Treatments to Help Manage Chronic Pain

Chronic pain cannot be understood as a simple transmission of messages along nerve fibers. Many factors are involved, including the emotions. How we experience pain can change from day to day, even minute to minute, and the changes are often linked to our emotional state. The emotional dimension of pain suggests that it is possible to manage pain, at lest to some extent, by managing the emotions. The following are the techniques for treating chronic pain.

• Biofeedback:

Sufferers from tension headaches and lower back pain can learn to relax the muscular tension that causes or amplifies the pain. Sensors that monitor muscle tension are placed on patients. These sensors are then attached to the machine tat produces frequent clicking sounds or light flashes when muscles are tensed. With practice, patients can lower the tension in their muscles by trying to lower the number of signals that the sensor emits.

• Psychotherapy:

Many pain clinics offer individual and group therapy for chronic pain sufferers. Simply talking about chronic pain can sometimes make it less isolating, as can listening to others who know firsthand the emotional toll that pain can exact.

• Hypnosis:

Not everyone can be hypnotized and not all of those who are hypnotized will gain relief from pain, but when it works, hypnosis helps to block the perception of pain by directing one’s attention away from it. Hypnosis is more effective in controlling pain caused by illness or injury than in easing emotional induced pain.

• Surgery:

Surgically serving the nerves that transmit pain, can be of help. But chronic pain is seldom easily vanquished and may reappear after the nerve surgery.

• TENS:

One device called the TENS machine utilizes the gate-control theory to help ease pain. The TENS device works by stimulating nerves with tiny jolts of electricity. Electrodes are placed on the skin and hooked up to batteries. Electrical stimulation for up to thirty minutes will overload a patient’s pain circuits and so close the gate to further pain. In some cases, relief from pain lasts for several months.