Nearly 1 in 5 American adults experience chronic pain. Pain can make it hard for you to work, sleep, and take care of yourself. What’s more, it can affect how you have fun and ruin your quality of life.

If pain is a regular part of your life, you may need to consult a pain management doctor. Depending on the cause and type of pain, healthcare providers will work with you to create a pain management plan that improves your wellbeing.

Below are some services offered by a pain management doctor that can help you improve your quality of life.

1. Drug Therapy

Pain medicines can help you manage chronic pain and other types of pain. While over-the-counter medicines can be effective, it’s important to visit pain management doctors for safe drug prescriptions. Some prescription medicines used to treat pain include:

Corticosteroids

They offer relief for inflamed parts of the body by easing redness, swelling, itching, and allergic reactions. Examples are prednisone, methylprednisolone, and prednisolone.

Opioids

Mostly used for acute pain like short-term pain after surgery. Some examples of opioids include fentanyl, codeine, morphine, and oxycodone.

Antidepressants

They can treat pain and emotional conditions by altering levels of neurotransmitters in the brain. They are usually available over-the-counter.

Anticonvulsants

While they’re often used to treat seizure disorders, some of these medications can treat pain as well. They should be prescribed by your physician.

NSAIDs

Depending on your pain condition, NSAIDs are prescribed in different doses. They relieve pain and reduce inflammation.

2. TENS

TENS is also referred to as transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation. It utilizes electrical stimulation to help reduce pain. During the procedure, AZ pain doctors deliver low-voltage electrical current through electrodes placed on your skin near the source of pain.

The electricity from the electrodes stimulates the nerves in an affected area to block the transmission of pain signals. What’s more, TENs stimulate the production of endorphins, which are your body’s natural painkillers.

TENS is not painful and may be an effective therapy to treat conditions such as osteoarthritis, fibromyalgia, diabetic neuropathy, and more.

3. Injections

Pain injections can deliver medication directly to the part of your body that generates pain. This means they may provide pain relief compared to oral medications. Commonly administered injections for pain by pain management doctors are:

• Epidural and cortisone injections: Both contain a corticosteroid, an anesthetic, and a saline solution
• Trigger point injections: They target muscles that contain trigger points and irritate the nerves around them
• Selective nerve root block injections: Target a specific spinal nerve to offer relief
• Facet joint injections: Offer pain relief stemming from a specific facet joint
• Sacroiliac (SI) joint injections: Provides relief for pain that starts from the SI joint—connecting the spine to the pelvis

4. Alternative Therapies

Some doctors for pain management use alternative therapy to offer relief. These treatments for pain are often used in place of conventional medicine. Alternative therapy encompasses a variety of disciplines, including:

Mind-Body Therapies

Your mind and emotions play an important role in how you experience pain. If you are living with chronic pain, stress and depression tend to amplify your perception of pain. Your brain can continue sending out pain signals, even though they aren’t needed.

Mind-body therapies may focus on using the body to relax the mind. This can help reduce discomfort associated with chronic pain. These therapies include meditation, relaxation techniques, yoga, hypnosis, CBT, and more.

Therapeutic Touch and Reiki Healing

This alternative pain management treatment can help activate your self-healing processes, reducing pain. It is administered by a softer touch compared to the deep pressure applied during massages.

Acupuncture

Acupuncture involves the placing of very thin needles through your skin at specific points on your body. It can help decrease pain by increasing the release of endorphins.

Pain management doctors often use it as an accompanying treatment for many pain-related conditions. These include headache, tennis elbow, menstrual cramps, low back pain, and more.

Chiropractic Treatment and Massage

Chiropractic treatment and massage can provide patients with a multitude of benefits. They can help to relieve pain, accelerate healing and improve your overall health and well-being.

5. Surgery

When standard medicines, therapy, and alternative pain treatments fail to offer adequate pain relief, your Arizona pain management doctor may recommend surgery. It’s often used as a last resort. Mostly it involves the placement of surgical implants to control pain.

Here are the types of surgical implants pain management doctors use:

Intrathecal Drug Delivery

Also known as spinal drug delivery systems or infusion pain pumps. It involves making pockets under your skin that are big enough to hold a medicine pump and the insertion of a catheter.

The catheter helps transports pain medicine like morphine from the pump to the intrathecal space around the spinal cord. This can offer pain relief.

Spinal Cord Stimulation Implants

In this procedure, a device that delivers low-level electrical signals which block pain signals is surgically implanted in your body. You will use a remote control to turn the current on and off or to adjust the intensity of the signals.

How to Choose a Pain Management Doctor

Choosing an Arizona pain management doctor is one of the most important decisions you can make. To help guide you, the following are a few tips designed to get you to the right doctors for pain management.

Ask Your Primary Care Physician for a Referral

When looking for a pain management doctor, a good starting point is consulting your physician. They can recommend a qualified colleague they work closely with who specializes in dealing with pain conditions.

Research

You can also look for reliable information about pain management doctors online. There are a lot of online directories that allow you to search both by location and specialty.

Also, research the pain doctor’s credentials. This will help you find out if they have the necessary training, skills, and experience to provide pain treatment.

Get Help from Pain Support Groups

Pain support forums are a great way to get information about pain management doctors. These groups have people who have been through what you are going through now and can offer valid recommendations.

Know What Your Insurance Covers

Your insurance coverage is a practical matter when seeking health services. To avoid paying out-of-pocket for your care, select a pain management doctor who participates in your plan.

Consult with Top-Rated Pain Management Doctors in Arizona

Looking for qualified treatments for pain? Look no further than AZ Pain Doctors. Our certified pain management doctor will first determine a diagnosis for your pain before prescribing personalized treatments.

Schedule an appointment today for a consultation.

Although chronic pain can make you feel very alone, this isn't the case. One in five Americans is living with chronic pain and each of them has to find ways to navigate their lives through it and manage it well.

Chronic pain management is fortunately very possible if you know how to do it. It just requires being aware of what lifestyle and treatment choices can help you.

Wondering how to manage chronic pain? Let's take a look at the best ways.

1. Stay Active

Staying active is one of the best methods of managing chronic pain. Although you should take great care if your pain is due to an injury (and never do anything that might make the root cause of the pain worse), staying gently active will keep your body in good shape which can reduce the pain overall.

Although it's easy to spend most of your time lying down thinking about the pain, something is better than nothing. Even going for a short walk every day could make all the difference.

2. Live a Healthy Lifestyle

More than anyone else, someone trying to manage chronic pain should try to live a healthy lifestyle. While it may be unrealistic to expect a person never to indulge, overall healthy practices will reduce the risk of things getting worse (or causing more pain).

Some healthy lifestyle tips include:

• Eating a balanced diet and reducing your intake of junk food
• Drinking lots of water to stay hydrated
• Reducing alcohol intake
• Quit smoking

The diet is especially important, as the right foods can help you boost your immune system which, in turn, can help you fight pain.

3. Track Daily

One of the best chronic pain management tactics that people often forget about is to keep a daily journal.

It doesn't have to be very detailed but every day, you should write down your level of pain along with a quick note about what you did that day — perhaps your activity, how you slept, and what you ate.

When you look back on the journal entries, you might be able to establish patterns. Your chronic pain might be worse, for example, if you eat certain foods or don't get enough sleep. This will tell you what to focus on to lessen the pain because you'll be able to see what you can do that makes it better.

4. Find Ways to Distract Yourself

Although it's easier said than done, the last thing you want to do is focus on the pain. This can make things so much worse as you'll get stuck in a vicious cycle of never thinking about anything else, meaning the pain will also feel worse.

Finding ways to distract yourself is key and it's very individual. Whether you're best distracted by a good Netflix show or spending time with friends and family, try to find things to do that don't involve focusing on the pain.

Meditation can also help with this, as it teaches you mindful thinking and you can focus your attention elsewhere, away from the pain.

5. Get Good Sleep

Sleep problems affect between 50-70 million Americans and are very common but for those with chronic pain, this can be more than an inconvenience — it can be detrimental.

Studies have shown that poor sleep increases the risk of pain, so it's important to do what you can to get some good rest, including:

• Prioritizing going to bed early
• Sleeping in when you can
• Minimizing screentime before bed
• Taking a hot shower before bed
• Trying meditation to relax

If you're struggling to get a good night's sleep, you can also talk to your doctor about getting medication to help. They may be able to prescribe something mild that can let you drift off so you don't have to toss and turn all night.

6. See a Chiropractor

When many people think of getting help for pain, they think of traditional medicine like surgery and painkillers. While those things have a lot of value in many situations, chiropractors can also be a huge help.

They address the root problem rather than masking the symptoms, adjusting your body so you can feel better, sleep better, and experience less pain.

This is especially true for those with back and neck pain, but a chiropractor can help many people. Look around in your area for one with good reviews and lots of experience.

7. See a Pain Specialist

Pain management services are invaluable to those who suffer from chronic pain. Many doctors specialize in both managing the pain and addressing the root cause. Treatments other than chiropractic methods may include:

• Epidural injections
• Acupuncture
• Muscle relaxers
• Spinal cord stimulation

Although people may be nervous about going to a doctor or have given up and believe that pain specialists can't make a difference, they most certainly can. These professionals have been working with a variety of different cases and understand that no two people are unique.

A good pain management doctor will find the right treatment plan for you and help you towards a pain-free life.

This Is How to Manage Chronic Pain

When it comes to how to manage chronic pain, it's very individual. While one tactic may work well for someone, it might not be good for someone else, and it's really about knowing what works for you.

Still, you can't go wrong with staying active (where safe), living a healthy lifestyle, getting good sleep, and seeking the help of a professional.

Looking for Arizona pain specialists? Schedule an appointment at AZ Pain Doctors and work with one of the top pain management specialists today.