Chronic & Persistent Pain Treatment in Fenton, Michigan
Have you been dealing with pain for a long time? You’re not alone. Approximately 100 million Americans are affected by some sort of chronic pain. Unfortunately, the United States holds the world record for the highest rates of chronic pain (Tsang et al., 2008). The longer our bodies are in pain, the tougher it can be to break the cycle of pain & return to normal function. Treatments used to address persistent pain are unfortunately slow to catch up, with many doctors still prescribing opioid-based pain medication to treat chronic pain, despite the opioid epidemic and its effects on our country. Another unfortunate reality is that the United States also holds the world record for the highest consumption rates of opioid based pain medication (99% of it, in fact). We consume so much pain medication that we literally prevent every other country on the planet from having an opioid crisis (Manchikanti, et al., 2008).
Despite these statistics, our bodies are resilient and always capable of changing, no matter how frustrating our pain experiences can seem. We take a different approach to chronic pain at HealthHQ: we want to unlock the medicine already inside of your body. There is overwhelming, compelling evidence that even low intensity, steady state cardiovascular exercise produces natural, strong, pain-killing chemicals. In fact, the average strength of pain-killing chemicals released during exercise is almost 400% higher than the normal dose of opioid based pain medication (Gurevich et al., 2008 & Koltyn et al., 2014). Our goal is to help you find ways to move that do not aggravate your pain, so that we can tap into your body’s own pain-killing chemicals to help you feel better, move better, and return to normal living.
In addition to movement, we utilize severe hands-on, manual therapy techniques to reduce your pain so that you feel more like moving. While we can’t cure people with our hands as physical therapists, the inclusion of manual therapy in any plan of care related to chronic pain is important to ensure the exercises we have you perform make you successful in permanently reducing your pain long-term (Puentedura & Flynn, 2016; Wood et al., 2019; Saracoglu et al., 2022).
The final component to addressing chronic pain is the restoration of high quality sleep. Sleep & pain present a question similar to “What comes first: the chicken or the egg?” Often, sleep can be affected when we are in pain, which can trap us in a vicious cycle, but more often than not, a reduction in sleep quantity & quality almost universally precedes the development of pain (Mork et al., 2012; Finan et al., 2013; Aili et al., 2015; Kovacs et al., 2017; Shaver et al., 2018). Working with you on strategies to not necessarily sleep more, but sleep better will further improve your body’s ability to heal itself.
Every person’s pain experience is unique, but it doesn’t have to be permanent.
Do you want to learn more or get started with treatment?
Give us a call, text, or email today!
