Five Approaches for Easing Your Pain
Riddle: What is something everybody experiences, we all need for our own good and most of us would do just about anything to make it go away?
Answer: Pain
Unless you are among the infinitesimal percentage of humanity with congenital insensitivity to pain— a sensation they will never feel— this riddle applies to you. The inability to feel pain is both a curse and a blessing. A curse because the body won’t alert you that you shouldn’t be walking on that sprained ankle or that you are leaning against a red-hot stove pipe. A blessing because chronic pain will never be part of your life.
Various treatments to assuage chronic pain go back over a span of centuries, and we at Montvale Health Sport + Spine utilize methods, both ancient and contemporary, to subdue, even conquer, the curse of chronic pain.
Just about every facet of our multidisciplinary practice deals with chronic pain in some way, but the following quintet of pain treatments stand out:
Chiropractic
The therapeutic procedure of chiropractic manipulation, traditionally known as spinal adjustment, is the sustaining core of a treatment modality that serves millions of patients every year across the United States. There is no cure for chronic pain, but this is as close to noninvasive as you can get, especially when compared to the perils of pain killers and elective surgery. We ease pressure on nerves, correct misalignments of the vertebrae and inhibitors that produce pain.
We work with other in-house specialists who expertly provide relief, including massage therapy, physical therapy and educate, recommending lifestyle adjustments that may be the source and protraction of your chronic pain.
Therapeutic Massage
Massage therapy earns credit for seniority, along with acupuncture, among the pain treatments we offer. It has been around for some 5,000 years and is still respected, still easing pain and improving enjoyment of life, which explains why it continues to thrive. It is a relaxing tension reducing treatment that we often rely on to supplement other pain alleviating procedures.
Physical Therapy
Physical therapy is essentially human rehab, which simply means returning one to good health or to original, if not better, condition. It is regularly prescribed before and after orthopedic surgery and has evolved into a service you’ll find in many hospitals. It might be restoring joint flexibility and range-of-motion after a knee replacement or improving strength and mobility for someone recovering from serious illness or injury.
Strengthening, flexibility and restoring mobility typically result in reduced pain and, by extension, return to normal activity with renewed confidence.
Acupuncture
This therapeutic technique relieves pain from sufferers of an assortment of illnesses and injuries, including cancer patients. Perhaps its most prodigious followers are those who suffer from the unrelenting pain of arthritis, both osteoarthritis and rheumatoid arthritis, with an increasing number of rheumatologists including it among their treatment options. They are reporting relief that can dramatically improve mobility, positive attitude and quality of life.
Studies have suggested that acupuncture not only eases chronic types of joint pain, but it wards off migraine headaches and eases frequency of tension headaches.
Cupping Therapy
A controlled vacuum generated by a state-of-the-art device gives us the ability to relieve pain and soreness via gentle suction from cups placed on the affected areas, often the back and shoulders. Athletes are among its chief users, but you don’t have to be an athlete to seek relief from soreness and pain.
