If you’re someone that’s been following our content recently you know that we’ve been covering chronic pain, and have focused heavily on helping you understand what pain is and what’s going on. This is ultra important because we know from the research that one of the core components in overcoming it is to know more about pain and how it uniquely pertains to your situation.

BUT, today is going to be different. I want to give you some action oriented tips you can take to overcome your pain.

It’s so common to feel hopeless when you’ve had pain for 6 months. Or 6 years! This is totally understandable. But, if you’re going to have some hope, you’re going to need to see some progress. You need to know you’re taking the right steps in doing something about it. The following 3 things will help you know you’re heading in the right direction:

1. CONSISTENCY

2. TRACKING

3. MODEST INCREMENTAL PROGRESSION

Let’s say right now you know you can only walk for 5 minutes before your back or your knee flare up and you can’t do any more.

I have three challenges for you. First, walk 5 minutes EVERY DAY. Second, resolve to doing just 10% more each week. Third, WRITE IT DOWN!

Here’s the math – That would mean that you walk 5:30 seconds the following week. And the third week you would be walking about 6 minutes.

I’m hoping that this seems do-able for you, because it really should be.

If you can stay consistent, and track it by writing it down, you’ll gain some momentum and begin forming a HABIT. This is HUGE!

So, set yourself a modest goal, write it down, and hold yourself accountable.

When you’ve been experiencing pain for a long time, your adrenaline, muscles, GI, and other systems can be acting as though there is a lion in your house! 

What’s happening is that your stress response (which is totally normal and goes up and down throughout the day), stays elevated. Over time, this leads to a bunch of problems. 

Watch the video to learn more, because knowledge is power when it comes to overcoming long term pain! 

You got this! ????????

YOUR bullseye is the thing(s) that your pain has affected you from doing. Low back causing you to avoid playing with the grandkids? Well, your bullseye is being able to play with your grandkids without fear of having to worry about what your low back is going to feel like the next day.

Having a very clear bullseye can give you the motivation to have the endurance to overcoming that pain that won’t go away. Yes, you do need a PLAN. You need to know what to do. But, you will also need to put in a ton of hard work. And you may need to do that for 6 months. Maybe a year!

This is incredibly difficult, and it’s so easy to quit. It’s easy to get frustrated. To feel hopeless.

Knowing what your bullseye looks like, and what life can be like on the other side, can give you the endurance to keep with it!

A physical pain in your body doesn’t just affect how you feel physically. It could be affecting your family, your job, your friendships, etc. Listen to this story (some details altered for privacy, of course!) about how pain had been affecting one of our patients.

But, more importantly, understand how important it is to truly uncover all of the ways in which your life has changed from pain. By doing this, you’ll know what your motivations are to overcome the pain, because YOU CAN!

In the last video, I equated our Nerves to an Alarm System in your house.

Well, in chronic pain something’s happened to where anytime a leaf blows by in the wrong direction, the whistles begin and the sirens blare.

Here’s what I mean – your nerves over time have gotten so sensitive to any little movement, or increase in your stress levels, or a change in temperature (or any number of other things), that even small changes in your baseline send you into pain.

The longer the pain persists, the more likely those nerves will remain really close to the line that ignites the sirens!

Those of you having persistent pain will now be asking “well, how the heck do I get my nerves to calm down and lower their levels?”

Great question! Here are the 4 things that will get them to calm down.

1. Education

2. Blood Flow

3. Oxygen

4. Medication

The primary purpose of me doing all of these videos about chronic pain is to help you understand what’s going on, because the more you’re educated about what’s going on the less pain you’ll experience. They’ve actually done studies and have shown that healthcare workers that have similar injuries as non-healthcare workers are WAY less likely to have chronic pain! This makes sense because the alarm will stay on when there are more questions than answers.

Nerves Are Like an Alarm System for Your Body.

Nerves always have a little bit of electricity traveling through them, which is normal and means you’re alive! Sometimes the electrical signals can go up or down, based on things like stress, temperature, movements, pressure in your skin, etc.

Nerves also have thresholds, and when they get ‘excited’ enough to reach the threshold, the alarm goes off. A signal gets sent to your brain, so your brain can make sense of what’s going on and take the appropriate action. If you stepped on a rusted nail, you’d want to know about it! You’d want to know, so that you can get a tetanus shot, make sure the nail is out, and walk funny to take the pressure off of the injured part of your foot.

Once you get things addressed, the alarm system shuts off.

That’s what SHOULD happen. HOWEVER, in chronic pain, this is not the case.

In the next video you’ll understand how these nerve levels can go haywire in chronic pain. Stay tuned, cause the more you know about chronic pain the easier it is to overcome it.

I’m sure you’re thinking “what the heck is that picture all about?” Well, it describes what happens in someone’s brain that is not in chronic pain, and what happens when you’ve had pain for a long time.

Here’s the idea: When you’re feeling good and you’re healthy but then have an injury, your brain releases a bunch of chemicals to fight things off and address the issue. Chemicals like serotonin, endorphins, etc. BUT, when you’re in chronic pain and you have a new injury or have some danger messages coming in, your brain does not release the same chemicals in the same volumes. So, your body’s ability to fend things off and regulate the response diminishes.

So, what do we do with that? Well, knowing this, and knowing what things you can do to increase those chemicals is a good place to start. I’m going to give you 3 things you can do right now to increase your body’s production of these positive chemicals.

1. NUTRITION. Eating foods like turkey and salmon that are high in tryptophan can help increase your serotonin levels. These foods have high concentrations in other amino acids as well, which will help the tryptophan get absorbed.

2. SUNSHINE. Typically these ‘happy’ chemicals are higher in summer and lower in the winter. Getting outside and enjoying a lot of natural light will help increase your positive chemicals and potentially regulate your pain better.

3. EXERCISE. Studies show that exercise can have a lasting effect on your endogenous chemicals and help fight chronic pain as a first-line defense. Be sure to find the exercise that you tolerate well, enjoy, and don’t flare up your pain.

Try these few things to begin feeling better and taking control of your chronic pain, but understand that dealing with chronic pain is an exceptionally challenging and complex feat and won’t be fixed with some simple advice. It takes a specialized approach, time, and hard work. Please let us know if you have any questions about your chronic pain.

In the last video, you heard me describing the crazy notion that pain can be GOOD! Though that is absolutely true and though we can all appreciate how pain can inform us and shape us in the positive, it’s much easier to FEEL and KNOW that pain SUCKS!

Especially pain that LASTS! Tearing a ligament in your knee chasing after your grandchild can really hurt, but what is much worse is having that pain for a long time, and ultimately it affecting how you walk. Then it affects how well you can get out of a chair. And before you know it, 5 years later you’ve realized that you’ve stopped chasing your grandkids, had to crawl up the stairs at your house, and you can barely get off of the toilet without a hoist!

Here is the message. Don’t think you have to live in pain. No one should be relegated to a life of ongoing pain. The pain will change how you move and ultimately rob you of the FREEDOM to do whatever you want.

The first step is deciding to do something about it. Get fed up, and then act! Find someone that can help you. Try something. And keep trying something till you find what works for you. We know a lot of our patients that have tried a LOT of different things to overcome their pain. And many things didn’t work. But they still kept searching for a solution. Know that though you may have tried a bunch of different things, you haven’t tried EVERYTHING. So don’t give up. There’s a way out of chronic pain. I promise!

In the next video, you’re going to hear what happens in chronic pain and what you can do about it to start reversing the process and taking back control of your pain and your life.

In the last video, you heard me describe how pain and injury are not synonymous. You can have pain without an injury, and vice versa.

Well, this video describes how some pain is GOOD and can be a really positive, helpful teacher. Without pain, we’d be touching hot stoves and continually getting burned, walking into walls, and stepping on nails all day. It’s important to understand that all pain is not bad, especially if you have chronic pain. If your perception of pain is all negative, you may be experiencing more of it than you need to.

So, pain is important and helpful. Until it’s not. When pain persists for too long, our brains have a hard time distinguishing what is potentially dangerous and what’s not. In the next video, you’ll hear about when pain is NOT helpful, why that happens, and what you can do about it so that you can get back to doing what you love.