus health and human services budget bill and in so doing he marked a significant milestone in the recent history of chronic pain management. The bill contained language, introduced by State Representative Deb Kiel and State Senator Jim Abler, authorizing the trial of a new payment arrangement through Medical Assistance, which makes it possible for state recipients of the public health insurance to receive care within an interdisciplinary chronic pain rehabilitation program.

The increasingly pressing need for effective alternatives to prescription opioid medications for the management of pain fueled the passage of the provision.

In over a three year effort, a number of additional organizations and individuals pooled resources to ensure passage of the bill, including: the Minnesota Department of Human Services’ Health Services Advisory Council, led by Jeff Schiff, MD, and Ellie Garret, JD, which authorized the state to seek to increase use of non-pharmacological, non-invasive pain therapies among Medical Assistance recipients; the Institute for Chronic Pain; Courage Kenny Rehabilitation Institute; State Representatives Matt Dean, Dave Baker, Mike Freiberg, and State Senator Chris Eaton. To our knowledge, with the passage of the bill, Minnesota became the first state in the nation in recent history to pay for an interdisciplinary chronic pain rehabilitation program in a viable manner through Medical Assistance.

The problem until now

Interdisciplinary chronic pain rehabilitation programsare a traditional, empirically-supported treatment for people with chronic pain conditions. The focus of the care is to assist patients in acquiring the abilities to successfully self-manage pain without the use of opioid medications and return to work or other meaningful, regular activity. Multiple physical and psychological therapies performed on a daily basis for three to four weeks constitute typical chronic pain rehabilitation programs. An interdisciplinary staff of pain physicians, pain psychologists, physical therapists, nurses, social workers and others deliver the different therapies. Research over the last four decades has shown that such programs are highly effective (Gatchel & Okifuji, 2006). Indeed, in 2014, the American Academy of Pain Medicine dubbed such programs the “gold standard” of care for those with chronic pain.

Despite the long-standing research base supporting its effectiveness, interdisciplinary chronic pain rehabilitation programs have historically faced obstacles to obtain adequate insurance reimbursement (Gatchel, McGreary, McGreary, & Lippe, 2014). Component therapies within such programs, when billed on a per therapy basis, are commonly reimbursed at below cost or not reimbursed at all. These low rates of reimbursement make it unviable for chronic pain rehabilitation programs to survive if they accept such reimbursement.

Historically, chronic pain rehabilitation programs have gotten around this problem by repetitively proving their superior outcomes through research and using this research to negotiate “bundled” payment arrangements with individual insurers within each state. The bundled payment is typically one fee for all the services delivered over an agreed upon time frame (usually, as indicated, for three to four weeks). Worker’s compensation and most commercial insurers pay for chronic pain rehabilitation programs in this manner.

State Medical Assistance programs over the last few decades have refrained from negotiating such bundled payment arrangements, due to lack of legislative authority to provide such arrangements. As a result, they’ve pursued more customary reimbursement practices. As indicated, though, such customary reimbursement effectively makes accepting the public health insurance unviable for interdisciplinary chronic pain rehabilitation programs. As a result, recipients of Medical Assistance were cut off from being able to receive this effective form of chronic pain management for many years.

During this time, society has also witnessed the onset of alarming epidemics of opioid-related addiction and death (CDC, 2017; SAMHSA, 2016). It is generally accepted that the impetus for these epidemics has been the large-scale adoption of the practice of prescribing opioid medications for acute and chronic, benign pain that began late last century and continues to this day.

These epidemics have led to increasing societal demand for safe, effective non-opioid options for the management of pain.

With the passage of the Minnesota bill, patients who have state-funded Medical Assistance insurance within Minnesota can now obtain chronic pain management that effectively helps them eliminate the need for opioid medications and return to work or other valued life activities, such as returning to school, job re-training or volunteering.

Not just a local problem

The importance of Minnesota’s legislative action to develop and trial a new payment arrangement for an interdisciplinary chronic pain rehabilitation program is highlighted by the fact that it’s a solution to a problem that is long-standing and widespread. This problem is not isolated, in other words, to the time and place of Minnesota in the year 2017. In other states throughout the nation, chronic pain rehabilitation programs face the problem of telling patients who would benefit that their insurance will not cover the cost of the program and as such would have to pay out of pocket if they attend. To be sure, most patients in this predicament choose to forego the therapy and resort to continuing their use of opioid medications for the management of their pain.

State-funded Medical Assistance programs are not the only insurer that has failed to cover interdisciplinary chronic pain rehabilitation programs. Medicare and some large commercial plans in the nation either do not cover such programs or only do so in a cost prohibitive way. As such, chronic pain rehabilitation programs and many would-be patients face the dilemma of being unable to access a therapy that could go a long way to resolving the epidemics of addiction and death associated with the opioid management of pain.

This problematic insurance reimbursement for interdisciplinary chronic pain rehabilitation programs has had significant consequences for the availability of such programs nation-wide. Because different insurers over the years have not covered chronic pain rehabilitation in a viable manner, many programs have struggled to remain open. While estimates vary, the number of interdisciplinary chronic pain rehabilitation programs in operation has dropped precipitously over the last two decades (Gatchel, McGreary, McGreary, & Lippe, 2014; Schatman, 2012).

This problem of reimbursement is both ironic and tragic at the same time. For the last two decades, we as a society have had a safe and effective alternative to the use of opioids for chronic pain and yet many people cannot access them because state-funded Medical Assistance programs, or Medicare, or some commercial insurance do not reimburse for them. All these insurers readily pay for opioid medication management, with all its adverse consequences, but not for chronic pain rehabilitation programs that show patients how to manage pain without the use of opioids. This irony becomes all the more tragic considering how many lives could have been saved from addiction and accidental death had people been allowed to access chronic pain rehabilitation programs as a substitute to opioid management.

Not yet a permanent solution

The bill, as passed, provides authorization of a two-year trial of a bundled payment arrangement for a chronic pain rehabilitation program within the state of Minnesota. Its intent is to provide demonstration of the effectiveness of both this type of treatment and its corresponding type of insurance reimbursement. In turn, this subsequent data will provide lawmakers with further justification to make it a permanent benefit within Medical Assistance. The long-term goal would be to bring Medical Assistance in Minnesota into alignment with the current reimbursement practices of most commercial and worker’s compensation insurers in the state.

Article Provided By: Institute for Chronic Pain

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If you would like to discuss what Carolina Pain Scrambler do to help relieve your chronic pain symptoms or receive more information on our treatment process, please do not hesitate to call us at 864-520-5011 or you can email us at info@carolinapainscrambler.com

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Reducing Pain Talk

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Reducing Pain Talk: Coping with Pain Series

A common complaint among people with chronic pain is that their pain has come to occupy too much of everyone’s time, attention or energy. In other words, it can sometimes feel like their pain is the only thing anyone ever talks to them about – that they’ve become almost synonymous with their pain.

We call it pain talk. Pain talk is the persistent verbal focus of everyone’s attention on the pain of someone with persistent pain.

Most, but not every person* with persistent pain has experienced pain talk. They quickly and inevitably add that they appreciate, of course, the attention of their friends and loved ones, but it comes to get old.

Might the same be true of you?

Friends and family can develop over the years a tendency to make you and your chronic pain, its treatments, and your overall well-being the topic of conversation. For after all, it tends to be the socially appropriate thing to do. When people are sick or injured or otherwise unwell in some way, we are all supposed to ask about it, express condolences and offer help. Indeed, most people want to express their concern in these ways.

This normal behavior is all well and good. Most of us appreciate some attention when not feeling well or injured or what not. People bring over dinners and help out around the house. Maybe they bring your kids to piano lessons or sports practices for a few weeks following a surgery. Everyone, on both the receiving and giving ends, tend to appreciate these gestures.

It’s also common that after a while these kinds of overt offers of assistance tend to fall away. Life goes on for other people and it’s hard to keep up with such overt helping behaviors. However, the well-being of the sick or injured person tends to remain in the object of everyone’s attention when others do in fact come around. In other words, despite overt helping behaviors falling by the wayside, most people continue to talk to you about your well-being. Again, it’s thing that we are supposed to do.

While initially nice and helpful, when this state of affairs continues on a chronic basis, it can become increasingly problematic. There comes a point for many people where it’s preferable that you are no longer the focus of everyone’s attention. The attention, in the form of you being the object of everyone’s conversation, can become problematic in a few different ways.

It causes inner conflict for you

Suppose that your spouse when she comes home from work tends to ask, expectantly, “How’d you do today?” which implies that she’s hoping you’ll be better. You tell the truth, which you can see in her demeanor is disappointing, and so you feel bad for disappointing her that your pain is still as bad as it ever was. Suppose your four-year-old daughter comments that she wishes you could pick her up, but knows you can’t because it hurts your back. Out of the mouth of a babe, she means no ill will. It’s just an innocent yet accurate comment and yet you end up feeling terrible. Or perhaps, you see your cousin for the first time in a number of months and the first thing she asks about is the surgery that she had heard you had. You know she just had a baby and you want to be there for her, yet she’s trying to be there for you. The brief interaction immediately puts you on edge.

What lies at the heart of these interactions is what, in psychology, we call feeling conflicted. You end up feeling guilty or awkward or ashamed or irritable that you’re yet again the topic of conversation. At the same time, however, it’s not that you can get upset with them. They are expressing a sincere regard for your well-being! It would be socially inappropriate for you to express your displeasure with their attempts to care about you. It’s a no-win situation. You feel conflicted.

This recurrent sense of feeling conflicted is stressful. It wears on you and reduces your abilities to cope with pain. Stress, of course, also makes pain worse.

As a result, pain talk that was initially helpful and nice can become increasingly problematic once it continues on a chronic basis.

People tend to give you unsolicited advice

Suppose your neighbor sees you across the yard and asks, “How’s your back?” and then goes on to ask whether you’ve ever tried chiropractic. He continues for a few minutes on how much it helped so-and-so. Or suppose your friend at church or synagogue or mosque sees you and comes over to tell you about laser surgery that he saw advertised on TV last night. Your cousin insists that you absolutely must try some salve that he absolutely swears by.

You’ve heard it all before, but what do you say? Of course, you’ve considered those therapies or maybe you’ve even tried them. Nonetheless, you nod your head and politely let them finish their thought, but the whole experience makes you irritable.

People trigger bad emotional reactions

Sometimes, people trigger an emotional reaction that you’d rather not have. In fact, as an active coper, you try to stay out of either the victim perspective or the perspective of perceived injustice. Nonetheless, other people’s attitudes can put you into a bad emotional place. Suppose your brother-in-law exclaims, “If they can put a man on the moon, why can’t they fix your back?” Or suppose a friend comments on how unfair it is that nothing legally happened to the person who caused the motor vehicle accident that started your chronic pain. Or perhaps it was your sister who, getting mad that your disability claim was denied, expresses, “It’s so unfair that you can’t get disability – you paid into it for years!”

Such comments, while understandable and perhaps wholly accurate, put you in a bad emotional place. They stoke the resentment that occurs deep down inside you. They tap you into the long-held anger and powerlessness and lack of control that you feel. You try not to go there too often, because you find yourself too depressed when you do, but it is difficult to hear such comments without going there.

It’s not anyone’s fault

Please notice that in observing these complicated interactions no one is blaming anyone or criticizing those who talk too much about your pain. It’s not anyone’s fault. Pain talk is normal and natural, while at the same time it isn’t helpful.

So, what do you do about it?

One long-standing recommendation in chronic pain rehabilitation is for patients to have a discussion with their friends and loved ones and ask them to stop talking about pain. The discussion might go something like the following:

“I’d like to talk to you about something that is important to me. It’s the fact that we talk about my pain a lot – how I’m doing, whether it’s a good pain day or a bad pain day, and how my therapies are going. I know that you ask about all these things because you care about me. I appreciate your caring – I want you to know that. However, I’m also trying to cope better with pain and to do that I need to focus on my pain less. I need to get involved in other things that also matter and preoccupy my time and energy with these things, not my persistent pain. So, one thing I’ve learned recently is that I should ask everyone in my life to stop talking or asking about my pain. This will free us up to talk about all the other things that matter in life. It will also serve to keep me focused on these things, and less on my pain. If we all agree, I’ll make you a deal in that I will update you on my pain if there is any significant change for the better or for the worse. But as long as my chronic pain remains chronic, let’s try to stay off the subject. OK?”

Reducing pain talk leads to improved coping

Pain has a natural capacity to command our attention. When it’s a bad pain day, it’s hard to focus on anything else. This relationship between pain and attention is reciprocal or self-reinforcing: the more pain we experience the more we focus on it, but the more we focus on it the more pain we experience.

It is possible to counteract this natural tendency for focusing on pain. It involves a learning process over time and it takes repetitive practice, but it is possible. It’s a process of recognizing in the moment that your attention is focused on pain and making an intentional effort to change the focus of attention to something else – something that it is stimulating or interesting or pleasurable or meaningful in some way.

This process of repetitively recognizing and changing your focus of attention is helped along when others stop talking about your pain. Your interactions with them become focused on other things in life that are stimulating, interesting, pleasurable or meaningful.

When other things in life that matter start to compete for our attention, we can come to experience less pain. Pain gets relegated, as it were, to the background of our everyday lives. It’s a little bit like white noise. When a box fan gets turned on, it seems loud and it competes for our attention. But as we get involved in other activities, the stimulation remains, but we stop paying so much attention to it. We start to hear it less. We’ve all had the same experience with pain. When we get involved in other things that compete for our attention, we come to experience the pain less.

When we talk about pain less, life is less stressful. We don’t have to put up with feeling conflicted – knowing that others care about us but wishing they’d stop talking about pain so much. We also have a greater likelihood of staying out of bad emotional places, like experiencing the resentment that’s common when you have a chronic pain condition that you didn’t deserve or ask for.

Reducing pain talk also reminds you and everyone else that you are more than just your pain. You have endeavors and aspirations, activities about which you are passionate, and relationships that are meaningful. Reducing pain talk takes these issues off the back burner and puts them front and center. They can again come to define your identity.

Of course, when you see your healthcare providers, go ahead and talk about your pain. But in the course of your everyday life, it is best to repetitively practice staying off the subject.

*Such concerns are not always true of all people with chronic pain. Some people report basically the opposite experience. In their case, no one in their life asks about their pain anymore. They tend to feel alone and can understandably wish for someone to ask about their well-being once in a while. This state of affairs is also problematic. It deserves a discussion of its own and so we’ll save it for another post in the Coping with Pain Series. So, for now, let’s focus this post on how to cope when your pain occupies too much of everyone time, attention and energy.

Article Provided By: Institute for Chronic Pain

Carolina Pain Scrambler Logo, Chronic Pain, Greenville, SC

If you would like to discuss what Carolina Pain Scrambler do to help relieve your chronic pain symptoms or receive more information on our treatment process, please do not hesitate to call us at 864-520-5011 or you can email us at info@carolinapainscrambler.com

 

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John Hopkins, Pain Therapy, Pain Center, Chronic Pain, Greenville, South carolina

John Hopkins recommends Calmare Pain Therapy

Calmare Pain Scrambler, News, RSD - Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy ,

Johns Hopkins pain management specialist recommends Calmare Therapy for RSD pain

Scrambler therapy can overcome severe neuropathy

Preface: Three years ago, my team and I conducted an exhaustive search looking for a new drug-free therapy (with no patient side effects, which was FDA cleared) to help combat treatment-resistant chronic pain.

We eventually (unanimously) agreed that Calmare’s scrambler therapy was a new technology that offered long-term pain relief with no debilitating side effects to patients, who had suffered too much already.

Today, this therapy is minimizing or even eliminating chronic neuropathy in patients living with failed back surgery, chronic spine pain, chemotherapy-induced pain, reflex sympathetic dystrophy (RSD  / CRPS  /  fibromyalgia). I’d like to share a story about Amy, a patient suffering from severe chronic pain after a failed neck surgery which had left her virtually bedridden.

My message is that regardless of the pain therapy you choose, keep in mind there are treatments that do not involve expensive and debilitating drugs or invasive treatments such as spinal cord stimulators. Keep looking, talk to doctors, keep up with the new research. There is a solution out there to minimize your pain.

About Amy and her pain
Forty-six-year-old Amy Horwitz is a bigger-than-life, vivacious, “mover and shaker.”  When complications from a 2010 neck surgery left her immobilized and bedridden, her life was turned upside down.  No longer the care-free, independent woman she used to be, Amy become dependent on a cane or walker to get around, and her husband quit his job to care for her.

Calmare Pain Therapy Amy Horwitz

Amy during her scrambler therapy treatment.“I felt like I had a boa constrictor going around my legs. I felt pain everywhere from my head to my toes,” Amy explains. “My pain was literally off the charts.”

Former pharma tech is handed scripts for painkillers
Amy visited several highly regarded medical specialists, including an orthopedist and a neurosurgeon. But instead of receiving a diagnosis, she was told that her pain was psychogenic (in the mind) and she received a myriad of prescriptions for antidepressants, muscle relaxants and strong narcotics, including the highly addictive OxyContin.

 

Calmare Pain Therapy Hand Before

Amy’s hand before Calmare therapy

As a former pharmaceutical tech, Amy was well aware of the debilitating side effects of these narcotics, some of which she had experienced firsthand. “I wanted relief─but did not want to live my life dependent on expensive and dangerous pain medications,” says Amy.

Amy and her husband face the source of her chronic pain–head-on
With the support of her husband, they conducted extensive research of her symptoms on the Internet and agreed in their mutual self-diagnosis of reflex sympathetic dystrophy (RSD), which was later confirmed by an RSD specialist at John Hopkins Blaustein Pain Treatment Center. After hearing of Amy’s desire for a drug-free solution to her chronic pain, her doctor  recommended a newer treatment for pain that tricks the brain’s pain signal and is showing great results for RSD sufferers–Calmare Therapy.

Calmare uses a biophysical (using physical methods to treat biological problems) rather than a biochemical (drugs) approach to pain management. It is a pain-free, non-invasive treatment for nerve pain that uses electrodes placed on the skin to deliver a ‘no-pain’ message directly to the nerve.

Calmare Pain Therapy Hand After

 

Amy’s hand after treatment

When Amy first arrived at my office,  her pain was a 10/10 on the Pain Scale. After nine daily  sessions, her pain level dropped to 2/10.

“The swelling on my hands had gone down and the pain in my legs had significantly improved. I am finally able to move on my own. I can honestly say I feel like myself again for the first time in years,” says Amy. She is still amazed by the fact that she can grab a glass and put ice in it herself. “It is an incredible feat for me,” laughs Amy.

While Amy is not completely pain-free, she says she can finally see “the light at the end of the tunnel.”  She does not know what her future will bring. She hopes to try yoga and ride a rollercoaster again. But one thing she knows for sure is that, “I’m moving and shaking once again and nothing is ever going to derail me from enjoying this wonderful life.”

Learn More

Carolina Pain Scrambler Logo, Chronic Pain, Greenville, SC

If you would like to discuss what Carolina Pain Scrambler do to help relieve your chronic pain symptoms or receive more information on our treatment process, please do not hesitate to call us at 864-520-5011 or you can email us at info@carolinapainscrambler.com

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Back Pain Relief Nurse, Chronic Pain, Pain Relief, Greenville, South Carolina

Carolina Pain Scrambler Open House

News

Carolina Pain Scrambler would like to thank everyone that attended our Open House. We would also like to congratulate our Winners in our door prizes Michelle C who won our MGM Grand Swedish Massage and Brenda C who won the Carolina Olive Oil Gift Basket.

Check out some photos below from our Open House:

Carolina Pain Scrambler - Open House Carolina Pain Scrambler - Open House Carolina Pain Scrambler - Open House

Carolina Pain Scrambler Logo, Chronic Pain, Greenville, SC

If you would like to discuss what Carolina Pain Scrambler do to help relieve your chronic pain symptoms or receive more information on our treatment process, please do not hesitate to call us at 864-520-5011 or you can email us at info@carolinapainscrambler.com

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Back Pain Relief, Pain relief, Nerve Pain Treatment, Carolina Pain Scrambler, Greenville, South Carolina

Carolina Pain Scrambler – Open House

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OPEN HOUSE for CAROLINA PAIN SCRAMBLER

Be sure to attend the OPEN HOUSE in coming up in 2 days!!! All Visitors get 50% off treatment at: Carolina Pain Scrambler

Come join Carolina Pain Scrambler for our OPEN House
Date: Thursday, February 21, 2019
Time: 4:00 to 7:00 pm
Location: 103 S.  Venture Dr, Greenville, SC

Food and drinks, Evaluations, Raffle Prizes and Shopping. Come learn about health, wellness and pain management.

REGISTER NOW

 

 

 

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Pain Relief, Nerve Pain Therapy, Greenville, South Carolina

Pain Scrambler MC-5A Scrambler Treatment

Calmare Pain Scrambler, Chronic Pain, Neuropathic Pain, News, Therapy , ,

It is state-of-the-art pain treatment instrument accredited by US FDA(2009), EU CE(2008), and AMA(2011) that is effective to chronicle pain.

Characteristics of Pain Scrambler MC-5A Scrambler Treatment

Pain ScramblerPain Scrambler MC-5A Scrambler Treatment is innovative pain treatment method especially for incurable chronicle pain treatment, besides neural pain and chronicle pain. is invented. Generally it applies to patients who are either dumb to all formal pain treatment and medicine treatment or careful of side effect of medicine, has no side effects, and can be expected to direct effective treatment effect.

In present it is used in Mayo Clinic, Johns Hopkins, MD Anderson Cancer Center, Walter Reed National Military Medical Center) and Navy Camp Hospital.

 

Effective objects of Pain Scrambler MC-5A Scrambler Treatment

  • Incurable chronicle pain despite of various conservative treatment
  • Continuous post-operative pain
  • Chronicle pain in neck, waist, and joint
  • Neural pain in hipbone, radiating pain
  • CRPS(Complex Regional Pain Syndrome)
  • Phantom pain of amputee
  • Peripheral neural disease caused by chemical treatment
  • Fibromyalgia Syndrome, etc

 

Principle of Pain Scrambler MC-5A Scrambler TreatmentPain Scrambler 2

It cures and controls pain through Max 5.5 mA electronic shock that generates artificial neuron to recover distorted pain recognition

 

Treatment Method of Pain Scrambler MC-5A Scrambler Treatment

  • Takes around 40 min for each treatment
  • practices treatment 10 times for everyday
  • Early regular treatment maximize effectiveness
  • Pain diminish and effect of painlessness continue for long duration after treatment
  • In case of disease with anatomical and structural problem, root cause treatment is mandatory.
  • In this case, you should utter to medical staffs before treatment.
  • -Patients with artificial cardiograph transplantation
  • -Medical history in cerebral aneurysm clip/coil surgery, arrhythmia,  pregnancy, myocardial infarction

Cautions after treatment

  1. Pain diminish stair in treatment duration.
  2. Even if pain had disappeared, do not over-move right away. It has to increase motion gradually because disease causing pain take time to be recovered completely.
  3. You might feel unrecognized remained pain after recovery of heavy pain. Remained pain due to primary pain arises so that continuous treatment is needed to accomplish effect.
  4. Sometimes pain could be increased for some hours, however, it is treated in the process of Pain Scrambler MIC-SA Treatment.

Worldwide attention from media oversea

Pain Scrambler 3WSA UTAH State TV KSL-TV 5 News(2011.03.16)

“I gave up myself to live depend on crutches due to pain for my whole life. Till now nothing has been existed besides medicine. How incredible! It’s miraculous.”

 

 

 

Pain Scrambler 4NBC-TV 10 News USA Rhode Island State TV(2012.03.13)

“Till now I cured hundreds of patients and above 80% of them achieved effectiveness.    I was tortured for pain but all got cured after cancer treatment. It’s unbelievable.”

 

 

Pain Scrambler 5SBS News – TV

SBS Washington correspondent release       “Pain treatment without medicine”

 

 

 

Article Provided by Wooridul Hospital

Carolina Pain Scrambler Logo, Chronic Pain, Greenville, SC

If you would like to discuss what Carolina Pain Scrambler do to help relieve your chronic pain symptoms or receive more information on our treatment process, please do not hesitate to call us at 864-520-5011 or you can email us at info@carolinapainscrambler.com

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Pain Scrambler Therapy, Back Pain Relief, Pain relief, neck pain relief, carolina pain scrambler, greenville south carolina

Scrambler Therapy: New, Drug-Free Treatment For Chronic Neuropathic, Cancer Pain

Calmare Pain Scrambler, Chronic Pain, Neuropathic Pain ,

A new pain management therapy plays games with your nerve fibers: It sends non-pain information via electrodes placed on the skin to nerve fibers that have been receiving pain messages, blocking the transmission of pain signals.

That’s how scrambler therapy works, using a machine by Calmare Therapeutics Inc. — no drugs and not invasive — for outpatient treatment of chronic pain.

Dr. Ricardo Taboada, an anesthesiologist specializing in pain management at the Hartford Hospital Pain Treatment Center, talks about nerve pain treatment on WFSB.

Beth Garrison, a physician’s assistant at the Hartford Hospital Pain Treatment Center, explains how the scrambler therapy works.

Q: What type of conditions can you effectively treat using scrambler therapy?
A: We can treat chemotherapy induced peripheral neuropathy and generalized neuropathies such as diabetic Complex Regional Pain Syndrome, and pain caused by damaged nerves.

Q: How does this therapy work to actually re-program pain?
A: Nerves pathways are how the body and the brain communicate. Calmare/Scrambler therapy actually reprograms transmission of the body’s pain signal through the nerve pathway so that the brain perceives it as reduced or no pain with the repetition of approximately 10 treatments.

The Calmare pain therapy device.

Q: Is this a one-time treatment or will it require a series of treatments?
A: If the patient responds to the initial treatment, and continues to have increased relief of pain by the third treatment, a series of 10 consecutive treatments is recommended with each treatment lasting 45-60 minutes.

Article Provided by Health Hub News

Carolina Pain Scrambler Logo, Chronic Pain, Greenville, SC

If you would like to discuss what Carolina Pain Scrambler do to help relieve your chronic pain symptoms or receive more information on our treatment process, please do not hesitate to call us at 864-520-5011 or you can email us at info@carolinapainscrambler.com

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ON HEALTH WATCH – Scrambler Therapy: ‘Future of Chronic Pain’ Relief

Calmare Pain Scrambler, Chronic Pain, News , ,

On Health Watch News: Scrambler Therapy technology was cleared by the FDA in 2009

 

Carolina Pain Scrambler Logo, Chronic Pain, Greenville, SC

If you would like to discuss what Carolina Pain Scrambler do to help relieve your chronic pain symptoms or receive more information on our treatment process, please do not hesitate to call us at 864-520-5011 or you can email us at info@carolinapainscrambler.com

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