Category: Pain Management

Depending on the severity of their condition, headache sufferers may take over the counter medications or prescription remedies. Many “alternative” treatments are available as well. According to the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM), researchers are continuing to study the effectiveness of these treatments. While some of these widely-touted remedies may not work as advertised, others are effective.

Here, from the NCCAM, is a rundown of the current research on alternative remedies for headaches:

Shingles is a disease that affects nerves and causes pain and blisters in adults. It’s caused by the same varicella-zoster virus that causes chickenpox in children. After you recover from chickenpox, the virus doesn’t leave your body, but continues to live in some nerve cells. For reasons that aren’t totally understood, the virus can become active instead of remaining inactive. When it’s activated in adults, it produces shingles.
Most adults live with the varicella-zoster virus in their body and never get shingles.

If you’ve ever wanted to speak up about your pain but didn’t quite dare because you didn’t want to “complain,” or wondered whether it was normal, the experts at the National Institute on Aging have want to shatter some pain myths. Here are a few of the untruths about pain – and what the reality actually is:

Most people don’t have to live with pain.

There are pain treatments that work for most people. If your doctor has not been able to help you, ask to see a pain specialist.

When it comes to chronic pain, there’s usually a limit to how much relief medications and procedures can bring. That’s where changes to your daily life can help bridge the gap. Cleveland Clinic pain and wellness specialists Daniel Leizman, MD, and Mladen Golubić, MD, PhD, offer nine “pain wellness” tips to make sure you’re following for maximum pain management.

Take deep breaths. The average adult takes eight to 16 breaths per minute. Slowing that down to five or six deep breaths that really fill your lungs will help you relax, which can lessen your discomfort.

Over the counter pain relievers may seem harmless enough, but take enough of a certain type and you could find yourself with a peptic ulcer, a potentially serious abdominal disorder.

As people age, chronic pain becomes a real problem. In your younger years, you probably had pain for a short while – from a broken arm, say, or a bad toothache. But pain can become a constant, unwelcome companion for older people who have age-related illnesses like arthritis, cancer or diabetes.

However, though chronic pain often accompanies aging, that doesn’t mean it’s something you should put up with. Don’t delay going to your doctor. Here, from the National Institute on Aging (NIA), are tips on how to talk to your doctor so your pain problem can be solved.

Virtual reality as a means of distraction, inducing positive emotions, or creating the perception of “swapping” a limb or bodily area affected by chronic pain can be a powerful therapeutic tool, according to a series of studies done in Belgium, the U.S., Korea, and Spain. Subsequent articles were published in print and online in June 2014 Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking.

Standardized research methods are needed to make greater progress toward reducing the high burden and costs of chronic low back pain, according to a National Institutes for Health Task Force report published in the June 15th 2014 issue of the journal Spine.

An online training module using “Edna”, a virtual elderly woman with chronic lower back pain as a case study, greatly improved medical student clinical skills. That’s the finding of a study done at the University of Pittsburgh and published in the May 2014 issue Journal of the American Geriatrics Society. The module is the first curriculum resource created through the efforts of the National Institutes of Health Pain Consortium’s Centers of Excellence in Pain Education program (CoEPEs).

Here's another addition to our Third Age video collection. Press play to start learning.

Here's another addition to our ThirdAge video collection. Read more at www.thirdage.com. 

Scientists have identified new pain relief targets that could be used to provide relief from chemotherapy-induced pain. Researchers at King's College London made the discovery when investigating how pain occurs in nerves in the periphery of the body.

A release from the Biotechnology and Biological Science Research Council quotes Dr Marzia Malcangio a saying, "We have been investigating and identifying mechanisms underlying pain generation and our findings could help chemotherapy patients who suffer pain related side effects."