Why Early Intervention for Diabetic Neuropathy is so Important
About half of people with diabetes will develop nerve damage, or neuropathy. This common diabetic complication is by no means inevitable, and it can be minimized with early intervention.
Dealing With Chronic Pain During the Holidays? It Doesn’t Have to Hold You Back
The holidays are supposed to be full of cheer, but your chronic pain often has very different plans for you, and none of them involve anything close to joy.
The numbers surrounding chronic pain in the United States are staggering — nearly 22% of adults report chronic pain, and nearly 8% report high-impact pain that limits their lives. And, as all of these people can attest, chronic pain doesn’t take a break for the holidays.
If you want to put your pain on the back burner this holiday season, the team at Neuropathy & Pain Centers of Texas has a few great strategies for pain management that we want to share with you. Our goal is the same as yours — to help you find relief over the holidays — and beyond.
Get help for your chronic pain
Hollywood loves nothing more than those tales of brave people who soldier through great pain and triumph. From our standpoint, we’d rather see you get through life without pain and agony.
Unfortunately, a great many of us struggle with pain on a daily basis. For example, more than 92 million Americans report doctor-diagnosed arthritis or arthritis symptoms, meaning joint pain and inflammation. Nearly 40% of Americans report back pain and more than 22% report headaches.
Whatever is causing your chronic pain, we want you to know that relief is possible. At our practice, we pride ourselves on offering the most effective pain management therapies available, which include:
- Interventional injections
- Medical pain relief
- Physical medicine
- Trigger point therapy
- Laser therapies
- Massage therapy
- Chiropractic care
Often, we use a combination of modalities to bring you relief, and we’d be happy to figure out which ones will work best for your pain. We want you to see us sooner rather than later, so we can make sure that your holidays are long on cheer and short on discomfort.
Tips to manage chronic pain on your own
While we can do our part to relieve your chronic pain through evidence-based treatments, you can help to reduce the impact that pain has on your life.
Pain is designed to get your attention, and, when the pain is chronic, it can become the center of your attention. Over time, pain can create well-worn neural pathways in your brain, so we want you to fire up different neural pathways that get your mind unstuck from the pain spiral.
Great ways to do that include:
- Exercising, which can be as simple as going for a walk in nature
- Meditation
- Deep breathing exercises
- Socializing with friends and family
- Listening to music or doing a puzzle
We also want you to avoid stress as much as you can, which can be hard during the holidays. When your body is in a fight-or-flight mode, pain can flare. Most of the practices we mention above are great stress busters.
Finally, we want you to take care of yourself. If you’re feeling pain over the holidays despite your best efforts, take it easy. Your friends and family will understand if you have to leave early or you need to skip an event.
Still, we believe that there’s no reason why you can’t enjoy the holidays with a good pain management plan in place. To get that started, we invite you to call or message one of our conveniently located clinics in Waco, Arlington, Wichita Falls, or Fort Worth, Texas, today to schedule an appointment.
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