Everyone deals with pain at one time or another. Perhaps you’ve temporarily suffered from a cluster or tension headache, or a muscle spasm.
Pain that lasts for two months or longer can be called Chronic Pain. Chronic Pain, often stress-related, can feel like it is bodily pain, localized or generalized, but mostly it’s generated by misfiring pain circuits in the brain. For some, the cause is arthritis or other health condition, such as Fibromyalgia, a muscular-skeletal disorder, often causing pain receptors to go into hyperdrive. Ignoring this kind of pain can have dangerous consequences, and can lead to many other problems, such as:
- Impact your daily activities
- Sleep disturbance, disruption of regular eating habits
- Make it difficult to focus
- Can lead to Anxiety and Depression
- Detract from quality time with friends and family
Those with Chronic Pain describe symptoms in various ways, as aching, burning, shooting, squeezing, stiffness, stinging, or throbbing. Living with Chronic Pain can be emotionally and physically challenging.
There are various kinds of treatment approaches that can help with pain management:
- Prescription drugs are used to treat several kinds of severe pain, but they can be highly addictive. Users tend to replicate with higher doses to obtain the same desired effect.
- Corticosteroids work by reducing the immune system’s inflammatory response. But there can be various side effects, such as difficulty sleeping, weight gain, high blood sugar.
- Short term counselling may reduce the reaction to chronic pain.
- Physical therapy: various meds including antidepressants are used to treat pain
- Other methods include Yoga, plus EEG Biofeedback, which, it is suggested, should be performed safely by a professional therapist. EEG Biofeedback – Neurofeedback – can alter control of pain by altering connectivity between brain regions, thus bringing lasting changes in neuronal networks.
LENS Neurofeedback is used to treat Fibromyalgia, Chronic Fatigue, Migraine. Biofeedback measures physiological activity (Autonomic Nervous System), which includes heartbeat, breathing, muscle activity, skin temperature – a monitoring system, leading to changes in thinking and emotional control processes.