I know someone with chronic pain in their neck. They will sometimes have low, moderate pain, and then somedays they say that the pain feels like needles are in their neck. One unhealthy way to cope with chronic pain is called passive coping. With passive coping, the person avoids the problem and tries to escape from the pain. With this coping, there are reports of more depression, greater pain, and their flare-up activity is worse than before. Another unhealthy way to deal with chronic pain is to stop drinking and smoking. These types of coping habits are not the best because when you smoke, it decreases the effects of your nervous system. Then with alcohol increases inflammation in the body because it increases inflammatory particles in the bloodstream, which can make your symptoms for chronic pain worse. Last, you do not want to be unhealthy with your diet. For a person with chronic pain, some foods or drinks can make it worse and have it a flare-up. For example, gout is caused by high protein-based foods or shellfish.
Some healthy ways to help treat chronic pain is to reduce your stress level in everyday life. If a person stays stress, it can activate the adrenal glands to release a hormone that is like adrenaline. When this is released, it starts a negative feedback loop that will reinforce the chronic pain you previously had. Another way to treat it is by being more physically active. This will improve your quality of life and distract you from the pain. Lastly, adding supplements to your diet can help. This helps because it can give your immune system a boost, which can help your body control pain flare-ups.
Next, you have the possibility of gene therapy to help get rid of the pain, possibly. Scientists have found out by cutting out specific NOP-coding genes in the amygdala. Although, in one of their final experiments in “Nociceptin: Nature’s Balm for the Stressed Brain,” the scientists injected nociception into the rat’s central amygdala. This helped reduce stress in the rats and better behavior in the rats that had it injected into the amygdala.
Lastly, you have psychological factors that can influence your pain perception. I think that psychological factors make a significant impact on pain perception. I believe that if a person goes into a treatment of some sort and is thinking that it is going to be painful, it is worse than it is. I also believe that it has a significant impact on feeling pain when you’re not even hurt. An example of that would be a husband and his wife going into labor and then passing out of pain when he was not giving birth. Another example would be the study that the kids who said they had no control over pain experienced more intense pain than the kids who said they could control pain. These prove that psychological factors do play a role in pain perception.
Sources:
TED-Ed. The mysterious science of pain - Joshua W. Pate. TED. https://ed.ted.com/lessons/the-mysterious-science-of-pain-joshua-w-pate.
Nociceptin: Nature's Balm for the Stressed Brain. Nociceptin: Nature's Balm for the Stressed Brain | Scripps Research. https://www.scripps.edu/news-and-events/press-room/2014/20140108roberto.html.
Büssing, A., Ostermann, T., Neugebauer, E. A. M., & Heusser, P. (2010, August 20). Adaptive coping strategies in patients with chronic pain conditions and their interpretation of disease. BMC public health. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2936426/.
15 Coping Tips for Living Easily With Chronic Pain - Page 4 of 16. SimplyHealth.io. (2019, October 30). https://simplyhealth.io/15-coping-tips-for-living-easily-with-chronic-pain/4/.