5 Ways To Treat Your Arthritis Today To Feel Better Tomorrow

November 11, 2022 / Thomas Cohn, MD

Arthritis is one of the most common medical issues, having been diagnosed in roughly 1 in every 4 adults. Because it’s so common, many people assume that arthritis-related symptoms are simply something that they have to get used to dealing with, but that simply isn’t true. And while you can’t turn back the clock and restore your joint health to how it felt decades ago, you can improve your symptoms and slow or stop the progression of joint degeneration.

Best of all, treatment is oftentimes pretty simple and only involves a few adjustments to your daily life. With that in mind, we highlight five things you can do to treat your arthritis today so that you’ll feel better tomorrow.

Daily Treatments For Arthritis

Arthritis is a degenerative condition that can be caused by natural factors like normal wear and tear and aging, or it can be exacerbated by injuries and illnesses. However, you can fight back against your arthritis by doing these five things regularly:

1. Exercise – Perhaps the best thing you can do to improve the health of your joints and help them become stronger for tomorrow is exercise. Exercise strengthens your joints and the soft tissues that help to keep them stable. Pressure on your joints has less of a degenerative impact on the joint when the supportive structures are stronger and better able to disperse this stress. Strive to get at least 30-45 minutes of exercise each day, or at least 3-4 times a week.

2. Eat Right – Your diet can also play a role in arthritis symptom prevalence. Foods that are high in sugar or fat tend to be pro-inflammatory, and this inflammation can cause problems for you joints. Avoid these pro-inflammatory foods and reach for more fruits and vegetables, and you may find that you are experiencing fewer arthritis symptoms.

3. Use Ice And Heat To Your Advantage – Ice and heat can help to improve your circulation or prevent swelling and inflammation, so use their powers wisely! Ice your arthritic joints after exercise or periods of extended activity to help keep swelling and inflammation at bay, or use a heating pad if your joints are feeling stiff or uncomfortable.

4. Physical Therapy – Physical therapy is very similar to exercise, but it can be even more beneficial at controlling symptoms because you can target specific areas. Your pain management specialist or a physical therapist can help set you up with some home-based therapy exercises to perform each day or when symptoms begin to help you get more control over your arthritis. Physical therapy can be both a treatment and prevention technique, so don’t underestimate the power of connecting with a physical therapist!

5. Mind Your Posture – Finally, it’s important to be mindful of your posture each and every day. When your body is out of alignment, you’re putting excessive stress on certain areas, including pivotal joints. Poor posture or body mechanics can cause problems for your facet joints in your spine, the joints in your wrists or put excess pressure on your knees. Improve your posture each day, and your joints will thank you for it!

If you do these things each day, and you connect with a pain management specialist like Dr. Cohn, we’re confident that you’ll notice an improvement in your arthritic symptoms! For more information, or for help with a different pain issue, give our office a call today at (952) 738-4580.

Is Ice Or Heat Best For Chronic Pain?

September 14, 2022September 14, 2022 / Thomas Cohn, MD

We use ice and heat every day to make life a little better. Whether we’re cooling down a glass of water or heating up leftovers in the microwave, we regularly use ice and heat to manipulate the temperature of certain things. We can also use ice and heat on our bodies to make it function a little better! But which is better for chronic pain, ice or heat? We explore the answer to that question in today’s blog.

Icing Or Heating Chronic Pain

We can’t sit here and say that it’s always better to ice an area or always better to heat it if you’re suffering from chronic pain. Every person’s pain is different, and what works for one person may not work for another. So to say you should always do one or the other is disingenuous.

Instead, let’s take a closer look at what each technique does, and it may help you figure out what move is best. Heat helps to open up blood vessels and improve your circulation. Healthy blood can more easily flow to muscles and structures in your body, so if your chronic pain is being caused by a frequent muscle cramps or joint stiffness, heating the area may be the right move.

On the other hand, ice helps to constrict blood vessels. This limits the flow of fluid to and from an area, which can be helpful if you’re dealing with an inflammatory response. Icing will help to calm swelling and inflammation that can make movement uncomfortable. If this inflammation is contributing to nerve compression and chronic pain symptoms, icing may be the perfect solution.

Again, find what works for you, but here are a couple of methods that tend to be helpful based on the cause of your discomfort:

Lower Back Pain – Heat tends to be better than icing, but again this is highly dependent on the root issue.

Arthritis – Arthritis tends to see some mild symptom relief with either heat or ice.

Joint Overstress – If your joints are painful from a long day of physical activity, ice may be the best way to calm inflammation.

And finally, remember that how you apply ice and heat is important. Heating pads can work great, but so too can a warm bath or a hot shower. When it comes to using ice, be careful not to apply ice directly to the skin, as this can lead to cold burns or other injuries. Don’t apply an ice pack directly to the skin, instead wrap it in a towel or cloth before putting it on the affected area. Cold baths or showers can be another way to help calm inflammation instead of an ice pack.

You also want to limit your time with each technique. Don’t heat or ice an area for more than 15-30 minutes at a time. Over-applying ice can do more damage than sitting in a warm bath for an hour, but instead of sitting with heat applied for an hour, do so for 15 minutes then get up and stretch to help muscles get used to movement and activity when they are getting ample blood flow. Be sure to pursue active treatments alongside these ice and heating techniques for maximum benefit.

To learn more about whether ice or heat is right for you, or to talk to a pain specialist about your chronic pain issue, reach out to Dr. Cohn and his team today at (952) 738-4580.

Do This, Not That For Chronic Joint Pain

May 5, 2022 / Thomas Cohn, MD

If you have chronic pain or aches in your knees, hips or wrists, you’ve probably heard a bunch of advice on what you should and shouldn’t do to help alleviate this discomfort. While much of this advice is well-intended, it may not all be in your best interest. So what should you be doing, and what should you be avoiding if you hope to overcome chronic joint pain? We share some things you should and shouldn’t be doing to treat your recurrent joint pain.

How To Overcome Chronic Joint Pain

If you’re dealing with chronic joint pain, here’s a look at some of the things you’ll want to do to help treat it, and some activities you may want to avoid.

Do Activity, Don’t Just Rest – Don’t get us wrong, rest can be great in the short term for common joint aches and pains, but after a couple of days your joints will typically be better served if you target them with controlled activity. This will help develop muscles in the area, improve stability, increase flexibility and push healthy blood to structures that need it. If you never work to strengthen an area, tissue can atrophy and become weak. Your joints work better when you’re moving, so don’t shy away from activity.

Do Consult With A Specialist, Don’t Just Rely On Google – Google is a wonderful tool, but looking for medical information online can lead you to pursue some treatments that aren’t right for your specific issue. Instead of simply leaning on your search results for answers, get an individualized diagnosis from a specialist who can view your issues in person. You’ll get set up with a personalized treatment plan that is designed for you.

Do Active Treatments, Avoid Long-Term Passive Treatments – Your joint discomfort is unlikely to resolve by simply pursuing easy passive treatments, like opioids, resting and massage therapy. Those treatments can certainly serve complimentary roles as part of a comprehensive treatment plan, but you need to pursue active treatments like exercise, physical therapy, stretching and strengthening if you want your joints to have the best chance at functional improvements.

Do Focus On Your Total Wellness, Not Just Your Physical Health – While joint pain is a physical problem, long-term physical issues can have an effect on your emotional and psychological health. Don’t ignore the other ways your health and your mind are being affected by physical pain. If you aren’t sure how your physical pain could be affecting your mood or your mental health, it’s another reason to connect with a specialist. Care for your mind and body as you try to overcome a chronic joint issue.

Do Reevaluate Your Lifestyle, Don’t Keep Doing The Same Things – If lifestyle choices contributed to your joint pain, don’t keep following those choices and assume the problem will resolve. If you have poor posture habits, you smoke, you don’t eat a great diet or you are overweight, consider how these factors could be leading to problems for your joints. Again, if the connection isn’t clear, speak with a pain specialist like Dr. Cohn. Oftentimes simple lifestyle adjustments can go a long way in helping you overcome chronic joint pain.

For help overcoming your joint issue, or for other chronic pain problems, reach out to Dr. Cohn and his team today.

The Duality Of Chronic Pain Treatment

February 3, 2022 / Thomas Cohn, MD

For a number of health conditions, the focus is mostly or solely on the physical condition. For example, if you break your arm or sprain your ankle, treatment will be focused on providing a healthy environment for these physical injuries to heal. The physical injury gets the brunt of our attention because it is typically the catalyst for our discomfort. If we address the underlying problem, everything can get back to normal sooner.

However, that’s not typically the case with chronic pain. Chronic pain can certainly have a physical trigger, but oftentimes there is also a significant mental burden as well that needs to be managed in order to successfully treat the chronic pain condition. Only focusing on the physical cause of pain or the brain’s interpretation of pain oftentimes leaves the problem only partially treated. That’s why it’s so important to have a dual approach when treating most chronic pain conditions. Below, we talk more about the physical and mental approaches to treating chronic pain.

The Physical Approach To Chronic Pain

The physical approach to treating chronic pain is typically easier for patient to comprehend. If a pinched nerve is causing pain or joint degeneration is making movement painful, we can come up with some specific treatments for these physical issues. Rest, medications, physical therapy, exercise, weight loss and stretching techniques can all serve to help alleviate physical issues causing chronic pain. These therapies can help to:

Calm inflammation
Strengthen supportive structures
Stabilize an area that regularly handles stress
Shift structures back in alignment
Improve blood circulation
Promote healthy muscular and tissue function

Treating the underlying physical cause of pain is very important, but sometimes it’s only part of the problem. Other times chronic pain is caused or exacerbated by your brain’s interpretation of pain signals. As you might imagine, changing how your brain interprets pain isn’t easy, but it can be done with the help of a pain management specialist like Dr. Cohn.

The Mental Approach To Treating Chronic Pain

Learning how to use your brain to overcome your chronic pain condition can be tough, but programs like cognitive behavioral therapy and similar techniques help patients better understand and interpret the signals they are receiving. Now, you’re not going to be able to learn how to turn off pain receptors in your brain, but you will learn how to better cope with a painful flareup or how to mentally approach your chronic pain condition so that you string together more good days than bad.

A pain management specialist or cognitive behavioral therapist can help you:

Better understand your pain triggers and your underlying condition
Coping techniques when a flareup develops (deep breathing, yoga, relaxation, etc.)
The importance of healthy lifestyle choices in controlling physical pain (exercise, diet, sleep)
Identifying sources of stress that could exacerbate pain sensations

At the end of the day, for chronic pain conditions it is very important that you connect with a specialist who can help you overcome both the physical and mental challenges brought on by chronic pain. Treating one without the other can cause symptoms to linger. Let Dr. Cohn and his team help treat the totality of your pain so that you can regain control over your chronic pain condition. For more information or for help with your condition, give his office a call today at (952) 738-4580.

Looking At The History Of Pain Awareness Month

September 2, 2020 / Thomas Cohn, MD

September is here, and that means it is officially pain awareness month here in the United States. We’ve written about pain awareness month on the blog in the past, but today we wanted to take a closer look at how this campaign came to be and why it is so important for chronic pain sufferers, their families and their physicians.

A Brief History Of Pain Awareness Month

Pain awareness month was officially established in 2001 led by efforts from the American Chronic Pain Association. The fact that chronic pain has only been officially recognized for less than 20 years speaks to how dearly a campaign like this was needed. Many chronic pain patients suffer in silence because of the stigma of chronic pain or because of how they believe they may be perceived by others. By developing the campaign, the ACPA hoped to normalize chronic pain and help prevent these feelings of loneliness that can often accompany a chronic pain diagnosis.

Two years after the declaration of pain awareness month, the ACPA held a conference during September to further their agenda. The conference featured speakers and workshops on topics like:

Pain in the workplace
Pain and the family
When kids hurt
Women in pain/Men in pain

Media was invited to attend and further spread the work that chronic pain is something that millions of people deal with on a daily basis.

A few years later, pain kits were put together and distributed at the conference and online to help those in pain better manage their conditions. Toolkits were also provided for nurse and pharmacists, two groups who work closely with individuals in chronic pain. More than 150,000 kits were distributed by the end of 2006. By 2007, the ACPA felt that pain awareness month had officially been established, so they turned their sites on state-level changes across the US.

We’ve written about pain awareness month on the blog a few times in the past because we want to do our part to help bring attention to the problem of pain. Research for chronic pain conditions is grossly underfunded, and awareness campaigns like this can help drive funds towards new treatments and a renewed ability to understand the complexity of pain. Hopefully these campaigns are successful and we can continue to bring awareness and crucial funding to treat a variety of chronic pain conditions.

So if you are battling chronic pain or a chronic pain condition, know that you are not alone and that there are resources out there for you. We know firsthand how difficult chronic pain can be to treat, but you can get control of it if you’re willing to work with a doctor who will take the time to really listen to your concerns and uncover your root causes of pain. Dr. Cohn and his team have done that for so many people already, and he can do the same for you. For more information or to set up an appointment with his team, give them a call today at (952) 738-4580.