Conservative Treatment of Pain
We will design a treatment plan that takes your individual needs and preferences into consideration. We believe in a conservative approach whenever possible, so this plan will often contain multiple approaches to provide pain relief and improve your quality of life and may include:
- Physical therapy
- Manual therapy, exercise instruction, soft tissue massage, cupping, dry needling
- Non-opioid pain medication and topical pain relievers
- Safe use of opioids when indicated
- Lifestyle guidance for pain management
- Pain psychology services to address mindfulness and other pain control options
- Trigger point and other office-based injections
Sleep and Pain
We know that getting enough sleep is very important to general overall physical and mental health. It is also very important component of your pain management. Sleep is interrupted by pain, which lessens the quality of your sleep and its ability to help restore you to better health. We know that interrupted sleep also makes you more sensitive to pain and lowers your pain threshold on a neurological level. Our team of providers will discuss important sleep topics, including sleep hygiene, relaxation strategies, home remedies and medications when necessary. With your input, we will design a specific sleep treatment plan for you. You may also want to learn skills such as calming the mind, learning how to break worry loops and other cognitive behavioral and mindfulness strategies to assist with improving the quality and restorative power of your sleep.
Exercise
Exercise can improve your overall physical health, reduce anxiety and depression, reduce inflammation, and improve sleep quality, and as a result be a good stress and pain management tool. Our team of providers will work to utilize physical therapies, medication management when needed, diet and supplements, and other means to assist you in achieving the highest level of exercise possible. Even low-level stretching, walking or stationary cycling and minimal core exercise can have a very positive effect on your sense of well being and management of pain. There should ideally be a balance of strength, endurance and flexibility.
Physical Therapy
There are many components to physical therapy and other therapies that employ some of these strategies such as chiropractic, osteopathic manual therapy, massage, Rolfing, and other therapeutic arts. Manual therapy consists of the use of maneuvers to free up joint motion or expand the range of motion through tight and painful tendons, muscles, or joints. Soft tissue massage, cupping, dry needling, and other techniques are useful in working on relaxing, lengthening or freeing movement up in muscle, tendon and joint capsules. It is then also very important to rebalance the muscles in terms of strength, flexibility, and the proper timing of the muscle firing for joint and spine protection and the normalization of function. This muscle retraining is one specialty of physical therapists. The physical therapists at the Denver Spine and Pain Institute are experts in providing all levels of restoration of joint mobility, muscle function and helping you get back to the activities you enjoy.
Pain Psychology
The injuries and inflammation that cause pain also cause changes in the brain, called neuroinflammation. Neuroinflammation not only makes pain worse, but worsens or even causes symptoms of anxiety, depression, PTSD and lessons your quality of life. We also know that certain thought patterns, social stressors, as well as lack of sleep and exercise worsen these brain, neuroinflammation, and behavioral problems which leads to a worsening of pain. Science has also learned about the ability of our brains to adapt and change in response to good or bad stimuli. The brain is adaptable and is called neuroplasticity. This adaptation can be a negative one in response to chronic pain and poor behavioral responses to pain. One advantage of working with a pain psychologist is that your work with them helps to change these negative neural circuits back towards more positive and normal neural circuits, or wiring. They may use strategies such as:
- Instructing you in proper relaxation techniques
- Sleep hygiene
- Cognitive behavioral therapy
All of these modalities can help reduce your pain and move you towards restoring normal function and mood. This ultimately leads to a better quality of life. Speaking with a pain psychologist about these and many other pain treatment options can be an important component of your pain management plan. We work closely with Joy Simpson, LPC of MindYourPain, who is a member of our Connected Care Approach™ team, as well as other psychologists in the community and are happy to work with your psychological care provider, if you already have one. We believe that this is an important component of a well-rounded, holistic care approach.