Wellness Wednesday is sponsored by Intermountain Health
“Did you know that about 20% of the population actually suffers from chronic pain?"
The funny thing about pain awareness, the people experiencing pain are aware of it, but maybe not of possible solutions. And all of us should understand what the people around us are facing.
“If you've ever been in pain, you realize that pain does impact your life, and it seems like in every aspect, mentally, physically, and so it's important to understand that when pain's there with you on a daily basis. It does impact you. It impacts your function. What you're able to do. It actually may cause anxiety, depression, anger, lack of energy,” said Kim Compagni, Assistant Vice President of Pain Management Services at Intermountain Health.
She said, “Typically, if you fall down, you injure yourself, you have pain immediately. That's what we call acute pain. That's kind of that short-term pain, and usually that tends to go away as you as you heal. But the chronic pain is the one that's persistent, specifically, like we say, usually about three months or longer.”
September is pain awareness month. It’s a subject important well beyond medical settings because our strongest drugs for pain also cause tens of thousands of American deaths each year. A population wide crisis with solutions that have to be individual.
“We really are trying to move away from the focus being on opioids for pain, because we have so many safer alternatives,” said Compagni.
Topping the list of alternatives…therapy. Both physical and behavioral.
“I think we need to take a holistic approach really look at how does pain and the psychology, how do those intersect? At Intermountain Health, we're really focused on the combination of those two, realizing that the brain associates those pathways very closely together,” said Compagni. “Also, we look at physical therapy and exercise as just great ways to improve function for patients with suffering pain from pain.”
Nutrition plays a role, and non-opioid medicine. But it doesn’t mean opioids are off the table.
“If an opioid does need to be used or is prescribed, it's always good to speak up and say is this really necessary for me?” said Compagni.
Sometimes the answer is yes, which leads to a piece of advice about the drug can reverse an opioid overdose.
“Naloxone is a medication that's great for everybody to have on hand. In fact, we recommend that everybody has that on hand in part of their first aid kit, said Compagni.
Naloxone is easy to get now, and if you get some the best thing that can happen is you don’t ever use it. It is available over the counter - just ask your local pharmacy.
