For many arthritis sufferers, winter is the worst season of the year. They spend a lot of time visiting with their pain management doctors trying to get a handle on how they feel when temperatures drop and snow starts flying. While visiting with your healthcare provider is good, there are also things you can do in between visits.
Our pain clinics are staffed by trained professionals more than willing to help you manage ongoing arthritis pain. We offer the sound advice, knowledge, and treatment options you need to take control of your healthcare so that pain doesn't control you. With all that said, keep reading to learn some easy ways to manage arthritis pain during the uncomfortable winter months:
For many people, cold temperatures are a trigger for arthritis pain. As temperatures drop, they experience more pain. What can you do? For starters, dress warmly. Wear long, heavy pants along with heavier shirts and sweaters.
It is also important to dress in layers. Layers provide more warmth while also allowing you to modify your temperature and comfort level by adding or reducing clothing. When you go outdoors, make sure to add an extra layer to protect your body against the cold.
Arthritis pain can be exacerbated when there isn't enough soft tissue support around the affected joint. An easy way to add support is to wrap the affected joint or use some sort of brace. Elastic sleeves and bandages are two very good options. If you suffer from arthritis in your knees, you can purchase knee braces online or at your local pharmacy.
In addition to providing extra support, these sorts of products also help to keep the joint warm. You win on both counts.
This next tip is one that seems counterintuitive. As our pain management physicians can tell you, there is a temptation among arthritis sufferers to avoid exercise because it causes pain. But here's the dirty little secret: a lack of exercise ultimately makes arthritis pain worse.
Regular exercise keeps arthritic joints looser and more limber. It also strengthens muscles, ligaments, and tendons, thereby providing arthritic joints extra support. One of the best things you can do for arthritis pain during the winter is maintain a moderate exercise regimen.
Did you know that certain types of foods can either aggravate or reduce arthritis pain? It's true. If the winter months are difficult for you, talk with your healthcare provider about modifying your diet to include more of those types of foods that can reduce inflammation, improve circulation, etc.
Combining a healthy diet with moderate exercise can really make a difference. Exercise strengthens your joints while a good diet gives your body the fuel it needs to deal with the causes of pain more effectively.
This final tip involves consulting with your healthcare provider. To get through the winter more comfortably, practice good med management based on a treatment plan you and your provider come up with together.
We would go one step further by encouraging you to team up with a healthcare provider open to the possibilities of plant-based medicine. As its name suggests, plant-based medicine is a more natural way to approach pain management. With the right plant-based meds and traditional treatments, you can manage arthritis pain effectively.
Winter is a fact of life here in Utah. While it is a season that arthritis sufferers don't necessarily appreciate, it can still be at enjoyed with the help of a pain management physician and the tips offered in this post.
A recent poll from the University of Michigan's Institute for Healthcare Policy and Innovation suggests that American adults, particularly those between the ages of 50 and 80, do not fully understand pain treatment options. The poll focused heavily on arthritis pain, but the results could probably be extrapolated to cover nearly all types of pain.
As we have discussed in other blog posts, pain is an ongoing problem in the U.S. When pain is minor and merely inconvenient, we can deal with it until it goes away. But what about more serious pain? What about chronic pain that threatens to be a life-long problem?
Pain clinics exist to help patients manage their pain and find relief. Likewise, pain medicine is a specialty designed to treat pain in a way that internal medicine and primary care cannot. But could it be that we aren't utilizing pain clinics to their full potential? The poll would seem to suggest that.
The poll was designed to query a sample of Americans between the ages of 50 and 80 about their experiences with arthritis pain. The poll was conducted between January and February 2022. Here are some of the things it revealed:
In addition, 74% said they believed arthritis and joint pain are a normal part of aging. Approximately 80% were at least somewhat confident they could manage arthritis pain on their own. Interestingly, about 18% said that there is nothing they can do to alleviate joint pain symptoms.
Respondents cited a number of medications they use to manage arthritis pain. Over the counter nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) were the most cited at 66%. Others reported using steroid-based medications, non-opioid pain medications, and alternative pain treatment options including substances like glucosamine and chondroitin.
The most interesting aspect of this part of the study was the role doctors played in helping their patients understand the risks of the medications they were taking. Only 40% of the respondents were confident their doctors had discussed medication risks. A stunning 53% reported having no such discussions with their providers.
We could continue dissecting poll data to fill out the rest of this post, but let us get to the point: the data clearly indicates that arthritis patients don't fully understand their treatment options. They are given many options but few answers. This is not good.
Living with chronic arthritis pain is bad enough by itself. But not knowing how to find relief from that pain makes an already uncomfortable condition worse. Patients need answers. They want answers.
Unfortunately, we are in this position because of the way traditional medicine approaches pain management. Western practitioners look at pain as a symptom to be treated. The only treatments they will recommend are those deemed scientific in nature. Western medical science completely dismisses plant-based medicine and other ancient treatments because there are no scientific documents to back them up. That's a mistake.
Both plant-based and holistic medicine have a long history of helping people manage a full range of medical conditions – including pain. Not only that, but plant-based medicine is also a more natural approach that doesn't carry with it the same risks that come with traditional medicine.
Our pain clinics exist to help patients find relief and manage their pain over the long term. That notwithstanding, it would appear as though patients do not fully understand their treatment options. That needs to change.
The patients who visit our pain clinics come from all walks of life. But they all have one thing in common: the desire to feel better. What would you say if we told you there was a secret to it? Would you be skeptical? Well, as it turns out, there actually is a secret: individualized care plans.
When patients work with their pain management physicians to create a customized treatment plan, good things happen. Individualized plans take into account a full range of circumstances that impact how patients feel. That is the big thing.
Real-world medicine teaches doctors things they don't learn in medical school. One of the first lessons they learn after school is that there is no such thing as a one-size-fits-all patient. Moreover, that model patient described by all the medical school educational materials doesn't exist.
So, if there's no one-size-fits-all patient, why do so many healthcare providers and clinics take a one-size-fits-all approach to treatment? Sadly, it is because that's how our healthcare system is set up.
Western medicine is often more about efficiency and productivity than actual healing. We have taken what was a highly individualized concept and turned it into assembly-line medicine. And when we do that, we eliminate the possibility of customized treatment plans.
KindlyMD pain clinics are built from the ground up on the individualized treatment philosophy. We believe it is important that our providers and patients work together to come up with flexible and adaptable treatment plans for feeling better.
Your individualized care plan would look different compared to your neighbor's. How different? That depends on how different the two of you are as people. But that is the whole point. You and your neighbor:
It is very easy for a provider to tap a single treatment and say it is the best way to address chronic joint pain. It's an entirely different matter to recommend that single treatment to a hundred patients and observe the same results among all of them. In the real world, medicine is just not that simple.
Interestingly, one of the hallmarks of an individualized care plan is variety. A well-developed plan almost always includes a combination of treatments designed to address the different aspects of the patient's pain.
Our particular approach combines the best of traditional and plant-based medicine. We also take a holistic approach to pain management, preferring to treat the entire patient rather than just a single symptom. Combining traditional and plant-based medicines with sound advice, we help patients take control of their care plans and lives.
If it seems like individual care plans are more about the patient than anything else, you've hit the nail right on the head. Individualized care is all about you. That's the whole point. It is about figuring out what makes you feel better so that the right strategies can be implemented.
An ideal treatment scenario guarantees that you remain in control. You work with your pain management physician to come up with a combination of traditional meds, plant-based meds, and lifestyle enhancements capable of helping you find relief.
That's what we strive for here at KindlyMD. We strive to help each and every patient find relief through personalized treatment that includes a combination of medications and lifestyle enhancements. By customizing treatment to each individual, we are able to accommodate the built-in differences between patients. Doing so is the secret to feeling better.
Car accidents take an incredible toll on the human body. Even seemingly minor accidents can result in bumps, bruises, lacerations, and so forth. Whiplash is another big concern. Needless to say, pain can be a long-lasting consequence of a car accident. Should victims seek out pain management treatment following a car accident?
Anyone involved in a car accident should get medical help as soon as it's safe and practical to do so. There are a number of reasons for this:
In relation to pain management, it may not be something you seek out within the first few hours after an accident. But it may be something to seriously consider within the first couple of days.
Car accidents have lots of consequences. What few people realize, until it actually happens to them, is that injuries resulting from car accidents can cause pain that lingers for weeks, months, or even years. We have seen plenty of patients in our Utah pain clinics looking for help managing chronic pain after a car accident.
Ideally, a pain management physician wants to help the patient find full and complete relief. In many cases, full relief is eventually realized. Nevertheless, there are just as many cases in which pain lingers for the rest of the patient's life. Pain management becomes critically important.
For this reason alone, it is important to consider visiting a pain clinic if you don't begin feeling better within a few days of having an accident. There may be lingering issues that need to be addressed in ways your GP or family doctor didn't consider.
Pain management is also called for when car accident injuries dramatically alter daily life. For example, perhaps you suffered a back injury that continues to cause lingering pain. That pain is preventing you from living the life you lived prior to the accident.
A well-conceived pain management plan could change that. A good plan could eliminate your pain altogether. And if not, it should at least enable you to resume some of your normal activities to help you live a more normal life.
It would be inappropriate for us to promise a pain-free life after a few visits to one of our pain clinics. That's just not realistic. But our goal for pain management is to help you do what you can, when you can. Our approach is built on our belief in plant-based medicine and the holistic model of treating the whole person.
We do believe there is a place for traditional medicine in helping manage pain, especially pain resulting from car accidents. But we also believe that combining traditional medicine with its plant-based counterpart is the best way to approach long-term pain management.
If you are ever involved in a car accident, no matter how minor, get things squared away with the police and any other drivers and then get to your doctor. The sooner you are evaluated, the sooner any necessary treatments can begin.
Effectively addressing lingering pain may be something your GP or family doctor isn't equipped to do. We encourage you to visit one of our Utah pain clinics. Our pain management physicians are specialists in this particular area. They can help you chart a pain relief path moving forward.
Pain is a very real problem for people around the world. We all experience it from time to time, but there are some people whose lives are defined by it: chronic pain that can be debilitating at times. Enter America's pain clinics and plant-based medicine. They exist to help people take their lives back by managing pain effectively.
From our point of view, it is important that pain clinics consider plant-based medicine. For too long Western medicine has relied exclusively on prescription medications that may or may not work well. We all know what that has led to: the overprescribing of potentially harmful drugs like opioid painkillers.
CDC data shows that 20% of American adults have experienced chronic pain. That amounts to just over 50 million people. Below are the top three reasons we think those patients ought to have an opportunity to investigate plant-based medicine via their pain clinics:
Long before Western medicine became a thing, plant-based medicine was the only way to treat injury, illness, and disease. Healers and physicians have been relying on plant-based medicines since the earliest days of humanity. Simply put, plant-based medicine has history behind it.
Unfortunately, Western medicine stresses written documentation so heavily that healthcare providers and government regulators have a challenging time considering anything that hasn't been tested in a Western lab. That is unfortunate. Plant-based cures of all types have withstood the test of time even though they've never been investigated by pharmaceutical companies or government researchers.
Despite the positive characteristics of Western medicine, one of its biggest negatives is that it has effectively wiped out our understanding of ancient, traditional treatments and techniques. Scientific papers have replaced oral traditions to the extent that we are conditioned to mistrust anything that isn't Western medicine. Again, that is a shame.
Plant-based medicine is more natural medicine. Before you shrug that off as being unimportant, consider this fact: human beings are part of nature. We are not separate from it. All of nature is designed to work in balance – that includes humanity just as much as it does plants, animals, etc.
A plant-based approach is one that seeks to utilize what nature supplies. It doesn't completely exclude synthetic medications, but it does encourage looking at plant-based options first. It encourages sticking with nature whenever possible.
The biggest reason of all to consider plant-based medicine in pain clinics is its more holistic approach. Plant-based practitioners look for ways to treat the whole mind and body as a single entity rather than separate the physical nature of pain from everything else.
This is why you often hear plant-based practitioners discuss more than just pain. They talk about pain in relation to things like anxiety, lack of sleep, and one's overall outlook on life. There are so many things that affect how people feel. It just makes sense to treat pain holistically rather than isolate it as a single symptom and attempt to mask it with prescription medications.
Do not misunderstand. Prescription medications do have a place at the table. The same goes for certain types of Western treatments one might consider invasive. But there's also room at the table for plant-based medicine. There is more than enough room for pain clinics to consider a more natural approach to pain management.
That's what we're all about at KindlyMD. We believe there are better ways to reduce and manage pain than simply writing a prescription. If you are looking for a better way to feel better, consider a visit to any of our pain clinics.
