Balance is a key component in almost every aspect of our life. There are benefits to having a healthy work-life balance, and many of us grapple with the daily decision of whether money should be earmarked for needs or wants. But finding a healthy balance also plays a key role in helping patients fight back against their chronic pain condition. Below, we take a closer look at how finding a healthy balance in certain lifestyle factors can help you better manage your chronic pain condition.

Finding Your Daily Balance To Treat Chronic Pain

Now, we’re not here to say that all chronic pain conditions can easily be cured by making certain choices each day, but there is a lot of evidence that suggests improving your balance in these aspects can help to make chronic pain more manageable. So if you are struggling with a chronic condition, reflect on some of these factors and work to identify some imbalances that could be contributing to your chronic pain or inhibiting effective treatment of your condition.

Activity/Inactivity Balance – Developing a healthy relationship with activity and exercise is very important for helping to control your pain condition. Exercise triggers the release of endorphins in your brain that act as a natural pain reliever, and it can also help you work towards a healthy weight. Being inactive, gaining weight and losing muscle mass can lead to additional stress in areas of your body that are no longer best able to handle this stress, which can lead to inflammation and pain flare ups. We don’t expect you to become an ultra marathon runner because we know how pain can make it more difficult to exercise, but strive to get regular exercise 4-5 times a week. Whether that is in the form of a run, a walk or a routine in the weight room, it can help your body better manage your pain condition.

Food Choices – It’s also important that you find a healthy relationship with your daily food choices. Again, not every decision needs to be perfect, but each day you should strive to make more positive food choices than unhealthy choices. Aside from weight gain and the added stress that can put on your body, high fat and carbohydrate-dense foods can trigger inflammatory responses inside your body, again worsening chronic pain. Food choices are one of the more controllable aspects of your daily life, so strive for more positive food choices and you may notice less chronic pain.

Stress Balance – One of the reasons why we spoke about food choices being a more controllable factor is because this next factor can oftentimes feel uncontrollable. You can’t control whether your company has pending layoffs or your car got a flat tire, but you can try to identify certain stress triggers and either work to avoid them or teach yourself new coping mechanisms to prevent them from causing such large stress spikes. Some stress can bring out the best in us, but too much stress can heighten problems like chronic pain. Work with your pain specialist to identify sources of stress and develop healthy coping mechanisms.

Mindset: Yourself Vs. Others – There is a large psychological component to chronic pain that cannot be ignored, so it’s important to find a healthy balance in how you think about yourself and others. Being completely selfless will be exhausting and can make a pain condition worse, but being selfish and choosing a short term quick fix over a harder long-term solution will also lead to problems. You have to find a way to make time for yourself while also realizing that you can’t always act in your immediate best interests. Being able to step back, evaluate the totality of a situation and making the right choice will provide you peace of mind that can go a long way in helping control chronic pain symptoms.

If you can find a healthy balance with these factors, we’re confident that you’ll have a better chance of treating and controlling your chronic pain condition. For more information, or for help with your pain issue, reach out to Dr. Cohn’s office today.