Medication is not always the answer when you are experiencing chronic pain. Unlike what you may think, making some lifestyle changes can bring a big difference and help ease the pain as well as improve the quality of your life.

However, if you are truly committed and you have consulted your doctor, you can pair your pain medications with other treatment methods and certain lifestyle changes for quicker and better results.

Many people around the world are exploring treatment options like chiropractic adjustments and manipulations and spinal decompression in Austin and in other places, to better manage pain, as a result of various conditions and injuries. Your doctor can also guide you and help you understand the benefits of adopting a comprehensive and multimodal approach when it comes to pain management.

If you have been suffering from chronic pain or you have recently been in an accident, it is important for you to understand that pain management is more than just taking prescribed pain medications. However, making lifestyle changes and maintain good health are key components of this comprehensive approach.

Quit smoking

Did you know that tobacco can at times elevate your pain sensations, slow down the healing process of a wound, and damage your overall health and body? Smoking may also affect your pain resiliency. That said, smoking increases the connectivity and activity within two regions of your brain, the medial prefrontal cortex, and the nucleus accumbent when it comes to pain resilience. However, the increased connections and the activity results in reducing the pain resilience in your body.

Besides reducing the pain resiliency of your body, smoking is also commonly known to reduce the quality of your life. Hence, if you are particularly suffering from pain management problems and if you frequently smoke, this might be the time to rethink your decisions. To effectively control your pain issues, you must take all possible ways to help your situation including quitting smoking.

Eat a balanced and healthy diet

What you eat affects how you feel. Eating a healthy and balanced diet not only gives you important nutrients and vitamins that you need to live a fit life, but it also helps you maintain appropriate body weight. Being obese or overweight can cause or lead to a wide number of health issues, such as heart disease and diabetes. That said, maintaining a healthy body weight for your age and lifestyle is very important for managing pain.

Oftentimes, losing weight and switching to a healthier diet tends to help reduce the frequency of headaches and body aches in overweight patients. It can also be helpful in decreasing back pain for chronic pain patients and help with symptoms of osteoarthritis and musculoskeletal pain.

Another lifestyle change that can lead to being very beneficial for you is it restrict or limit the intake of food high in saturated fat and sugar, and processed foods. You might also benefit from trying an anti-inflammation diet, which mainly focuses on whole foods and helps reduce inflammatory responses. Changing your eating habits will enable you to consume nutrient-rich a diet with high contents of antioxidants. Antioxidants can help protect by reducing inflammation and even though they won’t cure your condition they may help with symptoms.

Keep a pain journal

Keeping a pain journal can turn out to be a very useful tool for you and your doctor. Your doctor can really use data like a track of your pain levels, what caused the pain, when it tends to occur, what events or actions make it worse, and what helps you manage the pain. Having this data available for a few days can help your doctor quickly diagnose your condition and provide you the best possible treatment for quick results. It may also enable you to0 identify the triggers that cause the pain or make it worse, so you can avoid them.

You will often see people suffering from migraines keeping a journal that helps them keep a track of important details concerning the pain, including what triggers the pain attacks and how often they occur.

Hence, if you are experiencing chronic pain or migraines, it might be a good idea to keep a track of the pain, you may want to use an app instead of keeping an actual journal for convenience.

Have a strong support system

Suffering from chronic pain affects you both physically and mentally. While you are going through this challenging time, it can make a big difference in your overall well-being if you have a strong support system around you. Staying connected with your close friends and family members may help your better cope with the pain. When you are surrounded by people you love, you tend to feel less stress and anxiety. Chronic pain can be the cause of a lot of stress and negative vibes, which can have a dire impact on your body and mind.

However, if you let your stress and anxiety go to higher levels, they can even lead to bigger problems like obesity, depression, and headaches. Hence, stay connected as much as possible with loved ones or you may also benefit from getting professional help by consulting a counselor or phycologist.

Seek out professional help

Making these lifestyle changes can take relatively longer to show an impact on your pain or in some cases they may not bring a significant impact at all. Hence, depending on the intensity of the pain, it is recommended to seek other alternative treatment options and professional help. Spinal decompression is often considered to be an effective treatment for degenerative disc disease, facet syndromes, spinal stenosis, and post-surgical patients. Similarly, chiropractic adjustments may also be an impact treatment option, if you have, are trying to heal from a car accident or sports injuries or back, neck, shoulder, and joint pain.

However, whatever treatment option you may consider adopting for yourself make sure to consult your doctor and discuss if it the best option for your condition.