Pain management is the key to the preservation and improvement of the quality of life of people who are suffering from chronic pain. It is a fact that pain medications, whether prescription or over-the-counter, have numerous side effects, complications and health risks. That is the reason why people have become hesitant and quite fearful to take over-the-counter drugs. To address this concern, non-stop research and new discoveries on pain treatment and pain management are being made every day in the quest to find more effective ways of treating and handling pain without doing too harm to the body.
A patient must also do his part in order to manage his pain effectively. He must find for himself a suitable pain management treatment by finding out what works best for him. The success or failure of a pain management treatment varies from one patient to another as there is no one pain treatment that will work on all types of pain. There is always a possibility that a certain treatment or technique may work for one but may not work for others.
There are different kinds of pain management treatments and techniques. These include pain medications which reduce or eliminate pain almost immediately. These are either prescription medication or over-the-counter medication. There are also alternative treatments and therapies such as exercise, hydrotherapy or warm water therapy, massage therapy, acupuncture, relaxation, hypnosis, application of transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation or TENS, and surgery.
A study made by Stanford University students introduces yet another alternative pain management technique with the aid of magnetic resonance imaging or MRI. The study revealed that when real-time images of their brain scans were shown to persons who were in pain, these images made it possible for them modify or change the way they felt their pain.
In the experiment, each person was told to focus his attention on a painless part of his body; to treat and visualise pain as something neutral and not as something that is agonizing; to think of the pain intensity and treat it as either high or low; and to be in full control of the pain at all times and not the other way around.
During the session, each person could see the real-time behavior of his brain. The MRI images showed the actual reactions occurring in the brain of the participant. By seeing the brain reactions, especially those corresponding to pain, the participants were able to learn how to control these reactions by applying the instructions given to them beforehand. Since it is always easier to control things which can be seen, the participants in the experiment were actually able to control the degree of pain that they felt only by using the power of the mind.
The results of the experiment will still have to be supplemented by further studies and testing before it can be used as a tool in pain management.
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