Pain management and medications – a reality check

In this post: Why tolerating pain without taking medication can be harmful.

I’m not part of our clinical team, I’m just a very lucky marketing professional who gets to learn from some of the world’s best scientists everyday at work. “Thanks” to several knee surgeries and arthritis I’m fairly familiar with pain. Yet, through this job my understanding of ongoing pain has been turned upside down – and for that I am glad. I want to share what I have learned with all of you, from a lay-person’s perspective.

It’s time again for a pain management reality check!

Today I’d like to challenge this statement:

“Tolerate pain for as long as you can before taking medication.”

That is exactly what I used to do. My reasoning was that if I can still function with the pain, I’d rather feel it because I’d learned that pain is the body’s way to signal that there is a threat. I wanted to hear those signals loud and clear.

Is the statement true or false? You might be surprised to learn it is false.

I’ll be the first one to admit that I’ve been acting completely wrong regarding this. But, you live, you learn, and you improve your ways.

‍

The more nerves practice, the more efficient they become

The problem is that while pain is the body’s warning system, that only holds true for acute pain. As we’ve already discussed here and here ongoing pain, like chronic low back pain for example, plays by different rules.

When nerves transmit more signals that contribute to pain, they become better at what they do. By letting pain ramp up you are actually letting your nerves be more active, for longer periods of time. Your body “gets better” at transmitting signals that contribute to pain. You know the saying ‘practice makes perfect’? I don’t think pain is something we want to perfect.

To take a painkiller or not, that is the question

With what I have learned I can now make more educated choices. Either I tolerate pain and let the nerves improve at transmitting signals related to pain…or just take a ‘painkiller’ to limit how active these nerves become. From now on, I choose to prevent these nerves from becoming over-achievers.

Now, I know some ongoing pain doesn’t go away just by taking a painkiller. When medication doesn’t affect pain, that is a good sign that nerve signals are not driving the pain. You know what else is involved? The brain, but I’ll leave it to our science team to explain that.

Are you ready for a new kind of pain management program?

If you are ready to challenge your understanding of ongoing pain take a look at our approach to pain management. Not only will we provide you with thought provoking facts about pain, we’ll also give you mindfulness meditations and positive psychology to build on that set of coping skills that makes pain management work in the best possible way. You can access the Aivo pain management program through our pain app. Just click the buttons below to get started!

And don’t forget to check out the rest of our blog posts. We have plenty of interesting information about the science of ongoing pain and pain management.