Pain Therapy And Pain Management

[petrushkagoogol]

Postulate : Simulating pain with an attempt to desensitize a person to it is the pro-active method of pain management.

 

Ascetics of the East are known to impose self-inflicted pain on themselves as a strategy to inure themselves to it's negative effects.

In Karate, conditioning helps in desensitizing the mind and body to pain.

Is this the right method of adaptive strategy for dealing with pain ? 

[Maine farmer]

http://rds.org/complex-regional-pain-syndrome-crps-treatment-desensitization/  and http://jaoa.org/article.aspx?articleid=2092892  I am a firm believer in staying away from pain relievers.  It has been my personal experience that experiencing pain does build up more tolerance, and so does keeping busy.  I got knocked sideways by a 1,400 pound cow a couple of days ago and kept on working.  I was in a lot of pain when I woke up the next morning, but once I got moving again, the pain faded into the background.

[CraigD]

Postulate : Simulating pain with an attempt to desensitize a person to it is the pro-active method of pain management.

I think you’ve misused a couple of words here, petrushkagoogol:

Postulate is term usually used in mathematics to mean something taken to be true without proof, or intention to prove, it true. Common postulates are “the integer 1 exists” and “every integer has a successor”.

 

I think what you mean, rather than postulate, is hypothesis. In science, a hypothesis is something you tentatively propose is true, then attempt to support with the outcomes of experiments.

 

Instead of “simulated pain”, I think you mean “self-inflicted pain”, or “pain inflicted with the person’s consent”. A simulation is an imitation of a real process using a model. “Simulate pain” would be something conducted using a computer or something other than a real human or non-human animal.

 

So I think your hypothesis is something like “by inflicting pain, pain caused by illness or injury can be reduced.”

 

Though I can’t quickly find direct support for this hypothesis, I think it’s true, because when we experience pain, our bodies produce pain-killing substances such as endorphins, which are chemically similar or identical to many medicines used to treat pain. My personal experience involves a lot of “endogenous self-medicating” of this kind – for example, while recovering from broken finger bone, I would treat the nagging pain from it be running. The slight, wide-spread musculoskeletal pain from the running would reliable dull the pain of my broken finger enough that it didn’t bother me as much. In principle, I could have gotten similar relief though something less athletic but similarly endorphin-producing, such as a good spanking. :)

 

Another personal anecdote that I think shows the limitations of this kind of pain management. I once had a dental cavity that spread to the neighboring bone and sinuses. I wasn’t able to control the pain even by running as fast and long as I could, to the point of exhaustion and near collapse – this would reduce the dental pain a little, for only about 30 minutes. I tried the less physical approach of slapping my arms until they stung, but again, could only control the dental pain for less than half an hour. Not until I found a dentist, who injected the area around my bad tooth with Novocain, did the pain really subside. Thankfully, once he extracted the badly decayed tooth, the pain vanished almost completely.

 

I’ve often wondered if elite athletes, especially martial artists, might be able to control pain without drugs or dental/surgical treatment of the pain-causing disorder better than me. I recently came across an anecdotal account that suggests they can’t: after a weight-lifting exercise spine injury in 1968, famous martial artist and actor Bruce Lee (by also famous friend Chuck Norris, in a 1975 convention appearance) is reported to have regularly taken a muscle-relaxing medicine, I think the pain medicine Equagesic. According to Norris, his 1973 death was due to an interaction with this drug and another he took for a headache the night of his death.

[A-wal]

Pain is very subjective, like sometimes when a cut starts hurting when you notice that you've cut yourself.

 

Meditation can definitely help with pain and some people can control it naturally better than others with and without meditation.

 

Even if someone can control it really will it might still prevent proper training so a martial artist who can use meditation to kill pain while they're not training might still want to take drugs so they can train.

[Maine farmer]

Pain is very subjective, like sometimes when a cut starts hurting when you notice that you've cut yourself.

 

Meditation can definitely help with pain and some people can control it naturally better than others with and without meditation.

 

Even if someone can control it really will it might still prevent proper training so a martial artist who can use meditation to kill pain while they're not training might still want to take drugs so they can train.

In my experience, tooth pain is the most difficult to deal with, and I wonder if it might have anything to do with the proximity to the brain, or if the mouth is just sensitive.

 

As far as using medication to deal with pain while training, that sounds dangerous.  If you can't feel the pain to monitor it, then you could end up dong serious damage to yourself.  I don't get to take time off from work for any reason, and when I'm hurt, I count on feeling pain to keep me from making stupid moves.

[A-wal]

You have to take a lot to kill the pain completely though. Just enough to take the edge off is best so you don't hurt yourself. It also depends on the nature of the injury. I've got a back problem that gets in the way of training but I'm fairy sure that training only aggravates it rather than causing any harm. Apparently it's a trapped nerve. I've had this problem for over ten years but I went to the doctors a couple of weeks ago for a numb foot and they asked if I'd had back problems because they think it's a trapped nerve so I should finally be able to get it sorted. :)

I think the best way to describe tooth pain is sharp. I don't even know why we've got nerves in out teeth, seems pointless. Head aches are the worst for me, nothing but strong pain killers can get those. Weed is a truly amazing pain killer for external injury type pain but it makes head aches much worse. I'm not really any good at mediation but I find that I am when I'm in mild to moderate pain because it gives me something to focus on. Try just blocking out everything but the pain and if it works the same as it does for me it just fades into the background until it's barely there.

[Maine farmer]

You have to take a lot to kill the pain completely though. Just enough to take the edge off is best so you don't hurt yourself. It also depends on the nature of the injury. I've got a back problem that gets in the way of training but I'm fairy sure that training only aggravates it rather than causing any harm. Apparently it's a trapped nerve. I've had this problem for over ten years but I went to the doctors a couple of weeks ago for a numb foot and they asked if I'd had back problems because they think it's a trapped nerve so I should finally be able to get it sorted. :)

 

Have you tried finding a good chiropractor?   I have one that I go to if my back pain lasts for more than a week or so.  I know a lot of people don't believe in chiropractic care, but I've had excellent results.  I have also heard of people getting messed up by a less skilled chiropractor, so I wouldn't go to one without good references.

[Maine farmer]

You have to take a lot to kill the pain completely though. Just enough to take the edge off is best so you don't hurt yourself. 

Is there any way to know how much it takes to risk addiction?

[A-wal]

Have you tried finding a good chiropractor?   I have one that I go to if my back pain lasts for more than a week or so.  I know a lot of people don't believe in chiropractic care, but I've had excellent results.  I have also heard of people getting messed up by a less skilled chiropractor, so I wouldn't go to one without good references.

I tried that once. It felt good for about twenty minutes then hurt more than before, at the cost of £40. I didn't go again. I'm not sure that's the right way to treat a trapped nerve anyway.

 

Is there any way to know how much it takes to risk addiction?

Well the only pain killer I used back when I was training heavily was weed and that's not really addictive. It is but it only lasts about two days after stopping and it's not like you get withdrawal or anything like that, it's just a herb. I smoked it every day for well over ten years and now I barely use it because I'd basically become immune, had my first in over a year a couple of weeks ago. Hopefully when I go back to full training again I won't need it because my back will be sorted.

 

The only conventional pain killers I ever take (with one exception when my back was really bad and I couldn't get the herb) are over the counter, nothing strong. I think people are in danger of getting addicted when the rely on it enough to build up a tolerance so they steadily take higher and higher doses, same with any addictive drug.

[petrushkagoogol]

You have to take a lot to kill the pain completely though. Just enough to take the edge off is best so you don't hurt yourself. It also depends on the nature of the injury. I've got a back problem that gets in the way of training but I'm fairy sure that training only aggravates it rather than causing any harm. Apparently it's a trapped nerve. I've had this problem for over ten years but I went to the doctors a couple of weeks ago for a numb foot and they asked if I'd had back problems because they think it's a trapped nerve so I should finally be able to get it sorted. :)

 

I think the best way to describe tooth pain is sharp. I don't even know why we've got nerves in out teeth, seems pointless. Head aches are the worst for me, nothing but strong pain killers can get those. Weed is a truly amazing pain killer for external injury type pain but it makes head aches much worse. I'm not really any good at mediation but I find that I am when I'm in mild to moderate pain because it gives me something to focus on. Try just blocking out everything but the pain and if it works the same as it does for me it just fades into the background until it's barely there.

 

So that you "don't bite off more than you can chew", Literally ..... :p