Managing Chronic Pain (Realistically!)
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Realistic chronic pain management
We’ve had a number of requests to do a main feature on managing chronic pain, so here it is!
A quick (but important) note before we begin:
Obviously, not all chronic pain is created equal. Furthermore, we know that you, dear reader with chronic pain, have been managing yours for however long you have, learning as you go. You also doubtlessly know your individual condition inside out.
We also know that people with chronic health conditions in general are constantly beset by well-meaning unsolicited advice from friends and family, asking if you’ve heard about [thing you heard about 20 years ago] that will surely change your life and cure you overnight.
It’s frustrating, and we’re going to try to avoid doing that here, while still offering the advice that was asked for. We ask you, therefore, to kindly overlook whatever you already knew, and if you already knew it all, well, we salute you and will not be surprised if that’s the case for at least some readers. Chronic pain’s a… Well, it’s a chronic pain.
All that said, let’s dive in…
How are you treating your body right now?
Are you hydrated; have you eaten; are you standing/sitting/lying in a position that at least should be comfortable for you in principle?
The first two things affect pain perception; the latter can throw a spanner in the works if something’s not quite right.
Move your body (gently!)
You know your abilities, so think about the range of motion that you have, especially in the parts of your body that hurt (if that’s “everywhere”, then, our sympathies, and we hope you find the same advice applies). Think about your specific muscles and joints as applicable, and what the range of motion is “supposed” to be for each. Exercise your range of motion as best you can (gently!) to the point of its limit(s) and/or pain.
- If you take it past that limit, there is a good chance you will make it worse. You don’t want that.
- If you don’t take it to the limit, there is a good chance your range of movement will deteriorate, and your “safe zone” (i.e., body positions that are relatively free from pain) will diminish. You definitely don’t want that, either.
Again, moderation is key. Yes, annoying as the suggestion may be, such things as yoga etc can help, if done carefully and gently. You know your limits; work with those, get rest between, and do what you can.
For most people this will at least help keep the pain from getting worse.
Hot & Cold
Both of these things could ease your pain… Or make it worse. There is an element of “try it and see”, but here’s a good general guide:
Here’s How to Choose Between Using Ice or Heat for Pain
Meditation… Or Distraction
Meditating really does help a lot of people. In the case of pain, it can be counterintuitively helpful to focus for a while on the sensation of the pain… But in a calm, detached fashion. Without judgement.
“Yes, I am experiencing pain. Yes, it feels like I’m being stabbed with hot knives. Yes, this is tortuous; wow, I feel miserable. This truly sucks.”
…it doesn’t sound like a good experience, does it? And it’s not, but paying it attention this way can paradoxically help ease things. Pain is, after all, a messenger. And in the case of chronic pain, it’s in some ways a broken messenger, but what a messenger most needs is to be heard.
The above approach a) is good b) may have a limit in how long you can sustain it at a time, though. So…
The opposite is a can be a good (again, short-term) approach too. Call a friend, watch your favorite movie, play a video game if that’s your thing. It won’t cure anything, but it can give you a little respite.
Massage
Unless you already know this makes your pain worse, this is a good thing to try. It doesn’t have to be a fancy spa; if the nature of your pain and condition permits, you can do self-massage. If you have a partner or close friend who can commit to helping, it can be very worth them learning to give a good massage. There are often local courses available, and failing that, there is also YouTube.
Here’s an example of a good video for myofascial release massage, which can ease a lot of common kinds of chronic pain:
Some quick final things to remember:
- If you find something helps, then it helps, do that.
- That goes for mobility aids and other disability aids too, even if it was designed for a different disability. If it helps, it helps. You’re not stealing anyone’s thunder (or resources) by using something that makes your life easier. We’re not in this life to suffer!
- There is no such thing as “this pain is not too much”. The correct amount of pain is zero. Maybe your body won’t let you reach zero, but more than that is “too much” already.
- You don’t have to be suffering off the scale to deserve relief from pain
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Guava vs Passion Fruit – Which is Healthier?
10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.
Our Verdict
When comparing guava to passion fruit, we picked the guava.
Why?
There aren’t many fruits that can beat passion fruit for nutritional density! And even in this case, it wasn’t completely so in every category:
In terms of macros, passion fruit has more carbs and fiber, the ratio of which give it the slightly lower glycemic index. Thus, a modest win for passion fruit in this category.
In the category of vitamins, guava has more of vitamins B1, B5, B6, B9, C, E, and K, while passion fruit has more of vitamins A, B2, and B3. A clear win for guava this time.
When it comes to minerals, it’s a little closer, but: guava has more calcium, copper, manganese, potassium, and zinc, while passion fruit has more iron, magnesium, and phosphorus. So, another win for guava.
Adding up the sections makes for guava winning the day, but by all means enjoy either or both; diversity is good!
Want to learn more?
You might like to read:
Fruit Is Healthy; Juice Isn’t (Here’s Why)
Enjoy!
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Spreading Mental Health Awareness
10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.
It’s Q&A Day at 10almonds!
Have a question or a request? You can always hit “reply” to any of our emails, or use the feedback widget at the bottom!
In cases where we’ve already covered something, we might link to what we wrote before, but will always be happy to revisit any of our topics again in the future too—there’s always more to say!
As ever: if the question/request can be answered briefly, we’ll do it here in our Q&A Thursday edition. If not, we’ll make a main feature of it shortly afterwards!
So, no question/request too big or small
Request: more people need to be aware of suicidal tendencies and what they can do to ward them off
That’s certainly a very important topic! We’ll cover that properly in one of our Psychology Sunday editions. In the meantime, we’ll mention a previous special that we did, that was mostly about handling depression (in oneself or a loved one), and obviously there’s a degree of crossover:
The Mental Health First-Aid That You’ll Hopefully Never Need
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Stop Tinnitus, & Improve Your Hearing By 130%
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Caveat: this will depend on the cause of your tinnitus, but there’s a quick diagnostic test first, and it’s for the most common kind 🙂
Step by step
To address noise in the ears (tinnitus) and improve hearing, start by identifying whether the issue is treatable. The diagnostic tests are:
- First, turn your head to the side, tilt it forward and backward, and observe changes in the noise. If the intensity changes, then the noise can be managed.
- Additionally, open and close your mouth, clenching and unclenching your teeth, and note any variations; this is about muscular tension affecting hearing.
- Finally, tilt your head downward—if the noise increases, it may mean it is a venous outflow disorder—there’s a fix for this, too.
Effective exercises focus on releasing tension and improving blood flow:
- Begin with the neck’s scalene muscles, located behind the sternocleidomastoid muscle.
- Massage these areas by moving your hands up and down and varying head positions slightly forward and backward.
- Repeat on both sides to enhance blood circulation and reduce auditory interference. Next, target the chewing muscles.
- Massage painful areas of the jaw and temporalis muscle in circular motions, working along and across the muscle fibers.
- Divide the temporalis muscle into sections and address each thoroughly to relieve tension and improve hearing.
- Mobilize the outer auditory passage by gently pulling the ear in all directions—starting with the earlobe, middle part, and upper ear.
- Focus on the cartilage above the lobe, moving it up and down to restore mobility and improve blood flow.
These exercises should fix the most common kind of tinnitus, and improve hearing—you’ll know quickly whether it works for you or not. Regular practice is required for sustained results, though.
For more on all this, plus visual demonstrations (e.g. how to find that temporalis muscle, etc), enjoy:
Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!
Want to learn more?
You might also like to read:
Tinnitus: Quieting The Unwanted Orchestra In Your Ears ← our main feature on this topic, with more things to try if this didn’t help!
Take care!
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Thriving Beyond Fifty – by Will Harlow
10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.
We’ve featured this author sometimes in our video section; he’s an over-50s specialist physiotherapist with a lot of very functional advice to offer.
In this book, Harlow focusses heavily on three things: mobility, strength, endurance.
You may not want to be a gymnast, powerlifter, or marathon-runner, but these things are important for us all to maintain to at least a fair degree:
- Mobility can be the difference between tweaking one’s shoulder getting something from a high shelf, or not
- Strength can be the difference between being able to get back up, or not
- Endurance can be the difference between coming back from a long day on your feet and thinking “that was a good day; I’m looking forward to tomorrow now”, or not
One of the greatest strengths of this book is its comprehensive troubleshooting aspect; if you have a weak spot, chances are this book has the remedy.
As for the style, it’s quite casual/conversational in tone, but without skimping on science and detail. It’s clear, explanatory, and helpful throughout.
Bottom line: if you’d like to maintain/improve mobility, strength, and endurance, then this book is a very recommendable resource.
Click here to check out Thriving Beyond Fifty, and keep thriving at every age!
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Figs vs Passion Fruit – Which is Healthier?
10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.
Our Verdict
When comparing figs to passion fruit, we picked the passion fruit.
Why?
Both are top-tier fruits! But the passion fruit is just that bit more passionate about delivering healthy nutrients:
In terms of macros, passion fruit has slightly more carbs, notably more protein, and a lot more fiber, giving it the win in this category.
In the category of vitamins, figs have more of vitamins B1, B5, B6, E, and K, while passion fruit has more of vitamins A, B2, B3, B9, C, and choline, making for a marginal win by the numbers for passion fruit here.
When it comes to minerals, figs have more calcium, manganese, and zinc, while passion fruit has more copper, iron, magnesium, phosphorus, potassium, and selenium. A clearer win for passion fruit this time.
Adding up the sections makes for an easy overall win for passion fruit, but again, figs are really a top-tier fruit too; passion fruit just beats them! By all means enjoy either or both; diversity is good!
Want to learn more?
You might like:
Top 8 Fruits That Prevent & Kill Cancer ← figs have antitumor effects specifically, while removing carcinogens too, and additionally sensitizing cancer cells to light therapy
Enjoy!
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16 Overlooked Autistic Traits In Women
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We hear a lot about “autism moms”, but Taylor Heaton is an autistic mom, diagnosed as an adult, and she has insights to share about overlooked autistic traits in women.
The Traits
- Difficulty navigating romantic relationships: often due to misreading signs
- Difficulty understanding things: including the above, but mostly: difficulty understanding subtext, when people leave things as “surely obvious”. Autistic women are likely to be aware of the possible meanings, but unsure which it might be, and may well guess wrongly.
- Masking: one of the reasons for the gender disparity in diagnosis is that autistic women are often better at “masking”, that is to say, making a conscious effort to blend in to allistic society—often as a result of being more societally pressured to do so.
- Honesty: often to a fault
- Copy and paste: related to masking, this is about consciously mirroring others in an effort to put them at ease and be accepted
- Being labelled sensitive and/or gifted: usually this comes at a young age, but the resultant different treatment can have a lifetime effect
- Secret stims: again related to masking, and again for the same reasons that displaying autistic symptoms is often treated worse in women, autistic women’s stims tend to be more subtle.
- Written communication: autistic women are often more comfortable with the written word than the spoken
- Leadership: autistic women will often gravitate to leadership roles, partly as a survival mechanism
- Gaslighting: oneself, e.g. “If this person did this without that, then I can to” (without taking into account that maybe the circumstances are different, or maybe they actually did lean on crutches that you didn’t know were there, etc).
- Inner dialogue: rich inner dialogue, but unable to express it outwardly—often because of the sheer volume of thoughts per second.
- Fewer female friends: often few friends overall, for that matter, but there’s often a gender imbalance towards male friends, or where there isn’t, towards more masculine friends at least.
- Feeling different: often a matter of feeling one does not meet standard expectations in some fashion
- School: autistic women are often academically successful
- Special interests: often more “socially accepted” interests than autistic men’s.
- Flirting: autistic women are often unsure how to flirt or what to do about it, which can result in simple directness instead
For more details on all of these, enjoy:
Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!
Related reading:
You might like a main feature of ours from not long back:
Miss Diagnosis: Anxiety, ADHD, & Women
Take care!
Don’t Forget…
Did you arrive here from our newsletter? Don’t forget to return to the email to continue learning!
Learn to Age Gracefully
Join the 98k+ American women taking control of their health & aging with our 100% free (and fun!) daily emails: