Hello ,
This month was Pain Awareness Month and I hope that the research on how we can deal with physical pain will be helpful to you or a loved one:
Many of my patients suffer from chronic pain, some more than others.
Their pain is not
necessarily related to digestion – even so there is plenty of pain that can be caused by wind or inflammation of the colon.
Pain medication itself can cause a lot of digestive issues. Opioid pain medications
are the worst and cause desperate constipation in most people who use them.
Too bad we can not self administer Nitrous oxide or laughing gas. It seems to work very effectively. It works on a different receptors and will help you relax and increase your body's pain threshold.
This means that it will not directly
numb you, but a sensation that you would normally perceive as painful may not trigger a pain response when on laughing gas. Plus there are no after effects!
But laughing aside. We all know someone who suffers from incredible physical pain. Many of them for years, either from
injuries or autoimmune diseases.
- 3.37 million Australians are living with chronic pain.
- 53.8% are women (1.81 million)
- 46.2% are men (1.56 million)
- 68.3% (2.30 million) are of working age.
- 2.95 million are estimated to be severely limited in their activities by 2050.
I, myself, am not very good with pain and whenever I used to get a bad back I would gravitate towards pain killer. Of course, I learned to take better care of my back and hardly ever get back pain anymore.
Still, I feel for people who have to endure pain on a daily basis. Sometimes when I meet a grumpy person I ask myself if they may be
in physical pain – which can give the best of us a short fuse.
As we get older – pain seems to be more prominent and sadly we see more people now with fibromyalgia than ever before.
So take good care of your body - treat it like
a temple and enjoy every pain-free moment you have.
Wishing you a happy and healthful month ahead.
