Five Additional Issues Caused By Unmanaged Chronic Pain

/ Thomas Cohn, MD

head painChronic pain isn’t an easy condition to control, and sometimes that can lead patients to become frusterated with how treatment is progressing. It can even lead them to give up on treating their condition entirely if they resolve to just grit their teeth and bear it during the bad days.

This isn’t ideal, because unaddressed chronic pain can cause a number of different issues for your health outside of pain. In today’s blog, we take a closer look at five additional health issues that can be caused by unmanaged chronic pain.

Health Issues Related To Chronic Pain

Here’s a look at a number of new health issues you may find yourself dealing with if you don’t work to actively manage your chronic pain condition.

1. High Blood Pressure – Unmanaged chronic pain places a heavy burden on your body, including your heart and your cardiovascular system. During a pain flare up, your body releases substances that increase your blood pressure and heart rate. Prolonged elevated blood pressure can put you at a higher risk for stroke or a heart attack.

2. Decreased Sleep Quality – Chronic pain can make it harder for a person to fall asleep and stay asleep, which can lead to shorter periods of extended restful sleep. This prolonged sleep is necessary for your whole body health, wheras poor sleep quality can leave your feeling tired and groggy throughout the day.

3. Depression and Anxiety – Chronic pain can also take a signfiicant toll on your mental health. Pain is a heavy burden to bear, and it can also affect the same pathways in the brain that regulate your mood. This can increase your risk of anxiety, depression, mood swings and similar mental health conditions.

4. Weight Gain – When you’re in pain, oftentimes all you want to do is curl up in bed and wait for the discomfort to dissapate. While that can be helpful once in a while, regularly avoiding activity and becoming more sedentary can lead to weight gain, which stresses other areas of the body like your joints. Not getting exercise because you’re in pain can lead you to become more inactive, leading to an increased risk of weight gain and making it harder for you to break out of the cycle you’re now caught in.

5. Decreased Quality of Life – While not exactly a health condition, untreated chronic pain can also negatively affect your total quality of life. You may find yourself shying away from activities you once loved or avoiding social situations out of fear of a flare up. That’s no way to go through life, but it’s a reality for many people who deal with pain on a daily basis.

Chronic pain is enough of a hassle without all the other issues that can develop as a result of untreated chronic pain, so it’s imperative that you really work to find a solution to your pain issue. That’s what Dr. Cohn and his team are here for. We won’t stop until we find a solution that works for you and has you back on the path to a fuller and more enjoyable life. For more information, or to take the first step in overcoming your pain condition, reach out to Dr. Cohn’s office today at (952) 738-4580.

New Research Dividing Physicians Over NSAIDs For Chronic Pain

/ Thomas Cohn, MD

NSAIDsWhen you suffer an injury, it causes an inflammatory reaction inside the body, and if the problem isn’t treated correctly, this inflammation can linger. The prevailing understanding when it comes to chronic pain is that it is caused by chronic inflammation, which is why many specialists try to prevent the problem by working to control inflammation. Anti-inflammatory medication like Ibuprofen has been a common recommendation for decades as a way to effectively manage inflammation and work to reduce the risk of it becoming chronic.

However, new research seems to suggest that attempting to drown out this inflammation with anti-inflammatory medications before it gets out of control may not be providing the benefits we assume it does. In fact, they believe short-term use of these Non Steroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drugs (NSAIDs) may actually increase your risk of chronic pain in the long term, and that claim is dividing the medical world.

Ibuprofen And Chronic Pain

The new research suggests that the initial inflammation that develops after an injury may be necessary for the body to make a full recovery. If this suggestion is true, it could shatter the decades-old standard of treating pain with aspirin, ibuprofen or IV steroids at the hospital. By drowning out this necessary initial inflammation, researchers suggest NSAIDs may actually be putting patients at a greater risk for developing chronic pain.

“For many decades it’s been standard medical practice to treat pain with anti-inflammatory drugs. But we found that this short-term fix could lead to longer-term problems,” says Jeffrey Mogil, a Professor in the Department of Psychology at McGill University and E. P. Taylor Chair in Pain Studies. “Neutrophils dominate the early stages of inflammation and set the stage for repair of tissue damage. Inflammation occurs for a reason, and it looks like it’s dangerous to interfere with it.”

Now, it’s worth noting that not everyone agrees with the research, at least not without additional evidence. The paper was rejected from the New England Journal of Medicine after one reviewer wrote that he would not “overturn decades of medical practice,” until additional convincing evidence was presented.

Even if the findings are true, as we’ve said countless times on our blog in the past, it may only hold true for a subset of patients because chronic pain is so unique to the individual, and what works for one patient may not work for others. For example, the shock and inflammatory response of an ankle sprain and a surgery vary greatly, and assuming this research applies unilaterally to both of these groups could lead people down the wrong treatment path.

So while the jury is still out on whether or not NSAIDs may be having some unintended consequences for our ability to help pain resolve, the good news is more research is being poured into how to best handle chronic pain, and that’s a great thing. The more we learn, the better we can help each patient.

If you need help with a chronic pain issue, reach out to Dr. Cohn’s office today at (952) 738-4580.

Do This, Not That For Chronic Joint Pain

/ Thomas Cohn, MD

chronic joint painIf 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.

Why Does Acute Pain Become Chronic?

/ Thomas Cohn, MD

low back pain lifestyleAcute pain is oftentimes the result of direct trauma to an area, but in most cases the injury can eventually resolve with the help of active treatment. However, for a small percentage of people, their acute pain turns into a chronic condition, and this can make it much harder for pain to eventually subside. But why does acute pain turn into a chronic condition, and what can you do to prevent this from happening? We answer those questions and more in today’s blog.

Acute Pain Turns Chronic

If you’re not careful, an acute injury can turn into chronic pain. Here’s a look at some of the more common reasons why acute pain eventually becomes a chronic condition.

Left Untreated – The most common reason that an acute injury turns into chronic pain is because you don’t actively treat the underlying issue. A lot of people just try to grit their teeth and push through any discomfort caused by an acute injury, but that can lead to additional stress on an area and prolonged pain. For example, if you sprain your ankle, you’ll make the best recovery with a little bit of rest, physical therapy and a slow reintroduction to physical activities. If you try to keep playing sports or working manual labor on an injured ankles, those damaged ankle ligaments may never truly heal, leading to chronic instability or similar long-term issues. Don’t leave a problem, no matter how small, untreated.

Treating The Wrong Underlying Condition – An acute injury can also lead to a chronic condition if you end up treating the wrong underlying issue. If you think you’re dealing with one injury with a specific treatment regimen, but you are actually dealing with something else that is best treated by a different set of remedies, the underlying issue may never be corrected, leading to long-term discomfort and chronic pain. This speaks to the importance of syncing up with a specialist to ensure you receive an accurate diagnosis.

Nerve Damage – If certain nerves are damaged, that can throw off off how sensory signals are sent and interpreted in the brain. You may no longer be in true physical pain, but a damaged nervous pathway could be relaying signals that the brain interprets as pain, leading to chronic discomfort. Chronic pain can be just as much psychological as it is physical.

Psychological Factors Associated With A Physical Injury – As we noted above, psychological factors can play a role in your expression and interpretation of pain signals, and sometimes our emotions can be thrown into flux following an acute injury. For example, if you were involved in a severe car accident, you may be dealing with more emotions like fear, anxiety or stress, and research has shown that these feelings can negatively affect your pain perception.

Acute pain can turn chronic for both physical and psychological reasons, so it’s imperative that you sync up with a pain specialist, get to the bottom of your issue and begin a targeted treatment problem to rid you from your acute or chronic pain. For more information, or for help with a chronic pain issue, reach out to Dr. Cohn’s office today.

Don’t Listen To These Three Myths About Chronic Pain

/ Thomas Cohn, MD

mythsChronic pain is difficult enough to overcome without falling prey to some misconceptions or myths about your condition or how to best treat it. So if you ever hear someone say one of the following three sentences to you in regards to your chronic pain condition, know that they are mistaken and that believing them will only make it harder to overcome your pain issue. Below, we share three myths about chronic pain that you shouldn’t believe.

Don’t Believe These Three Chronic Pain Misconceptions

Even if others have the best intentions, they can end up giving bad advice if they are misinformed. If a friend or family matter ever says any of the following sentences to you in regards to your chronic pain, just ignore it, because believing it will only make it harder for you to find a helpful treatment to your chronic pain.

1. “It’s All In Your Head” – Some people simply can’t comprehend the fact that you are dealing with a physical condition that is causing real pain, so they just tell themselves that it must all be in your head. And while it’s true that pain is perceived and interpreted in the brain, that doesn’t mean that you’re just making it up. Don’t let others suggest that your pain isn’t real, because they don’t know what you’re experiencing every day. Knowing that your pain is real and acknowledging it is the first step in finding a a treatment that works for you.

2. “There’s No Cure” – Another one we hear from patients every so often is that they’ve previously been told by a provider or a family member that there is no cure for their chronic pain and that they better just accept that fact. We’ve never found a chronic pain case that we haven’t been able to at least help mitigate symptoms and make life more enjoyable, even if we can’t completely cure the condition. Know that solutions are available, and we can always work to find a way to reduce symptoms, even if the first treatment fails. Don’t accept that there is no option for your pain, because we won’t stop until we find something that works for you.

3. “Exercise Makes Chronic Pain Worse” – Chronic pain may make movement a bit uncomfortable, but that doesn’t mean that exercise is bad for your condition. In fact, the opposite is oftentimes true. Movement helps improve your health in a number of ways, many of which can help to alleviate some issues associated with chronic pain. Activity strengthens structures so that muscle groups can better handle physical stress, it gets our hearts pumping oxygenated blood to vital components in our bodies, and it triggers the release of endorphins in our brain that can act as natural pain relievers. Regular exercise is oftentimes an integral part of a comprehensive chronic pain plan. Don’t assume that just because exercise isn’t always easy with a chronic pain condition that you should shy away from it.

To connect with a specialist who can help prove to you that these sentences are myths, and who won’t stop he finds a solution that’s right for you, reach out to Dr. Cohn and his team today.