The Benefits And Drawbacks Of Online Chronic Pain Support Groups

online support groupThe advent of the internet has made it easier for people to connect with one another from all over the world. This is especially helpful in the pain management community. Many people may not know anyone else in their immediate circle dealing with a specific type of chronic pain condition, but they can connect with hundreds or thousands of individuals who are going through the same issue they are dealing with when they find a support group dedicated to that condition.

At the same time, support groups aren’t a perfect solution for your chronic pain issue either, and they can actually make it harder to overcome your pain if you’re not careful. In today’s blog, we take a closer look at some of the benefits and drawbacks of online support groups for chronic pain.

Benefits Of Online Pain Support Groups

We’ve recommended online support groups to patients in the past, and they have the potential to be a perfect complement to your comprehensive treatment plan. For starters, there is a huge psychological weight that can be lifted off your shoulders when you know that you’re not going through your issue alone. There are so many others out there dealing with similar issues, and you can share ideas and stories with one another to feel less isolated by your chronic pain condition.

In fact, in a study about chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia, the most frequently mentioned benefit of an online support group was illness legitimization (67.8%). Two other benefits that were frequently mentioned were finding out new information (66.4%) and feeling understood by others (62.2%). Clearly sharing ideas and connecting with others was helpful for those dealing with an isolating condition.

Drawbacks For Online Support Groups

The same study also looked at some potential drawbacks associated with these pain groups, and they found some interesting results. Most notably, active members of the pain care group reported greater symptom severity and less illness improvement than inactive members or dropouts. Now, there’s many possible reasons for this result. Inactive individuals or dropouts may not lean on the group as much because their pain wasn’t as severe, so they may be more likely to find a solution that leads them to no longer need the group.

However, there’s also the hypothesis that over-dependence and heavy involvement in an online support group can negatively affect how you approach your pain condition. One of the most frequently reported reasons for dropping out of the group was too much negative talk or complaining (33.3%). If all you read about your condition is how horrible it is, how doctors are working against you and how there’s no hope for the future, those thoughts can make it harder for you to find the right treatment plan. You may be more likely to avoid the solutions you need simply because of misinformation and pain catastrophizing that can take place in these groups.

A number of these groups can connect you with wonderful people who truly want to help you find a solution to your pain, but like any online group, they can also be full of people who are angry at the world and use the group to spread their misery to others. Whether intentional or not, it’s important that you don’t allow yourself to focus on these negative comments and know that it will do nothing to actually help you overcome your condition.

We’d be happy to point you in the direction of some in-person or online groups where you can connect with others in the midst of their own personal pain battle. You don’t have to go through it alone, and you can also fight your battle with a pain management specialist by your side. For help with your pain condition, or for answers to your questions, reach out to Dr. Cohn and his team today.

Daily Exercise The Key To Combating Chronic Pain

exercise painAs someone who has suffered from chronic back pain for more than a decade, I know just how hard it can be to manage a chronic condition on a daily basis. You have good days where you feel like you can conquer the world, and you have bad days where you don’t even want to get out of bed. No matter what kind of day you’re having, it’s important that you push through any discomfort and find time to exercise, because that’s likely your best bet at stringing together more good days than bad.

Daily exercise isn’t something that comes easy. Most of us can find some spare time throughout the week, but we can’t always carve out time every single day, and when we do get spare time, oftentimes we’d rather use it on anything other than exercise. However, it’s this consistency that might be just what you need to put your chronic pain in the past.

The Benefits Of Daily Exercise

A recent study decided to take a closer look at the benefits of moderate versus daily exercise when it comes to helping control problems associated with chronic pain. For the study, researchers conducted a small, weeklong study of 40 healthy women on their sensitivity to pain before and after exercise. The individuals were asked to walk briskly on a treadmill for their exercise, and patients were separated into three different groups. One group walked three times per week, another group walked five times a week, and the final group walked 10 times a week.

After reviewing the data, researchers found no differences in pain perception following exercise for those who exercised three times a week, but the findings were significantly different for those who exercised at least five times a week.

“We asked them to rate that pain,” said neuroscientist Benedict Kolber, lead researcher on the study. “And at the end of the study, they rated the same pressure — the exact same pressure — as 60% less painful than they rated it at the beginning of the study.”

In other words, a small dose of exercise did nothing for helping manage chronic pain, but a bigger dose worked wonders. A good motto to live by is to “Strive For Five” in terms of striving to exercise at least five times a week. However, it’s also worth remembering that you need to start slow. If you haven’t been a frequent exerciser, don’t go straight to exercising for an hour each day. Ramping up your activity too quickly can lead to overstress injuries and exacerbate inflammation. Start slow, be it 5-10 minutes a day, and work your way up from there. Focus on doing small amounts daily instead of a longer session 1-2 times a week, and work your way to longer durations.

There have been days where the last thing that I wanted to do was get up before work and work out, but I knew I needed to do it if I wanted to function at my best throughout the day. I try my best to work out every day, and my back pain has been much more controlled than in years past, even though I’m years older. Controlled exercise can be your best friend when it comes to caring for your pain condition. If you need help developing a safe exercise routine, or you want some tips on what types of activity might be best considering your condition, reach out to Dr. Cohn’s office today.

5 Healthy Habits To Live Longer

healthy habitsEveryone has advice on living better and longer. Sometimes the advice is complex, sometimes someone is just trying to sell you something, and in a recent StarTribune issue, there was some simple practical advice. The information is from a study of 100,000 people published originally by the American Heart Association. It lists five habits to adopt to live better and longer. It is the straightforward approach to life.

The Five Habits

The first habit for good health is to avoid smoking. The best habit is to never smoke. The dangers of smoking have been known since the early 1960’s. Everything from vascular disease, to lung problems and cancer result from smoking. Quitting smoking does help, never starting is even better as far as the risk is concerned.

The next habit is maintaining a healthy weight. The easiest tool is based on having a body mass index (BMI) that is between 18.5 to 24.9.  The formula for is:  BMI=703x[(weight in lbs)/(height in inches)(height in inches)]. The number can be looked up in charts. Unfortunately this is a rough guide, and if you are muscular, or have a larger build with “big bone” structure, you may fall into the category of obese. For instance my BMI is 24.3, it is borderline since I have relatively more muscle than fat but I am pretty healthy from a cardiovascular standpoint due to an active lifestyle.

The third habit to increase life is to exercise moderately for 30 minutes a day. This is to walk, swim or work out in any sort of way every day if at all possible. The 30 minutes does not have to be all at once. If you take three ten-minute walks a day, that adds up to the correct amount of time. In addition to the above aerobic conditioning, most health advocates recommend a general strengthening program three times a week to maintain muscle tone. A daily stretching program to reduce muscle tightness and pain is also helpful.

The fourth habit is to drink only a moderate amount of alcoholic beverages. That is on average only 1 to 2 drinks a day. Drinking wine is often better than mixed drinks or beer due to some of the compounds from grapes that have positive health benefits. All alcohol contains carbohydrate-type calories and this needs to be remembered as part of your overall food intake. Excessive intake of alcohol, binge drinking and then averaging out the intake over time does not count. Binge drinking is dangerous.

The last healthy habit is to try to maintain a healthy diet. A healthy diet includes higher intakes of vegetables, fruits, nuts, whole grains, fibers, and stick to fats that are polyunsaturated or long-chain fatty acids. The best meats are fish and poultry as well as white meat (low fat pork). Obtaining protein from vegetable sources like beans and legumes once a week is also highly recommended. Try to reduce the intake of red meat, sugar and fructose sweetened beverages, trans fats, and high sodium salty food. Part of eating healthy is also controlling portion size and avoiding excessive snacking.

Better living is a goal in life. To reach the destination, one must take steps to change if you are not where you want to be. Setting realistic goals and changing one aspect of your life at a time is the best. Furthermore, be accountable to yourself and one another, as that will help you reach your goal. If you need help, work with appropriate experts to reach your goals. Help may be from dieticians, physicians, physical therapists, trainers to even psychologists. Change is difficult, and better health is a life long goal.

Is Cryotherapy Worth The Trouble?

cryotFor the stars, major sports athletes and the exercise enthusiasts, one of the newer trends is cryotherapy. In short, it involves immersing oneself in extreme cold after an intense workout. The intense variety is a liquid nitrogen vapor chamber with the head outside and the body exposed to minus 292 degrees Fahrenheit for at the most three minutes. It is supposed to prevent inflammation and promote faster recovery from intense physical activity. The main focus of treatment is for athletes, but there have been claims that it helps a number of conditions like Multiple Sclerosis, Rheumatoid Arthritis, migraines, fibromyalgia, Alzheimer’s, chronic pain and anxiety.

Cooling, ice and cryotherapy work on the premise of decreasing inflammation throughout the body. Cryotherapy is an inexpensive treatment, probably costing about $15 per session, but that can add up quickly if you do it after every workout. During a workout, the body produces increased waste products of metabolism. In general, these do not necessarily cause pain and inflammation. In fact, after a workout, one may want to flush the waste products out of the body versus rapidly cooling down the body and decreasing the body’s elimination of any of these waste products. Furthermore there is absolutely no scientific evidence to prove that cryotherapy works or helps athletes or any of the above illnesses.

Simpler is Often Better

Local inflammation can be helped with icing in the initial phase during the first 24 to 48 hours. An ice pack is an inexpensive and simple way to decrease blood flow to an area and diminish inflammation. After the first 48 hours, heat is helpful to increase blood flow and get rid of any inflammatory products left over. Throughout that time, adequate hydration of the body is needed so the natural processes can eliminate waste products versus accumulating locally and causing pain.

Fads for health often are merely just hype. Many are costly, and most have little to no scientific basis to be helpful. Whole body cooling for instance, if not done extremely carefully, can easily stress the heart and cause frostbite burns. Further, it may cause vessel constriction and prevent the body from eliminating waste products produced with exercise. Most fads are often an exaggeration of practical strategies for a problem. Changing hydration with drinking a sport’s drink to getting intravenous hydration with vitamins after athletic events, or slowing down and breathing deeply after a race compared to wearing an oxygen mask and breathing pure oxygen gas are both examples of this. There really is no science behind any of these trends and mostly are targeted at high profile individuals who are then emulated by others.

As far as cryotherapy goes, it surfaced a couple of years ago and the science is still not present. In 2016, the Food and Drug Administration actually posted a statement saying there is no evidence of any of the claims of helping athletes or curing diseases. Maybe the best advice the old KISS principle, keep it simple stupid, and try the ice pack when needed.

Tips For Staying Pain Free and Fit While Traveling

thanksgiving travelingWhile on vacation it is easy to lose all motivation to stay in shape. Extreme temptation is present to eat too much, to indulge with lots of fatty or sweet foods, and not to exercise. It is not fun to take the time to exercise versus sleeping or to say no to foods that the heart desires. However, staying a bit more fit is often easier than one may think, and making it a priority will serve you well. If you have chronic pain problems, keeping up with an exercise program will make travel go much smoother.

Exercising on the Go

If one stays at a hotel, most places have some exercise equipment available. Business travelers often exercise early in the morning, and if there are only a few pieces of equipment present, you may have to adjust your timing during the day if using it is important to you. Oftentimes no one else will be using workout equipment during the middle of the day and before dinner. I have often worked out with no one else around hours before dinner. The other benefit of exercising before dinner is that exercise tends to reduce your appetite.

Starting the day with exercise often helps get the body moving and decreases overall pain throughout the body. Many routines do not require any significant amount of equipment and can be done anywhere. The first thing is to spend 5-10 minutes with a good stretching routine. If you have low back pain, work at sitting on the ground and touching the toes, stand and touch the toes, and then do hip stretching by leaning forward with the pelvis. Tight muscles hurt, and although initially a stretch might slightly increase pain, as the muscles loosen, the pain often goes away.  

Strengthening does not require any amount of special equipment. Core strengthening can be done without any or with simple things like rubber tubing or bands. Basic core exercises to do include planks, leg lifts while lying or sitting, stomach crunches and supermans. Planks should be held for only 30-45 seconds and repeated one or two times. They can be done with leg and arm lifts and performed on the side to make them more difficult while working more muscles.

Using a balance board or balance cushion can add even more of a challenge, and these portable boards and can be found for $20-50. Rubber tubing can also be used for strengthening, and anchoring it in a door allows a number of exercises for the arms, trunk, lower back and legs. Affordable rubber tubing for exercise with a variety of resistances, handgrips and door anchors with a carrying sack can be found on Amazon. Just doing balance exercises requires no equipment and works the core muscles too.

Finding Time To Exercise During Holidays Or Vacation

Maintaining general conditioning may be one of the easiest tasks while on vacation. Start walking and do some sightseeing. Walk to a restaurant or take a walk in the morning or evening. Explore the area where you are on foot and spend 30 minutes to an hour just walking every day. Google maps will even give you walking directions an estimated time of when you’ll arrive. If more ambitious, go for a run, go swimming or in many cities there are now inexpensive bike sharing services that allow one to explore the area and get some exercise.

Lastly, while on vacation, eat sensibly. Try to keep to a similar diet while traveling as you do while at home.  A high protein meal plan with fresh fruits, salads and vegetables will keep you from overeating. Keep the simple carbohydrates down like the bakery goods, pasta, potatoes and desserts. Avoid stuffing yourself at meals, eating late at night, and drinking lots of alcohol. It is okay to splurge somewhat, but if you do not overeat you definitely will feel better.