6 Natural Pain Relievers to Reduce Chronic Pain

Whether you’re experiencing chronic pain as result from a serious injury or from an illness, it is a frustrating and debilitating condition that effects your entire life. But thankfully, with the help of various treatment options, you can experience real relief from the endless aches. In addition to seeing a physician regularly, there are many natural pain relievers to have help reduce your chronic pain in between treatment. Utilize these simple, healthy and safe solutions to help pinpoint and reduce your pain.

1. Trigger Point Injections

Similar to acupuncture, trigger point injections are specifically created to reduce pain found in certain trigger points of your body. An outpatient procedure, trigger point injections are administered by a health care professional and involve a small needle being inserted into the painful area. The most common numbing agents used during this procedure are lidocaine or an anti-inflammatory. While they are not effective for every patient, they have proven in many cases to help tight muscles relax, providing you fast relief.

2. Heat

Sometimes underestimated, applying heat to the affected area is a powerful method of pain relief. Whether you choose to use a heating pad, soak, or heat wrap, heat helps increase oxygen flow to an aching, tight joint or muscle, bringing about healing nutrients to the area. In addition, this type of natural pain reliever can help prevent pain signals from traveling further down your body.

3. Stretching

Because chronic pain can limit your body’s motion, stretching should be an integral part of your everyday routine to help keep your muscles and joints loose. It is best to consult with your physician before beginning to see what stretches are optimal for your unique situation. While stretching has been proven effective to alleviate aching and throbbing, it’s important to note that it can take up to weeks or even months for your body to loosen up and benefit. Be sure to take it slow and stick to it!

4. Meditation

In order to help relieve your chronic pain, sometimes you need to put mind over matter. Meditation can help you reflect on, envision, and create ways to cope with the chronic pain you are suffering from. Meditation allows your body to stimulate and strengthen certain areas within your brain that are used to process pain, which helps reduce the intensity of the overall agony you are experiencing. In addition, meditation helps reduce your stress levels, which in turn helps lessen some extreme aches you may experience from time to time.

5. Massage Therapy

Massage therapy is a great option to naturally help improve your quality of life. During a massage, serotonin is released, which is your body’s natural production of anti-pain chemicals. In addition, a massage is an extremely effective tool to help increase the amount of deep sleep you receive. The more deep sleep, the less pain you will experience. Just like with stretching and meditation, a massage helps lower your stress levels and increase your range in motion.

6. Spices and Herbs

The spices and herbs you have hiding in your pantry can do more good than you may know. Willow bark and turmeric are particularly known for helping relieve chronic pain. To help reduce inflammation, which is a primary cause of pain, willow bark can help. It can be chewed on, consumed in a liquid form or brewed as a dried herb. Full of pain-fighting antioxidants, turmeric can help lessen pain symptoms (when consumed orally).

Chronic Pain Management in Illinois

Those suffering from chronic pain should not settle with long-lasting discomfort. By incorporating these natural pain relievers into your everyday routine, along with regular doctor visits, you will see a difference in your quality of life. Here at Illinois Bone & Joint Institute, our physicians can help come up with an individualized plan to help manage your chronic pain. For more information on how we can help you, please contact us today.