Coping With Chronic Pain

When I'm treating a woman coping with any kind of chronic pain condition, I'm always struck by one thing: How the pain affects her entire life.

It's not just the physical ramifications of pain itself (i.e., you have low back pain so digging in the garden is out), but the way pain and the medication used to treat it saps your energy and strength.

I mention this because I'm about to recommend several lifestyle-related changes that may help with your pain. However, they are not for everyone. For instance, I know several women whose partners keep telling them to just get off the couch and exercise and their pain will disappear. And while it's true that physical activity is an excellent coping mechanism, sometimes the pain is simply too great for this to be an option.

What I don't want is for you to beat yourself up if you find you can't manage some of these recommendations. However, keep in mind that finding the right kind of medication or surgical treatment might be enough to enable you to try. And the combination of approaches-medical and lifestyle-may work better than any single approach for pain relief.

While there are numerous non-medical approaches to treat pain, including complementary medicine therapies like yoga, massage and acupuncture, some basic activities of daily living can also play a role. These include:

Diet. The impact of diet on pain rests on the fact that inflammation is a major cause of pain. So, the theory goes, if you can reduce the production of inflammatory chemicals in the body, you can reduce the pain.

For instance, studies find that certain antioxidants such as glutathione can help tissue recover from inflammation. One study found that supplementing with the nutrient n-acetyl-cystine, a precursor to glutathione, can reduce pain from nerve damage.