When it comes to chronic aches and pains, there are many factors that can cause this. However, there is also a lot that you can do to alleviate common aches and pains. Whether it is a sore back or achy knee that gets you first thing in the morning, these simple tips can make a big difference in how you feel and tackle your day.
- Improve your pain threshold – Our bodies take a daily beating and sometimes you can have a good day where you may feel a little tired and others when everything hurts. Why is this? Your pain threshold can actually fluctuate quite a bit daily and everyone’s pain threshold is slightly different. A pain threshold is where the stimuli of inflammation and daily trauma to an area have elevated to a point where certain pain receptors are triggered. Many factors go into lowering your pain threshold, including lack of adequate sleep, poor nutrition, stress levels and breathing. By simply improving these factors, you can restore your pain threshold and thus not trigger pain receptors when doing daily activities.
- Stay hydrated – If you are thirsty, then your body is actually quite deprived of water. You should never feel thirsty, because you should be drinking water many times throughout the day. When you are properly hydrated, your tissues are lubricated and can perform more daily tasks, with less trauma. Water also flushes out the daily metabolic wastes that are produced. A build up of metabolic wastes can occur when an area is under stress or injured. This in turn will cause pain.
- Calm yourself – Your body has a self-regulating system called the autonomic nervous system. There are two parts to this, the sympathetic (fight or flight) and parasympathetic (more calming, digestion, reproduction, etc.). In our daily lives, we are under tremendous stress and pressure. This keeps our sympathetic nervous system on overdrive. You can’t keep an engine at high RPM all the time and not expect parts to start breaking. One of the simplest things you can do to de-stress is to breathe. Take time in the evening, to lie on your bed and just take deep breathes in for 6 seconds and out for 8. Place your hand on your upper abdomen to make sure that you are using your diaphragm muscle.
- Be physically active – staying physically active helps improve blood flow, lymphatic flow, endorphin levels, serotonin levels and more. However, for many people, knowing where to start or exercising with an old injury or pain can be a daunting task. It doesn’t have to be this way and physical therapists are the true medical physical experts to turn to.
Try these simple tips to quickly relieve your pain and get back on the road to good health. If you have questions about how to help restore pain free movement with activities, call Total Care Physical Therapy today and speak to one of our physical therapists.
