Recent studies have shown that around 24% of adults in the US have chronic pain, and 8.5% of those have high-impact chronic pain, with women more likely to be impacted than men.
Living with chronic pain can impact your life in many ways. It can reduce or remove your ability to go to work, it can affect your social life, your family life, and even simple day-to-day activities that most people take for granted. Chronic pain can cause a reduction in mental clarity and increased fatigue as they try to battle through life, managing the pain and keeping things under control.
And for many people, chronic pain cannot be managed entirely via prescription or over-the-counter medication. Whilst in many cases medications can’t help reduce the impact of pain and lessen the pain to some extent, for many people, medication doesn’t even scratch the surface or even work at all. Especially conditions such as fibromyalgia.
With this in mind, people who live with chronic pain need to look at other options and changes to their lifestyle to help them improve their quality of life and even manage their pain levels and symptoms better. This post is going to look at some different ways people with chronic pain can help manage their conditions.
A Floatation Tank
A flotation or sensory deprivation tank is a small swimming pool-like structure with a lid that closes like a clamshell. The water inside the sensory deprivation tank is heated to body temperature, and it’s filled with salts that keep the body buoyant and prevent you from sinking. This tank aims to remove all light and sound from the space. You get in, close the lid, and leave the salt and water to do their thing.
THC and CBD
While more research is needed to fully understand the effectiveness of THC and CBD for managing pain, there is promising evidence that these products can be beneficial. This knowledge can give you hope and optimism about the potential of these alternative treatments.
They both work by interacting with the body’s endocannabinoid system, which regulates pain and inflammation. CBD may reduce inflammation and help with pain by influencing receptors and potentially impacting pain perception, while it primarily interacts with CB1 receptors in the brain and spinal cord. For those who want to try THC or CBD to help manage their pain, you can look into the top gummies for pain support to help you find the right dosage and application method.
Exercise
Now, you might be rolling your eyes; however, exercise can be massively beneficial for pain levels. The trick to making exercise beneficial to your lifestyle is to find some exercise that you can stick to and that doesn’t increase pain levels or cause further pain to your body.
You need to make sure that you are not pushing yourself too far and staying within your capabilities. This could be going for a simple walk, doing chair-based exercises or stretches, or mobility work lying in bed. You might find that once or twice a week, you have the energy to go strength training in a gym. But it’s essential to find the right type of exercise frequency and intensity levels that benefit your body the way you need it to and don’t make things worse.