ON THE BENEFITS OF PAIN

Pain is a pest, to say the least,

Yet it’s a signal of disease, 

A red alert and even more,

A cry for help you can’t ignore

 "The crying baby" inside us

Pain may come at any moment. A burning, searing, shooting pain in the foot, in the arm, or the back, may last for ages. Now it seems it has retreated a bit - just to come back with a vengeance and demand all your attention like a crying baby. The only thing you want is to get rid of it once and for all.

Pain may also be seen as a baby's cry. This baby is our body.

A baby is of course sacred. You should not be angry or aggressive with a baby. Pain, on the other hand, seems like pure evil that should be dealt with as soon as possible. Yet pain may also be seen as a baby's cry. This baby is our body. When it feels a lack of love and care, when it suffers from thirst or hunger, it whines softly, then starts pestering us with complaints, and finally starts to moan - making us moan as well.

This simple truth is not that easy to grasp, in part because of the progress in medical science. If a few pills can treat pneumonia or a kidney infection, why not address the issue of pain with the same resolve?

Should we muffle the body's voice?

"We are more often frightened than hurt, and we suffer more from imagination than from reality."

 Lucius Annaeus Seneca

Well, is there any point in muffling the voice of your body? Remember a young babysitter from a horrifying short story by Chekhov who smothers the crying baby left in her care with a pillow? If we look at pain as a suffering baby rather than a pest or a barking dog, if we give up the idea of omnipotent doctors and magic pills and start empathizing with our body and caring for it, it will respond soon with a similar understanding.

The first thing a baby needs to calm down is to be fed. Since blood is the main source of nutrition for the body, blood supply disorders often cause pain.

A crying baby needs to be fed (and probably lulled into sleep). Since blood is the main source of nutrition for the body, blood supply disorders and the ensuing inflammation often cause pain, like in the case of a heart attack.  A stent inserted into a narrowed blood vessel expands it, keeps the passageway open, and makes the heart beat again without pain.

Interaction with pain sources

What do we do, however, when the pain is in a hand, a leg, or the head? Where can we have the stent inserted? Where do we look for obstacles to blood flow? According to integrative medicine, the answer is a spasm in deep muscles at the back of your neck and near the spine.  If you have a headache, apply some ice to the back of your head for ten minutes and then carefully stretch the muscles next to your inion. Just don't forget that you are not trying to crush or smother these muscles, you are doing your best to calm them down like a baby - and you will feel the difference.

If the muscles around the nerve roots in the spine get herniated, it would be more of a challenge. You will need tons of patience and concentration to find the right position for the pain to go away and the right way to change positions. Any move should be made to protect the ailing part of the body as a baby. The pain will then start receding. While a sound combination of drugs may facilitate the process, the patient’s right attitude can vastly enhance the effects of medicines as well as physical therapy

Pain prevention

"Pain management is the toughest job ever. "

                                  Catherine Price

Saving the body from pain is probably one of the greatest secret desires, a dream of any sane person. As we seek a way to fulfill this desire, however, we yearn for an easy solution, like a magic superfood that would make us lose weight in a flash. Indeed, can we have a comfortable illness-free life now and for good? The answer, sadly, is no. "If you don't run now while you're in good health, you do a lot of running around once you are sick," ancient Greeks observed. With a bit of rephrasing, this may sound like "Learn to suffer today to be in good health tomorrow."

Pain prevention calls for a major effort. The Gospel says: "...the gospel of the kingdom of God is being preached, and everyone is forcing his way into it." (Luke 16:16).  Now you may ask a more sensible question: "How can I force my way to good health?" The answer is clear yet challenging. In a nutshell, think of fresh air, sunshine, and water as your body's best buddies. Add a lot of motion and a reasonable diet, and you are almost all set to enjoy good health and happiness. More specifically, think fitness, stretching, jogging or at least walking, swimming, going to the sauna, cold therapy, and yoga. Fresh air and healthy food are certainly also a must. Simple indeed, but such a dramatic change in lifestyle is too much for some people.

Learn how to grieve - even a fool knows how to be blissful…  

The lazybones can replace these self-imposed trials with artificial proxies such as massage, physical therapy, acupuncture, or joint manipulation. Professionals in this case would inflict a minor pain that prompts the body to release anti-inflammatory and vasodilating hormones and enter the self-healing mode.  So, if you can't remove the shackles of flesh on your own, seek help from the experts. Even in this case, though, you'll need to stock up on patience and reconcile yourself to the fact that you will still have to do some part of the job yourself.  As Venedict Erofeev, the cult Soviet underground writer, put it, tongue-in-cheek: “Learn how to grieve - even a fool knows how to be blissful”. 

Integrative approach to pain management

Integration means unity. Integrative medicine unites the efforts of the physician (external treatment) and those of the patient (natural self-healing processes). This discipline combines a variety of treatment techniques borrowed from pharmacology, manual therapy, reflex and motion therapy.  It also unites Western technology with the millennia-old Eastern wisdom. All this helps detect the bottleneck in the body, i.e. a compressed, constrained, or pinched area, and use systemic decompression to release the herniated nerve root, relieve muscular spas,m and restore blood circulation. Such an approach makes inflammation subside naturally and leads to a gradual recovery and complete pain relief.

So, if chronic or acute pain has you at your wit's end, before assaulting it with a barrage of mighty painkillers, try to understand it, try listening to the voice of your body, and change your life for a while, make it serve the body's best interests rather than your egotistic ambitions. Should you not succeed, seek professional help. The right specialist understands the language of pain and can assist you with restoring the harmonious relationship between your body and your spirit.