Chronic pain can be difficult. That’s why your Manhattan chiropractor is here. There are about 5 steps that come with this, which we will be discussing today: understanding pain, recognizing unhealthy attitudes or thoughts, targeting the treatment area, and passive/ active care. Let’s review these steps to give you a better understanding and education.
Your Manhattan Chiropractor Helps Chronic Pain Victims
About 70-100 million people suffer from chronic pain per year in the US. The good news is that with the technology we have today, we are able to understand chronic pain more than we ever were before. This is how it works: When you experience pain at a localized area, your nerves are sending a pain message from that area, to the spinal cord, and theen to the brain for processing. The brain then determines whether or not the pain is a threat and sends an inhibiter or exciter signal back down that path. This gives either habituation or sensitization. Let’s give an example of what these mean. Habituation is similar to living by the ocean. For the first week, you hear the ocean all the time, but you get used to it, and your brain eventually blocks it out, because you’re used to it. Sensitization is similar to walking through a spider’s web and freaking out for the next 5 minutes thinking you have a spider on your body somewhere.
Our Manhattan chiropractor looks at your overall well being, not just your physical wellbeing. Understanding a patient’s attitudess and outlooks of their pain is just as important to usso that we can provide the right treatment for you.
Once we understand your chronic pain condition, we are then able to tak a look at how and where to apply the treatment. There are three main target areas. Let’s go through these:
- Nociceptive: The localized area where most of the pain occurs, ex: low back pain
- Neuropathic: The most common form of chronic pain and is usually a result of another issue somwhere else in the body, ex: sciatica.
- Centralized: Conditions that originate with the brain, ex: fibromyalgia or tinnitus
There are also two treatment areas, which are passive and active care. Passive treatments include chiropractic adjustments which provide temporary relief to pain. Thse adjustments help to realign the spine and joints, which in turn eases pressure on the nerves, breaks up scar tissue, and reduces inflammation. The relief from these treatments is temporary and must be done often to keep on top of pain maintenance.
Active care, on the other hand, is educating the patient and giving exercises to help treat the chronic pain. Educating patients is most important to your Manhattan chiropractor. Sometimes due to genetics, there is no way to completely rid of the condition. This makes our secondary goal to greatly reduce pain. With a combination of active and passive care, we can effectively treat chronic pain very well.
Your Manhattan chiropractor is here to help you with whatever pain you are suffering from. Make an appointment today.
