If you're suffering with chronic pain or an acute pain episode from time to time you may have seen your doctor to try to get some pain relief. You may have found that your doctor was not trained in pain management. Others may have found that their doctors weren't sure about what treatment they could give them that would stop, diminish, control or get rid of their pain.
Your pain may be in your back, lower back, chest, abdomen, leg, shoulder, stomach, knee, hip, foot, head, arm or ribs. It could be nerve, muscle or joint pain or any combination of any of these or another area of pain. It may or may not be part of a disease or condition or due to a traumatic injury.
In any case there are certain approaches for chronic pain that are used among western doctors and traditional medicine and then there are approaches that are used by naturopathic doctors.
In any case you may find your doctor not sure whether or not to give you a prescription for opioids - which are medicines or drugs such as morphine, Percocet and Vicodin. The doctor may have some reluctance to do this and many want to seek more natural and less invasive methods.
But if the pain is severe they may feel obligated to stop it or try to stop it even knowing the possible consequence - the consequence being physical dependence, outright painkiller addiction or adverse reaction and possible side effects. Drugs just mask the symptoms to a degree but don't do any healing, another downside.
If you're seeking a naturopath they may want to try alternative medicine methods for pain such as herbal remedies and acupuncture. Acupuncture is being used much more often these days for acute pain and chronic pain but may require repeated and possibly expensive treatments to stop or control pain if at all.
Most conventional doctors are family practitioners and not able to keep up with current pain management techniques. They come to rely on painkillers and other drugs to stop chronic pain in their patients.
Even some studies that have been done have been stopped midstream, because the patients in the study were experiencing too much pain to continue. Herbal remedies and supplements have not been adequately tested for the long term to determine if they will work. This is ironic because better pain management may be why alternative medicine is often tried.
Unfortunately there is no good answer and it's up to the chronic pain patient to find their best pain management treatment. This may require visiting several doctors and related health professionals, often assembling together a team of acute or chronic pain management professionals. However although doctors are still struggling with the best pain management there are still many natural treatments you can do yourself to get the best chronic pain treatment and relief.
No comments:
Post a Comment