Is Chronic Pain Getting You Down… One thing that can help!
For millions of Americans, chronic pain is a daily, debilitating, and unavoidable part of life.
When physical discomfort occurs on a regular basis, it makes everyday tasks difficult or impossible.
The result is often decreased mobility, productivity, mental and physical health, and overall quality of life.
If you are managing an injury or illness causing chronic pain, you have likely tried a multitude of treatments with varying degrees of success – if any.
Although such setbacks are discouraging, there is another option that has provided patients significant relief from chronic pain: meditation. Whatever the cause of your chronic pain, the mind-body therapy of meditation can be a viable solution.
Causes of Chronic Pain
The types of chronic pain are as diverse as the individuals experiencing them. From pain originating externally to that radiating from within, such extreme discomfort can make those affected feel as though their bodies have betrayed them.
Common sources of chronic pain include:
- Injuries – New or old, injuries to delicate internal structures can produce soreness and aching long after they have been “repaired”. Whether in a limb or in the back, hip, or torso, injured bodies often impose untold suffering.
- Fibromyalgia – Around 5.8 million Americans suffer from this disorder, which impacts the body’s soft tissues and muscles. Joint tenderness, full-body pain, fatigue, depression, and sleep problems are among the symptoms of this syndrome.
- Back pain – Whether due to injury, chronic strain, or disc problems, back pain prevents millions of sufferers from engaging in the activities they need or want to do.
- Osteoarthritis – This most prevalent form of arthritis (also referred to as “wear-and-tear arthritis”) occurs when cartilage protecting hips, knees, necks, hands, and other oft-used joints wears down.
Regardless of the cause, ongoing pain in the muscles, bones, joints, or other parts of the body refuse to be ignored by sufferers. These people continually seek out treatments to alleviate or eliminate pain so they can return to an enjoyable and fulfilling life.
Pain Treatments that Fail to Meet Expectations
For individuals suffering severe chronic pain for long periods of time, it is not uncommon to visit numerous primary care and specialist physicians attempting to find a solution. Remarkable developments in the pharmaceutical, surgical, and medical device fields have made great strides in helping patients live longer and better, but they have yet to solve many forms of chronic pain.
Doctors prescribe a multitude of treatments for chronic pain, depending on the individual’s condition and medical history. Common chronic pain treatments include:
- Medication – Physicians prescribe everything from over-the-counter anti-inflammatory drugs such as ibuprofen and aspirin to highly-potent narcotics and opioids. Medications such as hydrocodone, OxyContin, and morphine may temporarily reduce pain, but often lead to abuse, addiction, and adverse side effects.
- Injections – Corticosteroid injections in the shoulder and spinal cord frequently fail to produce the lasting and complete relief patients anticipate.
- Surgery – Surgeries to fuse slipped discs or fix other back problems seldom succeed in eliminating the cause of the pain. Worse, they sometimes cause further injury and reduced mobility in recipients.
- Physical therapy – Although rehabilitative procedures prove remarkably effective for certain ailments and injuries, they don’t always provide adequate pain relief for all conditions.
Although most patients and their physicians would hesitate to eliminate conventional treatments altogether, their efficacy can be enhanced by adding meditation to the mix.
How Does Meditation Work?
When traditional medicine fails to address chronic pain, an increasing numbers of patients turn to meditation as a mind-body treatment alternative.
Experts believe the reason pain lingers in the body comes from emotional and mental processes – not just physical ones.
Meditation seeks to identify and address these issues.
In the most common form of meditation (mindfulness meditation), the practitioner works with the patient to help them focus on their breathing. The simple process of observing the breath as it enters and exits the body causes the individual to adopt a sense of heightened awareness. Rather than going away entirely, pain becomes a lesser part of the individual’s overall physical condition.
Several theories exist as to why meditation decreases chronic pain symptoms where other treatments fail to do so. These include:
- Neural plasticity – This field studies the tendency of the brain to adapt to new circumstances. Although chronic pain inhibits the brain’s ability to create new pathways to heal the body, meditation activates the prefrontal cortex and reduces pain signals from the amygdala. This changes the way the brain functions and helps it cope with pain more effectively.
- Controlled focus – A recent study by Brown University presents a slightly different perspective on how meditation works. Researchers refer to the brain as a “volume knob,” which allows the individual to choose where they direct their attention within the body and how they experience the sensations they find there.
- Stress reduction – When external factors such as work, relationships, and finances place stress on a person, it often manifests in both physical and mental ways. Ongoing pain (or simply the fear of experiencing it) has a similar effect. Meditation helps individuals gain a greater sense of acceptance regarding such circumstances, resulting in a heightened sense of inner calm.
If you or a loved one have suffered from chronic pain for many years, it may seem as though you have tried every treatment method available.
Although choosing to live with the pain may seem like the only remaining possibility, mindfulness meditation represents an additional option to add to your pain relief regimen.
Sources:
http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/04/treating-chronic-pain-with-meditation/284182/
http://www.webmd.com/fibromyalgia/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-abaci-md/chronic-pain_b_2185616.html
https://news.brown.edu/articles/2013/02/mindfulness
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2127208/pdf/9274544.pdf
http://consumer.healthday.com/senior-citizen-information-31/arthritis-management-news-40/physical-therapy-may-not-improve-hip-arthritis-finds-study-688042.html
Category: Chronic Pain
