What is pain?
The International Association for the Study of Pain (IASP) defines pain as an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with actual or potential tissue damage.
Pain is not just a physical sensation. It is influenced by various factors and can affect your wellbeing. Everyone’s experience of living with pain is different.
Acute pain is a sign that something has happened, your body is alerting you to something wrong. Acute pain comes on quickly, lasts a short period of time and goes away again.
Chronic pain is pain that lasts longer than the expected healing time of surgery, trauma or other illness (usually for more than 3 months). It may also be pain where the cause is not always found. Chronic pain can be a symptom of a disease, but can also be a disease in its own right, characterised by changes within the central nervous system.
Why is it important to treat acute pain?
Acute pain can turn into chronic pain if it is not treated appropriately. Changes happen within the nervous system which make the body more sensitive to pain. Pain can even be felt without a clear trigger for it. The longer pain is untreated, the greater the risk of your body becoming more sensitive to pain and it becoming chronic.
So, treating your acute pain is important.
How can Feel Amazing in Chatswood help?
At Feel Amazing we have a number of specialities that can treat acute pain. These include:
How do I know if I need treatment?
If you’re in pain and it is inhibiting your day to day activities, then it’s important to seek professional treatment.
Have you woken up with a neck that hurts? Or you’ve bent down to put something in the dishwasher and wished you hadn’t? Or you’re experiencing a flare up in symptoms of a recalcitrant injury? Or your body is really trying to tell you that you need to do something to relieve your stressed mind, tired and aching muscles sometime soon – listen to your body before it starts yelling at you.
Many of our clients are experiencing similar pain and discomfort that needs attention. We are here to identify what is going on in your body, provide treatment that is appropriate, some much-needed direction on what will help from here and most importantly some relief!
What can help manage and treat pain?
Once you have taken the medical advice for your unique pain situation, there are some other natural ways to help ease your pain. Acute injury management tools include:
- Applying ice or heat
- Protecting the injury
- Rest
- Elevation
Once the acute crisis is over, there are other ways to help relieve pain. They include:
- Help your body to release the natural pain-relieving feel-good hormones we all have in our bodies (e.g. endorphins). This could be through sharing a laugh with a friend or watching a comedy. Distraction is one way to relieve the nastiness of acute pain
- Ask for help with the things you are currently unable to do and talk to or spend time with others who will offer some extra TLC at this time
- Depending on your injury, try to avoid too much rest, keep moving your body gently, this will help reduce muscle pain and keep you mobile
- Sometimes pain medication is needed, but there are also many traditional herbs that help relieve pain. This may include taking turmeric, using essential oils, or using a lotion, like arnica to help with inflammation and bruising. If you would like to know more, make a booking with our naturopath or our TCM practitioner about what could help you.