Pain management: Changing your story
Hands up who has ever experienced physical pain in their body? I imagine anyone reading this blog right now, will be waving their hands in the air - myself included. ! I have struggled with chronic lower back pain on and off for a few years now due to a structural problem, so I wanted to share my thoughts on the subject but with a different and honest perspective.
But what is pain exactly ?
The concept of pain is quite unique. People feel pain when specific nerves called nociceptors detect a problem and sends information about the issue along the spinal cord to the brain. For example if you were to touch a hot iron by mistake, a message will be sent along the spinal cord, allowing a reflex to occur. The muscle will contract and you will feel pain, causing to move your hand away straight away, reducing the risk of damage. So pain in many ways is really important. But what happens next. Pain more often than not can linger around for a while, be it a migraine, period pain, injury or pain resulting from a chronic illness/problem and can cause distress, discomfort, fatigue and insomnia to name just a few.
Pain relief
Most of us, myself including would have reached for over the counter analgesics like paracetamol, anti-inflammatories such as Ibuprofen, or when things get super tough, GP prescribed medication such as Tramadol, neuropathic pain relief medication or co-codamol. For some of us - this might do the trick… for a while, but then the pain always seems to return. Plus you get the added joy of medication side effects such as night sweats, constipation and drowsiness! Fun! For many of us, it may feel like that’s a small price to pay for being ‘pain-free’, but more often than not, the root cause of pain still remains and our body is just learning to cope and adapt to it, without actually ever resolving it. Next thing you know you realise you haven’t been able to go a single day without taking a pic ’n’ mix selection of pain killers.
A different approach.
We are lucky to be blessed with the NHS who can help support our diagnosis of pain with specialist care and management of pain, with out-patient services such as physiotherapists, specialist pain and rehabilitation clinics and clinical psychologists, but we live in a time where our services are stretched to the max, so may find ourselves at the end of a long waiting list. With many other evidence based forms of therapy available, such as osteopathy, acupuncture, yoga, strength training, nutrition, herbal medicine and chiropractic care, there has never been a better time to look at other methods that could support our journey back to better health and less pain! Many of these modalities (with the exception of specialist health services such as Acupuncture, Osteopathy and Chiropractors) can be done at home, which also helps keep associated costs in check.
Acupuncture and pain relief - how does it work?
Acupuncture can help reduce pain by
Stimulating nerves located in muscles and other tissues, which leads to release of endorphins and other neurohumoral factors and changes the processing of pain in the brain and spinal cord (Pomeranz 1987; Zhao 2008).
It reduces inflammation by promoting release of vascular and immunomodulatory factors (Kim 2008, Kavoussi 2007;Zijlstra 2003).
In the case of muscular skeletal pain it can improve muscle stiffness and joint mobility - by increasing local microcirculation (Komori 2009), which aids dispersal of swelling and bruising.
When used, it has been found to reduce the use of medication in certain conditions (Thomas 2006), which results in a more cost-effective treatment over a longer period of time (Radcliffe 2006;Witt 2006). Source: The British Acupuncture Council.
From my own experience of managing a degenerative back condition, I have certainly experienced some welcome relief of my pain symptoms when using acupuncture. However, it would be irresponsible of me to say that acupuncture alone is always going to magically cure your symptoms. For instance, in case of muscular skeletal lower back pain, resulting from poor posture and a sedentary lifestyle, then acupuncture is only going to be able to do so much. It’s likely your hip flexors will also be very tight and contributing to the pain and will need releasing and if the physical contributor to the pain is not addressed (in this instance posture and lifestyle) then the pain will continue to return. This is what is referred to as co-management - the use of additional modalities/methods to support a collaborative approach to reducing pain. Sometimes pain is far more complex than this, which again supports the need for a multi-disciplinary approach to healing.
The co-management approach to resolving pain is very much supported by good health care practitioners, who are looking to improve the long term outcomes for their patients and is one I use regularly in my clinic for many conditions, not just pain. This may include lifestyle and activity changes, nutritional changes, use of certain supplements or the need for additional therapies depending on the main causative factor.
Over the years I have used this approach to manage my own muscular skeletal pain with a mixture of acupuncture, weight training, home yoga and occasional osteopathy. Acupuncture relieves the pain, reduces inflammation and rebalances my overall health and wellbeing. Weight training strengthens my muscles, joints and bones. Yoga encourages stretch in ligaments that get too tight, whilst osteopathy realigns my sacral-illac joint and pelvis which often gets twisted when I am over-compensating, which can trigger pain for me.
Weight and strength training at The Fitology Hub, Brockley, London.
My pain over the years has become less severe and frequency of acute episodes has reduced significantly. The need for strong and unpleasant pain killers has also dramatically reduced and even though I know that my degenerative back issue will never completely go away, I feel stronger in my physical and mental wellbeing knowing I also have an important role to play in changing how my pain story ends.
To learn more about my co-management approach to health contact me on hello@saminahaider.com
Or learn more about how successfully acupuncture is being used across the UK for a variety of conditions including pain, in an insightful documentary produced by The British Acupuncture Council. The video recently launched at a special parliamentary event and features the acupuncture charity work I am involved in, supporting the community of the Grenfell Tower tragedy.