How to Overcome Pain: Natural Approaches to Dealing with Everything from Arthritis, Anxiety and Back Pain to Headaches, PMS, and IBS

161 Pages·2017·1.73 MB·English

by  Leon Chaitow

Leon Chaitow is a registered osteopath and naturopath, editor of the Journal of
Bodywork and Movement Therapies, and Honorary Fellow and former senior
lecturer at the University of Westminster, London. Author of more than 60
books, including Holistic Pain Relief, he lectures internationally on both
bodywork and general health topics from an integrated perspective.
LEON CHAITOW
HOW
TO OVERCOME
PAIN
Natural approaches to dealing with everything from arthritis, anxiety and back
pain to headaches, PMS and IBS
This book is dedicated to my wife Alkmini with love and thanks
CONTENTS
Introduction
UNDERSTANDING YOUR PAIN
What is Pain?
The Pain Experience
Meet the Nervous System
Central Sensitization
Central Habituation
The Stress Effect
Help Your Body to Help Itself
Inflammation is Good for You
The Path to Recovery
Keeping a Pain Journal
POSITIVE ATTITUDES
Turning the Mental Key
Exercise: Unlock Your Potential
Family Resilience
Mind Over Matter
Affirmations
Making It Happen
Enhancing Compliance
Exercise: Problem Solving
FINDING PEACE
Release Your Muscles to Release Your Mind
Exercise: Progressive Muscular Relaxation
Exercise: Autogenic Training
Better Breathing
Exercise: Breathing to Relax – Relaxing to Breathe
Exercise: Pursed-lip Breathing – Encouraging the Diaphragm
Exercise: The 7–11 Stress-buster
The Power of Meditation
Exercise: Introduction to Mindfulness
Exercise: Repeat Yourself Calm
Exercise: Inspired Meditation
The Mind’s Eye
Exercise: Washing Away Pain
Exercise: Visualizing Your Pain
Healing Sounds
Exercise: Body Tuning
Sleeping with Pain
BODYWORK AND REHABILITATION
Healing Touch
Exercise: A Massage to Relieve Backache
Trigger Points
Positional Release
Exercise: Finding a Position of Ease
Stretching
Exercise: The Triangle Posture
Staying in Shape
Exercise: Take a Balanced Approach
COMPLEMENTARY THERAPIES
Energy and Harmony
Light and Colour
Hydrotherapy
Exercise: Constitutional Hydrotherapy
Nature’s Bounty
Healing Scents
EATING WELL
Inflammation and Diet
Other Diets and Pain
The Exclusion Zone
Supplements
TYPES OF PAIN
Reading the Signs
Common Pains
A Pain-by-Pain Directory
Headaches
Jaw, Face and Tooth Pain
Exercise: A Triathlon for Your Jaw
Neck and Shoulder Pain
Exercise: Rebalance Your Posture
Arm and Hand Pain
Exercise: “Tennis Elbow” Relief
Backache
Exercise: Stretching Your Back
Chest Pain
Bladder, Prostate and Abdominal Pain
Gynecological and Childbirth Pain
Bodywide Pain
A Work in Progress
Further Reading
References
INTRODUCTION
Pain is an inevitable and universal experience – it affects us all at some time. Of
course, the pain we most often experience is acute but transient and short-lived –
a self-limiting event. A cut, a bruise, a sting, even a break – all are dealt with by
our body’s self-repair mechanisms.
Chronic pain takes pain into another dimension altogether – and can be
experienced as a crushing life sentence. We need to be reminded that the body’s
self-regulation (technically known as homeostasis) also operates constantly in
chronic settings, just as it does in acute ones. Indeed, some of the body’s repair
mechanisms – such as inflammation – are themselves a source of pain, even
though they are helping to heal. This highlights a point that this book tries to
emphasize: the more you understand about the causes and mechanisms that
produce pain, the more you will be able to modify or eliminate it.
Chronic pain can be seen as a burden or a challenge. How you manage your
pain is, to a very large extent, up to you. Another of the primary objectives of
this book is to show you ways to approach your pain positively, enabling you to
lead as normal a life as possible. A key message to that end is “Hurt does not
necessarily mean harm.” In other words, even though it hurts, try to carry on as
normal (walking, working, gardening and so on), unless you have been
specifically advised to avoid particular activities. Using our pain as an excuse to
retreat from performing everyday tasks leads to a spiral of inactivity, increased
disability and loss of self-confidence.
An important first step in reversing such a tendency is to learn as much as
possible about your pain. If you understand why you are feeling pain, and are
aware of the possibility of recovery, you will manage the situation far more
positively than if you do not understand the processes and suffer from feelings of
anxiety and helplessness that amplify the pain.
Having worked as an osteopathic practitioner in private, as well as state-
funded, practices in the United Kingdom, and also in southeast Europe, I have
been fascinated to observe the differences in patients’ coping skills, both within
and between these settings. Much of my work has been with people who are in
considerable and often permanent pain, suffering from conditions such as
arthritis and fibromyalgia. One clear impression I have gained, supported by
medical research, is that learning about his or her own condition often helps the
person in pain as much as any treatment. Knowledge is power, and
understanding your pain gives you power over it.
One of my motivations in writing this book was to bring to a wider audience
as much information as possible about pain, based on current research (as well as
effective traditional methods), and to show what we can do to help ourselves to
recover from pain, or to cope with it. The sheer range of causes, types and
intensities of pain, and of ways in which it can be modified, blocked, eased or
eliminated, is beyond the scope of any one book. What can be done here is to
convey the essence of the pain story, giving you the knowledge that will
empower you to deal with your inevitable periods of pain most appropriately.
Instead of “no pain, no gain”, this book aims to give you “more information, less
pain”.
LEON CHAITOW D.O.
www.leonchaitow.com
UNDERSTANDING YOUR PAIN

Of all symptoms, pain is the one that is most likely to drive you to consult
your doctor. Acute pain is a warning that alerts the defence and self-
regulating mechanisms of the body that the brain senses danger. Without
acute pain you would not remove your hand from a flame. When a fire
alarm rings, finding the source of the fire is far more urgent than switching
off the alarm. But when pain is chronic, as it often is, the causes are seldom
obvious.
Understanding how chronic pain evolves, and how it may be modified, are
the major aims of this book. We now know that “pain is in the brain”, and
should remember that what we “feel” depends on how the brain interprets
and gives meaning to the multiple messages it receives. We can learn from
most chronic pain; and we may be able to ignore it safely, manage or
successfully treat it in a variety of ways. This book will explore all these
options.