Health tips for better life

No matter who you are, there is one constant. Everyone is afraid of real pain. What makes the fear strong is knowledge. If you have no choice. You get caught in an accident. The unexpected arrival of pain is something to deal with. Once the shock wears off, it is there and you cope as best you can. But if you are scheduled for major surgery, you know this caring doctor is going to cut you open, mess with your insides. You cannot help it. You are worried about how severe the pain is going to be after the operation. Although you read that pharmaceutical companies have produced better painkillers, that hospitals have become more caring places, that doctors and nurses are better trained, it is natural to be worried. So is fear justified?

There are a number of studies to guide us through this discussion. The first general thread tells us that people whose pain is controlled tend to recover more quickly and have fewer complications after surgery. To some extent, this is a psychological issue. If the pain is under control, you start moving around and rebuilding your body’s strength. You can focus on getting better. But if the pain is strong enough to make breathing difficult, then any kind of activity will be impossible. Muscle tone will be lost over time and healing will be delayed. So pain management is a balancing act. If you are only pain-free when full of drugs, you will not move around. If you are in too much pain, you will not move for fear of making the pain worse.

The most powerful response to pain is intravenous medication. The drugs drip through a catheter into your body alongside fluids. For short periods of time, the opiates and opioids can reduce even the most severe pain to a dull ache. Many hospitals allow patients some degree of control over when the drugs are administered. This empowers you and helps the mind cope with the pain. There are also techniques for reducing pain in particular parts of the body. These involve the use of an epidural or spinal anesthesia to deliver painkillers into the spinal chord, and nerve blocks to prevent pain messages from traveling through the nervous system to the brain.

The problems with all these approaches is that people come out of surgery and start taking pain medication from scratch. That is why the latest research suggests the better approach is to start taking the painkillers two days before surgery. This allows your body to build up a stable level of the active chemicals in your blood stream before the surgeon cuts you open. The research actually confirms that the use of a less powerful painkiller such as tramadol hcl is as effective as the more powerful drugs taken after the surgery. Think of it as being like preparing to play football. You strap on all that body armor before going out on to the field and letting strong people knock you around. Taking tramadol before surgery is like protecting yourself against the pain. There is also the advantage that people are less afraid. People who go into the operating theater believing they will come out feeling pain turn the experience into a self-fulfilling prophesy. Taking trusted painkillers before surgery means less stress and faster recovery.

This is one of the “mystery” diseases or disorders. Those that have it report exhaustion and a constant dull ache but, no matter how many tests are performed, your doctor says there’s nothing wrong with you. The tests come back “normal”. This is frustrating and annoying because the traditional view is then to class you as a psych case. Like that’s a constructive response. So let’s start with what we know. No-one knows what triggers it. People say it comes on after both physical injuries and emotional traumas. Some researchers speculate that people can be genetically predisposed to develop it. Others believe it is a viral disease. No matter what its cause, the result is greatly increased sensitivity to pain. It’s as if the brain is overreacting to pain signals.

Once it appears, it’s a chronic condition with long-lasting pain in the muscles, ligaments and tendons. It particularly affects the back of the head, the neck, shoulders and upper chest, and the major joints in the arms, hips and legs. Your body is also likely to develop tender spots where even the slightest of touches causes pain. You lose stamina, feeling exhausted after any form of activity, no matter how trivial. Sleep is disrupted and people wake not feeling properly rested, There seems to be a gender difference with women more likely than men to develop the disorder. Estimates of the number of people who have this set of symptoms varies but the best guess is that it affects about 2% of the adult population in the US.

Because this disorder is associated with depressive conditions, it’s quite common for doctors to prescribe antidepressants. Not only does this sometimes improve the mental attitude to the continuing pain, it can also help people to get more sleep. But the main medication strategies resolve around the use of painkillers and anti-seizure drugs. Depending on the level of pain you experience, the doctor will either start you off with a relatively low-powered NSAID or pick an opioid. With a reduction in the sensitivity to pain, sleep is improved and, as side effect, this relieves the general exhaustion and improves the mood. One or two of the anti-seizure drugs initially approved and used for epilepsy have now been granted FDA approval for use in the treatment of fibromyalgia.

The best hope, however, lies in a combination of physical therapy, counseling and skelaxin. This drug is most useful because it both relaxes the musculature and acts as a sedative. This both relieves the symptoms of ache in the major muscle groups and supports better sleep. But the use of a drug on its own is not enough. A physical therapist should teach basic sets of exercises to stretch the muscles and restore tone. More importantly, a cognitive behavioral therapist should teach you coping strategies. You must learn how to get the most out of your life within the new physical limits. Positive thinking is required to strengthen the belief in your ability to improve and to avoid situations in which there might be stress. Overall, the aim should be to exercise regularly, pace yourself through the day, get enough sleep and reduce the sources of stress in your life. This combination of skelaxin and counseling is now the preferred treatment regime.