Managing Your Chronic Pain: How A Specialized Pain Doctor Can Provide Helpful Relief
Everybody deals with pain at some point in their life on a daily basis. It can upend parts of your life or disrupt your daily routines with the favorite things you do. While many people often deal with acute pain that goes away with some minimal treatment, others have to deal with more persistent chronic pain in their lives. Chronic pain can cause more physical discomfort and affect your quality of life, but there are specialists who can provide the much-needed relief you need.
At Pain Doctors Medical, board-certified physician Dr. Ilana Etelzon and her team will help you receive compassionate professional pain management care of the highest quality. We offer a unique approach to relieving each of our patient’s pain conditions and utilize interventional techniques to restore function in the body, with minimal use of medications or painkillers.
If you’re experiencing significant pain on a regular basis, get in touch with us today so that we can start a detailed diagnosis and find the root of your pain condition before offering a solution. Doctors specializing in pain are a unique type of medical professional and we will explain how they can provide assistance for any pain you’re dealing with.
When Should I Visit A Doctor For Pain?
As soon as possible if the pain is really severe and persistent. It can be tricky sometimes to determine whether your pain is serious or not, but if it’s consistent over a long period of time, a doctor’s visit is recommended.
One of the best ways to keep track of your pain and when you should visit a doctor is by keeping a pain journal. It tracks how much pain you feel on a given day and provides your doctors better context and communication for your condition. You can also note how often the pain affects you and how it interferes with normal activities such as sleeping, working, or participating in activities. Writing a journal can help you see what may improve your pain (e.g. prayer, meditation, massage, light stretches) or make it worse (e.g. stress, lack of sleep, poor diet, etc).
Rate your pain on a 0-10 scale in the journal and it can help your doctor spot any recurring patterns for your condition. From 1-3, it can be nagging pain that isn’t much and goes away on its own. From 7-10, this can mean that the pain is so severe that it’s hampering your daily activities.
Having a detailed journal will help your doctor immensely in finding the right pain management solution for you. Rather than provide short-term fixes for pain, specialized pain doctors want to help you find long-term relief.
What Is The Difference Between A Pain Management Doctor And A Pain Medicine Doctor?
A pain management doctor is a specialized medical professional who evaluates your pain and helps treat a wide range of issues related to it. Chronic pain ailments can be relieved through advancements in medicine and science. As such, pain management specialists will often adopt unique solutions for each of their patients. This can be done by using modern tools and medicine to lower the intensity of the pain, diagnose the root cause, and offer long-term solutions that you can use as part of your lifestyle.
On the other hand, a pain medicine doctor is someone who just treats sudden pain problems such as headaches and some types of chronic pain like lower back pain. While their roles are similar to a pain management doctor, pain medicine doctors typically offer a mix of medication-based treatments and procedures to stop any onset of pain. Their assistance is usually short-term and just provides your pain with a quick fix. While these doctors have their uses, a pain management doctor can greatly assist in mitigating any chronic pain you’re dealing with.
Management strategies should be employed when trying to control and relieve any chronic pain. Using painkillers can only do so much temporarily that you’ll need a viable long-term solution to managing your recurring pain.
How Can I Manage My Chronic Pain?
Chronic pain can be managed in a variety of ways and there is no single solution because everyone’s body is different. It may involve multiple disciplines and diverse treatments that can be used to improve the patient’s lifestyle, physical function, and mental well-being. With the right solutions and routine working with a pain management doctor, you can work towards experiencing significant pain reduction in your life.
Examples of some of the things you can do to manage chronic pain include pacing yourself, staying active, stretching, relaxing, and getting much needed sleep on a daily basis.
If you want to explore ways to mitigate any chronic pain you’ve been experiencing, contact Pain Doctors Medical at 718-682-3686 to book an appointment and speak with Dr. Etelzon today. Work with our team now to get started on managing your pain more effectively.
