Managing chronic pain is challenging. It can interrupt your life and add stress and anxiety when you have consistent pain. If you have arthritis, managing physical pain and discomfort is often a daily activity. You probably take or have at least been prescribed pain medication, depending on the severity of your pain. The good news is there are other ways to manage your aches and pains. If you need relief from pain but are concerned about getting addicted to medication, here are four tips to help you avoid developing a painkiller addiction, which is increasingly becoming more common.
Exercise Often
If you’re feeling stiff and sore, you’re probably wondering how exercise can help with your chronic pain since it is probably the last thing you feel like doing. According to Better Health, exercise can help your arthritis in multiple ways and some of the main benefits include increased muscular strength, building and maintaining bone density, relieving pain and stiffness, improving sleep patterns, and lubricating joints.
The more you move, the better off you’ll be in the long run in terms of physical strength and overall well-being. This can help you avoid the need to use pain killers and will help you stay clear of the dangers of developing a pain killer addiction. Movement of any kind for any reason is good for anyone, whether they suffer from pain or not, so you really can’t go wrong with adding exercise to your daily routine.
Get the Right Nutrition
The right nutrition has little to do with a specific diet and more to do with making sure you’re getting the essential vitamins and minerals your body needs to heal and build strength. Like most people, arthritis sufferers require calcium to help build and maintain strong bone density from a nutritional perspective.
Eating foods rich in your dietary needs and avoiding foods that rob your body of essential nutrients will help you avoid feeling more pain than necessary. Inflammation is often a sign that you need more of something and you could probably do without eating all those cookies and bowls of ice cream. According to Urban Remedy, sugar and other unhealthy foods are known to rob our bodies of what they need, causing inflammatory responses. A proper diet will not only allow you to better manage your pain, but it will also help you avoid the need to use painkillers in the long run. Maybe avoiding sugar altogether isn’t an easy step forward, but cutting back on it and eating more nutrient-rich foods will definitely provide some key benefits to your body.
Combine Multiple Treatments
Like anything, if you focus on one way to solve problems, treat an illness, or improve any area of your life, the efficacy of that chosen methodology will most likely diminish over time as other needs and factors may not be met in the process. Painkillers aren’t necessarily a bad treatment, however, they can only do so much for your arthritis, which is to relieve pain for a certain period of time. If you’re not managing your arthritis well, developing an addiction to your prescribed painkillers could easily happen.
According to Transformations Treatment Center, combining multiple treatments increases the chance for recovery. If you want better health, and consequently a better quality of life, then combining treatments for your arthritis could help you achieve your health goals without being overly dependent on medications.
Be Aware of the Signs of a Pain Killer Addiction
It is highly likely that your doctor has prescribed a heavy pain killer for your severe pain, and, because you trust your health care providers, you may not see the harm in taking a strong pain killer when you find your pain unbearable. Many people find that this is exactly how their addiction began; they did not know or understand the signs. One of your best defenses against developing this type of addiction, or any for that matter, is knowledge about the potential signs and behaviors that are associated with addiction. You should make sure you take the time to understand the early signs of painkiller addiction before it begins to control your life in unimaginable ways.
Addictions of any kind can have multiple effects on your life and overall well-being. In many cases, they can become destructive and cause much heartache and loss. If you’re in the early stages of your arthritis diagnosis, be as proactive as you can in managing your pain and preventing your pain from getting worse.
The more you take control of and do what you can to manage your chronic pain, the happier you will be. Take the time to educate yourself and implement the solutions and treatments that you feel will work best for you and your pain level so that you can hopefully avoid the need for a prescription for heavy pain medication altogether.
Here’s another article you might like: 4 Exercises You Can Do Even with Arthritis
