Why Chronic Pain Is A Family Affair

March 11, 2021 / Thomas Cohn, MD

Your family deserves you at your best, but sometimes chronic pain can make it difficult to be completely in the moment with your family. It’s important to realize the role your family plays in treating and overcoming your chronic pain condition, and they’ll benefit too from a mother or father who is living without chronic pain. In today’s blog, we take a closer look at the reciprocal relationship between your chronic pain condition and your family.

Why You Need Your Family If You Have Chronic Pain

One of the biggest problems that individuals with chronic pain face is the feeling of isolation caused by their condition. Chronic pain can be incredibly isolating for a number of reasons. You may feel like you’re the only person dealing with your specific condition, or that others can’t fully understand what you’re going through. A pain condition can also lead you to withdraw from your favorite activities or to grow apart form your social circle, which only serves to make isolation feel worse.

That’s why it’s so important to have a family that supports your quest for successful treatment. Find your number one supporter and lean on them when times get tough. Whether that’s a spouse, a boyfriend, a sister or a parent, you need to have someone who you can turn to when a flare up is making daily life difficult. Some of you already know who this person is, but others may not have someone they can easily lean on. Our advice is to sit down with a loved one, explain that you’ll have bad days and that you hope you can count on them for support, and that they’d be welcome to attend an appointment with you to help better understand your condition and what you’re going through.

Leaning on family for support throughout your chronic pain treatment is extremely important. Knowing you’re not alone can help relieve some of the burden of your pain condition, and having someone who understands what you’re going through helps to alleviate some of the guilt and mental anguish that can accompany your pain. You’d be amazed at the physical progress we can make treating chronic pain when we also address some of the mental stressors in our life.

Why Your Family Needs You

Conversely, your family will also reap the benefits of a spouse or a parent who is in control of their chronic pain condition. The most obvious reason behind this claim is that we function better when we’re not in constant or intense pain. We can think more clearly, react more appropriately and be in a better mood when we’re not dealing with a flareup, and your family will appropriate this. Even if you do a great job thinking clearly, reacting appropriately and controlling your mood when you’re in pain, you know how exhausting this can be. You’re simply not at your best when you’re dealing with chronic pain, and your family deserves to have you at your best.

Chronic pain can also provide you with a teaching moment for your family. While they may never truly understand your pain, your spouse and your children will certainly take note of how your handle and overcome chronic pain. Show them that you are a warrior and what true strength looks like. Overcoming your chronic pain doesn’t mean hiding your condition and living a life of silent pain, it means being open with those closest to you so you can give yourself the best chance of effectively treating the issue. Make them proud of what you’ve overcome by working to treat your chronic pain condition, and you’ll be a role model for your entire family.

Overcoming chronic pain isn’t easy, but it’s something both you and your family deserve. To connect with a physician who understands this and who wants to be part of your solution, reach out to Dr. Cohn’s office today.

Why The Pandemic Is Making Chronic Pain Worse For Most Patients

March 3, 2021 / Thomas Cohn, MD

There is little doubt that the pandemic has been hard on everyone. We’ve had to readjust to a new normal and find new ways to juggle our personal and professional lives. Everyone has been hit hard, but new research shows that it has been especially difficult for chronic pain patients. For many of them, their chronic pain condition has gotten worse during the pandemic.

Chronic Pain Worsening During The Pandemic

According to a new study, the majority of chronic pain patients have seen their chronic pain condition worsen throughout the course of the pandemic. For the study, researchers surveyed 502 chronic pain patients, with 88 percent of the group being females between 30 and 59 years old. More than 87 percent of patients had pain in more than one location, and the most common locations of pain were in the lower back, neck and abdomen. Participants were asked to complete online surveys about their condition and the pandemic to get an understanding of how their pain had changed since lockdowns began (This study took place in Spain, but the results likely mirror chronic pain here in the US).

According to the data, 70 percent of respondents said their chronic pain condition worsened in terms of severity, frequency of episodes or in how it interfered with their daily activities throughout the pandemic. Researchers also looked into why chronic pain frequency was on the rise during the pandemic. They surveyed respondents and came up with some of the most common stressors that could have a negative effect on a person’s chronic pain expression. Those factors include:

Job insecurity
Worries about the future
The number of people living in the same dwelling
Having someone close to them who died of COVID-19
Fear of becoming infected and its relation to their chronic pain condition

Additionally, the study found that some new pain triggers emerged from the pandemic. Prior to COVID-19, the most common new pain triggers were stress and weather changes. Now, patients cite an increase in triggers like sleep problems, negative thoughts, sadness, insufficient physical activity and fear of the contagion.

Finally, the study also shed light on how people are coping with chronic pain, and it’s not encouraging.

“The study has shown that since the state of emergency began, more than half of the patients have used rest to manage their pain, and a similar percentage have increased the consumption of medication. Both could have counterproductive effects,” explained Rubén Nieto, professor and researcher at the lab that conducted the study.

The pandemic has worsened chronic pain conditions for countless patients across the world, but it’s important that you don’t let the state of the world draw you into bad pain management habits. Now more than ever, it’s important that you get regular exercise, eat a healthy diet and pursue other active treatment methods instead of over-relying on passive techniques like rest and medication. This can be accomplished more easily with a pain physician by your side, so please don’t hesitate if you need assistance along the way. For more information or for help with your chronic pain condition, reach out to Dr. Cohn’s office today.

Four Things Chronic Pain Patients Wish They Knew Earlier

February 25, 2021 / Thomas Cohn, MD

Many people describe their chronic pain management as a journey to find relief, and like any journey, there are things we wish we would have known earlier in the process. In today’s blog, we highlight four things that we’ve heard from some of our patients and others in the pain community that they wish they would have known earlier during their pain journey.

What Patients Wish They Would Have Known Earlier

Here’s a look at four sentiments that many patients say they wish they would have know earlier in the chronic pain management process:

1. It’s Not Just Physical – Chronic pain manifests itself in the physical form, but the underlying cause or contributing factors are not all physical. Chronic pain has strong emotional and psychological roots, so you need to make sure that you’re caring for more than just your physical health. If you’re under a lot of stress or you’re suffering from another mental health issue, it could be playing a role in the onset of your physical pain. If you only focus on the physical contributors to chronic pain, you may be ignoring promising treatment options.

2. You’re Not Alone – Chronic pain can leave you feeling isolated from the outside world, but it’s important to remember that you’re not alone. There are a number of ways to connect with others about your condition to help treat it and fight back against feelings of isolation. You can:

Connect with a pain management specialist for professional help.
Reach out to friends and family members for help or to talk, or to just take your mind of your condition.
Connect with others who are going through a similar situation in an online support group.

Know that you’re not alone in this process and that you should be relying on other people for support.

3. Your Mindset Matters – It’s also important to know that how you approach your chronic pain treatment can have an impact on its success. When you improve your mindset, you improve your outcomes. It’s obviously easier said than done, but try to focus on everything you’re doing to help you conquer your chronic pain, instead of looking at all the ways your chronic pain is affecting your life. You can start to take back control over your condition by approaching treatment with a positive and determined mindset. Talk to your pain specialist if you want extra help improving your mindset when it comes to your pain condition.

4. It’s About The Small Wins, Not Absolutes – We can never say with absolute certainty that we’ll be able to completely cure all aspects of your chronic pain condition, and while that is our goal, that’s not how you should always view your end goal. If you’re only ever focused on the existence of pain and not the fact that it’s getting better or you’re having fewer flareups, you’re only going to be discouraged in the face of progress. This discouragement can negatively impact your treatment and your long-term success. Instead, focus on small wins and celebrate them, and you’ll find it easier to keep on working hard to treat your chronic pain condition.

For more information, or for help with any of the above tips, reach out to Dr. Cohn’s office today.

The Updated Guidelines For Treating Children With Chronic Pain

February 18, 2021 / Thomas Cohn, MD

We often visualize chronic pain as a condition that only affects older individuals who have suffered a traumatic injury or whose bodies have been exposed to decades of stress and degeneration. While those groups do make up the majority of the people we treat for chronic pain, they are far from the only groups we help.

Another group that accounts for millions of cases of chronic pain throughout the United States is children. These cases can be much more complex, because oftentimes it’s not normal wear and tear that has caused their chronic condition. It can be caused by a number of other factors, like significant injury, genetic and growth plate defects, or a combination of psycho-social issues.

To continue to help provide the best care to children with chronic pain, the World Health Organization recently updated their 10 best practices for treating children with chronic pain. We take a look at the new recommendations and offer our insights in today’s blog.

10 Best Practices For Treating Chronic Pain In Children

According to the World Health Organization, here are the 10 best ways that chronic pain physicians can manage and treat the condition in children:

Children with chronic pain and their families and caregivers must be cared for from a biopsychosocial perspective; pain should not be treated simply as a biomedical problem.
The biopsychosocial model of pain recognizes pain as a complex multidimensional experience that is the result of interaction among biological, psychological and social factors. Pain management thus requires a multimodal, interdisciplinary and integrated approach.
A comprehensive biopsychosocial assessment is essential to inform pain management and planning. As a component of this assessment, healthcare providers should use age-, context- and culturally appropriate tools to screen for, and monitor, pain intensity and its impact on the quality of life of the child and family.
Children with chronic pain must have a thorough evaluation of any underlying conditions and access to appropriate treatment for those conditions, in addition to appropriate interventions for the management of pain.
Children presenting with chronic pain should be assessed by healthcare providers who are skilled and experienced in the evaluation, diagnosis and management of chronic pain.
Management, whether with physical therapies, psychological or pharmacological interventions, or combinations thereof, should be tailored to the child’s health; underlying condition; developmental age; physical, language and cognitive abilities; and social and emotional needs.
Care of children with chronic pain should be child- and family-centered. That is, the child’s care should focus on family values, cultural preferences and resources available.8. Families and caregivers must receive timely and accurate information. Shared decision-making and clear communication are essential to good clinical care. Communication with patients should correspond to their cognitive, development, and language abilities.
The child and their family and caregivers should be treated in a comprehensive and integrated manner: all aspects of the child’s development and well-being must be attended to, including their cognitive, emotional and physical health. Moreover, the child’s educational, cultural and social needs and goals must be addressed as part of the care management plan.
In children with chronic pain, an interdisciplinary, multi-modal approach should be adopted which is tailored to the needs and desires of the child, family and caregivers, and to available resources. The biopsychosocial model of pain supports the use of multiple modalities to address the management of chronic pain.

To sum up these recommendations, a pain management specialist who is familiar with chronic pain in children needs to be able to assess the physical and social constructs that go into the expression of a pain condition. From there, the specialist needs to be able to effectively communicate with both the child and their families and provide solutions and ideas tailored to each, taking into account their age, education level, values, cultural needs and access to certain types of care. Pain management needs to be an ever-changing collaboration between the patient, the physician, their family and their care team.

Needless to say, treating chronic pain conditions in children is a tall task, and one that you need to trust to just the right physician. You need a physician who is going to put in the time and the effort needed to help treat the underlying cause, not just alleviate the symptoms. It’s hard work, but it’s arguably the most rewarding work in our field when you can help put an end to a child’s pain. Dr. Cohn has extensive experience doing this for children with a range of chronic pain conditions, and he’d like to help your child find a solution to their pain.

For more information, or for assistance in treating your child’s pain condition, reach out to Dr. Cohn’s office today.

Combat Chronic Pain By Improving Your “Zest” For Life

February 10, 2021 / Thomas Cohn, MD

zest A new study focusing on the psychology of chronic pain recently revealed that intentionally training certain character strengths could possibly help patients reduce or overcome their chronic pain condition.

The desire to learn more about this possible connection was driven by the idea that chronic pain can suck the joy and satisfaction out of many of life’s pursuits. Researchers posited that if chronic pain can influence our quality of life and some of our daily character traits, the reverse may also be true, in that focusing on developing character traits that define us could in fact help a person gain more control over their chronic pain.

While that may sound a bit far fetched, when you break it down with some examples, the theory seems to hold some water. For example, someone who heavily relies on humor or a very honest person may be better able to deal with the totality of their chronic pain condition than someone without those personality traits because of the psychology that drives these character traits.

Which Character Traits Help With Chronic Pain Control?

To get a better understanding of which character traits may have more influence on a person’s ability to control their chronic pain condition, researchers asked 491 chronic pain patients to complete a survey about their pain severity, how it impacts their physical function and their self-efficacy (their ability to engage in normal daily activities despite pain). Additionally, patients were asked to complete a self-assessment of their character strengths, which included 24 different character strengths as defined by a previous study. Those 24 different character strengths were:

Creativity
Curiosity
Judgment
Love of learning
Perspective
Bravery
Perseverance
Honest
Zest
Love
Kindness
Social Intelligence
Teamwork
Fairness
Leadership
Forgiveness
Humility
Prudence
Self-regulation
Appreciation
Gratitude
Hope
Humor
Spirituality

Interestingly, some character traits were associated with greater pain self-efficacy in the face of higher pain severity and functional loss than others. The three best traits for chronic pain self-efficacy were:

Zest
Perseverance
Hope

While the three lowest were:

Appreciation
Creativity
Leadership

So, on that note, researchers pondered if working to improve one’s “zest” could in turn help them better manage their chronic pain condition. Zest, as the researchers write, “is characterized by a sense of vitality and ‘aliveness’ in their own individual lives, as well as having the ability to invigorate and energize the people around them.”

During a two-week intervention, 81 participants were asked to either work on cultivating their zest for life or another neutral condition and given instructions on how they could improve these characteristics. Both groups had similar pain levels at the beginning of the two weeks, and both groups reported less pain and functional improvement by the end of the study. However, only the patients in the zest group reported an increase in pain self-efficacy.

While the research is small and limited, it certainly is interesting. If you’re working to combat a chronic pain condition, follow the traditional methods but also work on improving your zest for life. It’s easier said than done, but by trying to become more enthusiastic for life and using your energy to the fullest degree, you may notice an improvement in your self-efficacy as it relates to your pain condition!

For more information, or for help with your chronic pain condition, reach out to Dr. Cohn’s office today.