Different Ways to Manage Your Chronic Pain

Chronic pain can be debilitating. From limiting your day-to-day activities to causing mental strain, chronic pain should be dealt with. If you need help managing your chronic pain, learn how medical pain management could be the tool that works best for you, regardless of the root cause.

Understanding Chronic Pain

Before we define chronic pain, we need to define acute pain. Acute pain is pain that happens due to an underlying condition, like a muscle tear or other injury. This kind of pain is typically short-lived, which is an indicator that the pain isn’t chronic. 

Chronic pain has two characteristics that make it different from acute pain, according to the Institute for Chronic Pain. First, they mention, chronic pain lasts more than six months. Second, chronic pain happens in addition to the pain of the original health condition. Chronic pain is seen as something separate altogether from the original injury or illness that started pain. 

Causes of Chronic Pain

Any injury to your skin, nerves, or spine can lead to chronic pain that affects your quality of life day after day. Pain can become a chronic condition if you suffer from progressive conditions like arthritis or fibromyalgia. 

WebMD also explains that chronic pain can be caused by many different factors, like: aging, years of poor posture, lifting heavily improperly, being overweight, suffering a traumatic injury, wearing heels, sleeping on a bad mattress, and more. It can even be caused by no obvious physical cause, which is part of what makes this condition tricky to understand. 

Chronic Pain Treatment Options with Texas Spine and Sports Therapy

Epidural Steroid Injections

This treatment is used for patients that suffer from neck, back, arm, or leg pain that has been caused by irritated or injured spinal nerves. When we inject a corticosteroid into the epidural space of your spine, you’ll find that nerve inflammation is greatly reduced at the source. We have noticed that this treatment option is highly effective for patients suffering from conditions like: 

• spinal stenosis
• spondylolysis
• disc herniation
• degenerative disc
• sciatica.

Stem Cell Therapy

This procedure is ideal for our arthritis patients or our patients that suffer from joint injury or damage. This is because it will work to stimulate the body’s natural process for healing. Our body naturally produces stem cells, which helps heal and regenerate tissue after an injury occurs. When we get older, we don’t produce as many stem cells as we did when we were younger, which is why the older we get the longer healing takes. This procedure involves injecting stem cells directly into the problem area, helping the body to rebuild its damaged joint. Each injection also contains hyaluronic acid (a naturally occurring substance in our body). This lubricates joints, relieves pain, and recovers lost mobility.

Platelet Rich Plasma Therapy

PRP Therapy can help patients with long term healing and pain relief. This non-surgical method is best for those that keep an active lifestyle and don’t want to experience any downtime due to surgery. The best part of PRP Therapy is that it uses the platelets from your own blood to repair the injury you’re currently facing. This can lead to fully healed and regenerated tissue because it enhances your body’s natural stem cell production. Other benefits of this treatment include: 

• reduced inflammation
• decreased postoperative blood loss
• increased resistance to infection
• reduced or eliminated dependence on pain-killing narcotics

Facet Joint Injections

Facet joints are located in the spine and their job is to provide stability and movement in our back. However, these joints can be the cause of pain after you suffer a back injury or become diagnosed with a condition like arthritis. Steroid medication and local anesthetic is goes into the facet joint to relieve pain and allow recovery of movement. Due to this, you can continue to heal with the help of physical rehabilitation.

Percutaneous Discectomy

This procedure often helps those who suffer from disc herniation and haven’t been able to find relief with previous treatment. The treatment removes or reduces the material around the herniated disc. As a result, pain and pressure are reduced. As a quick outpatient procedure, your appointment will only take about 30 minutes. It is a minimally invasive alternative to surgery, with little-to-no down time and a much quicker recovery. Patients who have osteoporosis or other degenerative conditions may also benefit from this treatment, because of its potential for reducing pain symptoms.

Kyphoplasty

This is a surgical procedure that treats the pain caused by spinal compression fractures. This works by stabilizing the affected vertebra and restoring most or all of its body height. This treatment is generally for patients suffering from osteoporosis. However, each patient is different and may require different care.

Radiofrequency Thermal Ablation

With this treatment, radio waves are able to heat the painful area of nerve tissue. This can help reduce pain and discomfort in those that suffer from arthritis, neck, joint, or back pain. 

Spinal Cord Stimulator Trials & Implants

This cutting edge treatment is an alternative for failed conventional therapy. It works by using electrical impulses to block pain signals that you may feel coming from the arms, legs, and back. Instead, the incoming signals are interpreted by your brain as a pleasant tingling sensation, which helps reduce your chronic pain and can restore some quality of life. We most commonly suggest this treatment option for patients that suffer from: epidural fibrosis, failed neck/back surgery, peripheral neuropathy, complex regional pain syndrome, post-laminectomy syndrome, and diabetic peripheral neuropathy.

Get Help with Texas Spine and Sports Therapy

We also provide a number of other treatments, which will be recommended based on your individual patient profile. Circumstance and environment can affect how any particular condition affects a patient, which is why we customize our treatments according to your best interests. If you’re suffering from chronic pain, call us now at: 512-806-0015.