Not too long ago, I was skiing with my kids on their spring break when my mother called.<\/p>\n
She knew I was on the slopes, so I was concerned at seeing her number pop up. I pushed my helmet away from my ear and said hello, and she got straight to the point: \u201cI broke my back.\u201d<\/p>\n
My mother, who was then 81 and had hardly ever been sick a day in her life, had lost her balance<\/a> while rolling her suitcase and toppled backward, landing in a sitting position. It hurt, and afterward her back felt sore<\/a>, but she didn\u2019t think much of it until the pain persisted. \ufeff<\/p>\n Despite massaging her back, resting it, icing it and even heating it for a few days, the pain wouldn\u2019t go away. So nearly a week after the injury, she went to get an X-ray.<\/p>\n Mom had a fracture of the first vertebra in her lumbar spine\ufeff \u2014\ufeff an L1 compression fracture that compressed her bone from its normal cylindrical shape to that of a pancake.<\/p>\n \u201cI cannot live like this,\u201d she told me. I knew the excruciating pain could be expected to last at least a couple of months, which would feel like a lifetime for her. I also knew she wasn\u2019t interested in taking high doses of opioid pain medications. Finally, she made it clear that she didn\u2019t want an aggressive operation, given her age and frailty.<\/p>\n So, along with her doctors, we landed on a relatively new approach<\/a> to deal with her pain, a minimally invasive procedure known as kyphoplasty, in which a hollow needle is used to insert a small balloon into the broken bone, which is then inflated. \ufeff<\/p>\n As the balloon enlarges, the bone starts to regain its normal height. X-rays make it possible to assess when the bone looks close to normal again, and then the balloon can be deflated and removed. Finally, a dollop of hot liquid cement is injected, which quickly hardens and helps the vertebra maintain its normal anatomy.<\/p>\n On the morning of the procedure, she looked at me and said, \u201cIf this doesn\u2019t help with the pain, I think my time here on earth is done.\u201d It was devastating to hear. My tough mom now seemed so weak.<\/p>\n That is the thing about pain. When you are in agony, it is all-encompassing.<\/p>\n Thankfully the procedure, which took about an hour, went well, and my mom felt almost instantaneous relief. While the surgery can relieve pain in many different ways, it certainly seemed that a significant amount of her pain relief was psychological, because the procedure had provided a much-needed dose of hope. \ufeff<\/p>\n Whatever the case, she immediately reduced her pain score from \u201cI want to die\u201d to a 3 out of 10. On the day I left her she was whistling in the kitchen as she cooked.<\/p>\n My mother\u2019s recovery isn\u2019t a miracle, or even an anomaly. Indeed, a dizzying amount of medical progress<\/a> has been made since I became a neurosurgeon more than 25 years ago. We better understand what causes pain, what may best relieve it, and what we can do to minimize or even eliminate certain types of pain. \ufeff<\/p>\n Many of those life-changing insights have not yet been made easily available to the public. If you are in pain, there are far more effective options than you may have previously realized<\/a>, as well as important things you should start doing today to greatly reduce your chances of suffering pain tomorrow. \ufeff<\/p>\n These are strategies I have started incorporating into my life, as well as the lives of my wife, teenage kids and parents.<\/p>\n \ufeffThe \ufeffpain \ufeffmanagement \ufefftoolbox<\/p>\n If you\u2019ve read anything about pain over the past 20 years, you have likely been angered by the opioid epidemic, a tragedy fueled by ignorance, arrogance and greed.<\/p>\n Because opioids have consumed most of the conversation, most people don\u2019t even realize there are plenty of other effective options to help relieve pain, including breathtaking breakthroughs that would have been unimaginable only a few years ago. \ufeff<\/p>\n Modern science and ancient wisdom have collectively begun to crack the code on pain. You can too. \ufeffConsider this your pain management toolbox.\ufeff<\/p>\n 1. Endorphins: Your \ufeffbody\u2019s \ufeffnatural \ufeffpainkillers<\/p>\n You know that opioids are some of the world\u2019s most powerful painkillers. But what you may not know is that your body is adept at producing natural compounds that have similar effects. They\u2019re called endorphins, a term that merges the words \u201cendogenous\u201d (meaning \u201cfrom within\u201d) and \u201cmorphine.\u201d Pump up the endorphins\ufeff \u2014\ufeff decrease the pain.<\/p>\n How does it work? Opioids bind to receptors located on the outer membrane of nerve cells in the brain, spinal cord and other organs, triggering a cascade of chemical changes<\/a> within and between neurons, producing feelings of pleasure as well as pain relief.<\/p>\n Under extreme stress, the fight-or-flight hormones can trigger the endogenous opioid system, which greatly reduces the pain. \u201c[It] is one of the most potent analgesic, anti-pain molecules that exists,\u201d says Daniela Salvemini, director of Saint Louis University\u2019s Institute for Translational Neuroscience.<\/p>\n These endogenous opioid benefits take place at a subconscious level, but now we know that simply moving\ufeff \u2014\ufeff jogging or going for a brisk walk<\/a>\ufeff \u2014\ufeff can trigger an endorphin release that delivers the rush we call a \u201crunner\u2019s high.\u201d Gazing at a sunset or a loved one can help do it as well.<\/p>\n If you don\u2019t believe in the essential power of these chemicals, consider the story of Dan Kruger, whose 40-year career as a motorbike racer led to fractures of his back, ribs, hands, wrists, fingers, leg, ankles, toes, jaw and collarbones\ufeff \u2014\ufeff and eventually, an opioid addiction. Kruger overcame both the pain and the addiction through 15-minute guided meditations<\/a> and his own mindfulness exercises.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s amazing that while meditating to the 15-minute guided recording, my chronic pain or migraines disappear,\u201d he says. He compares it to his workouts at the gym, training to stay in shape. \u201cI train every day because it gives me these endorphins that help me get positive, reduce stress and stay fit. Meditation does much the same thing for me.\u201d<\/p>\n Over time, Kruger carefully weaned himself off opioids, even refusing them after injuries and operations that followed. After a full year of his opioid-free recovery, the combination of brain-training techniques and other conventional and complementary pain management tools continued to deliver adequate relief, he says.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Not too long ago, I was skiing with my kids on their spring break when my mother called.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":109758,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[64,63,7338,78550,78554,137,490,78553,29561,78552,78551],"class_list":{"0":"post-109757","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-medication","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-chronic-pain","11":"tag-chronic-pain-management","12":"tag-exercises-for-pain","13":"tag-health","14":"tag-medication","15":"tag-medications-for-pain","16":"tag-pain-management","17":"tag-supplements-for-pain","18":"tag-temperature-therapy"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109757","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=109757"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109757\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/109758"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=109757"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=109757"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=109757"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}