imagedolezelova.com

Posts Tagged ‘reducing pain’

The common sense answer is an unpleasant sensation caused by anything from a small broken bone to cancer. Obviously, the causes of pain are not the same. Doctors label some pain as acute where you will recover and the pain will go away naturally. So, after proper treatment, a broken bone will be strong again and you can move around like nothing happened. But cancer can be terminal. If you catch it early enough, the treatments can produce a remission and let you lead a good life. Unfortunately the more usual pattern is late diagnosis and treatment that fails to give anything more than temporary relief. Then it’s a painful decline. This is depressing, but it also points to a valuable lesson. With temporary pain, you can take a big dose of a painkiller for a short period. If you have no hope of survival, the priority is now making you as comfortable as possible. This also allows you to take large doses of the most powerful drugs. The problem comes with causes that will persist for years. This is called chronic pain and it requires a different approach.

So here’s a radical idea for you. Pain is a good thing! Indeed, any attempt to make pain go away is dangerous! OK, let’s back up a little. Think of pain as being like an alarm that goes off in your home if a burglar enters. This is a useful warning. If you are home and an NRA member, you can pick up your gun and defend yourself. Now change the burglar to bacteria or a virus that breaks into your body. Although your auto immune system is going to slow down the damage these invaders might cause, the pain is there to tell you to get some real help. Fortunately, medicine has been improving over the centuries. There are now surgeons in ERs to stitch you back together and give you whatever drugs are likely to cure you quickly. Wait, you’re complaining that once pain has done its job and you’ve got the treatment, you want to switch off the pain. Well, that’s not a good idea. Let’s say you take a massive dose of some really powerful painkillers, how are you going to know when the pain actually goes away? How are you going to know whether it’s spreading? One of the most important symptoms to help doctors give you the right treatment is to have a steady stream of information from you about how much it hurts, and whether the pain is going away or spreading. Obviously, if it’s spreading, a different treatment will be required.

So before you start complaining about pain, remember it warns you when you have a problem. The fact you might be receiving treatment for the first problem doesn’t stop you from getting a second problem. That’s one of the reasons why Tramadol is considered one of the best drugs. It reduces the pain to levels easily tolerated and still lets pain do its job, say by warning you about that hot pan you just touched. Until our medical researchers work out how to turn off just the one pain message, you will just have to learn how to live your life with some pain. Tramadol is the best in these situations.

Arthritis is a very common health condition that is estimated to affect over 30 million people in US alone. There are dozens of different forms of arthritis that are manifested in different ways and have different causes. But in general arthritis describes a range of inflammatory and degenerative conditions that primarily affect joints and bones. It is commonly believed that arthritis is an age-related condition however there are different types of arthritis that can also affect children and younger adults. And the biggest problem about arthritis is it commonly caused chronic pain that seriously affects all activities of the person suffering from this health condition.

Chronic pain associated with arthritis is a serious problem because it can severely decrease the quality of life in the patient. Unlike acute pain that can be easily addressed in a short period of time and usually wears off in a gradual manner, chronic pain can be weaker in intensity yet persistent through time, causing discomfort for days, months and even years. It can vary in intensity but it’s always there so the patient also suffers from the psychological point of view because he or she knows that the pain will come back again and there’s nothing to do about it.

Fortunately, there are different pain management methods available for chronic pain relief these days. Arthritis patients are common to physical therapy that is often prescribed by rheumatologists for effective pain relief. Physical therapy can improve the condition of the area affected by arthritis and promote pain relief if applied repetitively. But it’s very important that the therapy is performed by a qualified specialist that knows how to address this sensitive condition correctly. Otherwise, there may be even an aggravation of pain if the therapy is performed by an incompetent therapist.

Another common form of arthritis pain relief that has become quite popular in the past couple of years is acupuncture. This ancient Chinese practice looks quite strange: small thin needles are applied to special spots all over the body. But in fact this technique was observed to be actually effective. Many arthritis patients who have undergone several sessions of acupuncture have reported that their pain has become less intense and their overall condition has improved. Specialists believe that it’s due to the increased production of natural painkillers, endorphins, in the body that is stimulated by needle application. But no matter how it is achieved it is also important that you address an experienced and competent acupuncture specialist for the most benefit.

And of course, there are oral pills that you can use for chronic pain relief. Apart from many common anti-inflammatory drugs that are prescribed to target arthritis there are also painkiller medications that you can easily use to make the condition easier. For example, the most popular painkiller in the US, Ultram, can be rather effective for chronic pain conditions. Only make sure that you take the special extended release form of Ultram that is designed for chronic pain relief, because with the normal form of this painkiller you won’t get relief for a long enough period of time. And discuss the use of Ultram with your doctor first to get a prescription.

In theory, everyone is the same except, obviously, they are not. Let’s start with age. Seniors may be physically active but, look inside, and you will find their liver and kidneys are not working as well as in days gone by. This means it takes longer for impurities to be filtered out of the blood. For these purposes, drugs are impurities. So, when an older person takes any medication, it’s processed through the stomach into the bloodstream and then circulates for longer. This means an older patient must either take a smaller dose or the time between doses must be longer. If such simple steps are not taken, it’s easy for older people to have peaks of drug concentration close to overdose levels. Adverse side effects are more common.

At the other end of the age scale, most drugs are not tested on children and young adults. It’s not considered ethical to expose underdeveloped human bodies to the risk of injury unless there’s a clearly identified need. As a result, doctors are often left guessing whether to risk prescribing drugs and opting for the lowest possible doses. Now we come to the politically incorrect question of body weight. Without getting into the speed of your body’s metabolism, thin people should receive smaller dose than those carrying more weight. Doctors often use a formula relating grams to pounds of weight.

A further difficulty is that pain is very subjective. Some people seem to be able to accept levels of discomfort that would have others rolling on the floor in agony. This is partly physical and partly psychological. As we grow up, we learn from our parents and peers how we are supposed to react when injured. Boys are supposed to be tough. It’s OK for girls to cry. Stereotypes are difficult to shake. This makes it very difficult to assess how much pain anyone is feeling. All a doctor can do is ask and try to place the answer on a scale of 1 to 10 where 10 is the worst pain imaginable. The louder the complaint, the higher the dose or the stronger the drug. For the doctor, it’s all trial and error until the patient admits to feeling less pain. Against this background, it’s interesting to see some new research into using a new technique on an MRI scanner to measure pain. Arterial spin seems to show changes in the parts of the brain associated with pain. If this research can map the brain to show more precisely which part of the brain to monitor, it may be possible to produce a more objective method for measuring pain.

This would have immediate benefits for the patient, always giving the right dose. It would also be good for society because it would reduce the risk of drug abuse. As it is, patients who are developing a dependence can exaggerate their reports of pain and get additional tablets to feed their habit. This is less of a problem for drugs like Tramadol which are significantly less addictive than the opiates. But even Tramadol can be abused if people take it for too long at too high a dosage. No matter what the diagnosis, it’s always better to have the right dosage for your age and physical size.