News on Pain Management in Orange Park, FL

Low back pain is one of the leading causes of disability worldwide, so everyone should understand its causes regardless of whether they are currently suffering from it. Due to our experience providing back pain treatment in Orange Park, FL, we’ve observed that one of the most common cases is muscle or ligament strain. Some patients strain these back muscles and spinal ligaments with a sudden, awkward movement, such as while falling. Other people’s strain is due to repeated motions, especially heavy lifting.

However, strain is only one potential cause. Other people come to our pain clinic due to other common issues, such as:

Bulging or Ruptured Disks: Your disks act as cushions between your spine’s bones. When they bulge or rupture, they might press on nerves and cause pain ranging from irritating to debilitating.

Arthritis: Your lower back has joints, so it too can suffer from arthritis. Some patients seek back pain treatment due to arthritis narrowing the space around their spinal cord. Others are suffering from different arthritis-related conditions.

Osteoporosis: Vertebrae are bones, so they can become porous and brittle in patients with osteoporosis. If you suffer a fracture or break, you may find yourself at a pain clinic for lower back pain relief.

Low back pain is something nearly everyone experiences eventually. In fact, it is one of the top causes of missed work in the United States. However, many people don’t know much about this common issue or how to deal with it. Read on to find out the basics of low back pain treatment in Orange Park, FL.

Your low back begins below the ribcage; this area is also called the lumbar region, named after the five lumbar vertebrae. While your low back is sturdy and resilient, it is also subjected to a constant heavy load and frequent stress. Low back pain may be the result of a repetitive motion injury, poor lifting techniques or sitting posture, or a sports or auto accident injury, among other things. It might feel like a dull ache, a stabbing or shooting sensation, or something else.

Acute vs. Chronic Low Back Pain

No matter what caused it, you should seek back pain treatment if the pain does not resolve in 72 hours and inhibits your daily life. Your treatment plan will depend on the nature of your injury and whether you are experiencing acute or chronic pain. Low back pain that comes on suddenly is “acute,” and it tends to be impermanent. If your pain lasts more than three months, it is “chronic.” Regardless of what you’re experiencing, a pain management physician can help you achieve relief and improve your quality of life.

Back pain is considered a chronic condition if it lasts three months or longer. While the pain can come and go, you might find yourself stuck on a horrible rollercoaster of temporary relief followed by pain and frustration. It can be particularly trying to deal with chronic back pain when you don’t know the cause. Age is a significant factor, but you might also find chronic back pain stemming from arthritis of the spine, spinal stenosis, disc problems, or myofascial pain syndrome.

Thankfully, there are ways for you to fight back against this pain. By visiting a pain clinic, you will learn about back pain treatment in Orange Park, FL, which can help reduce how often you suffer from chronic back pain—without needing surgery. Seven effective treatment options include:

Physical Therapy – Exercise is the foundation of almost any pain treatment—especially chronic back pain. Under the guidance of your physician and spine physical therapist, you will be able to create a customized exercise regimen tailored to address your specific symptoms and condition.

Mindfulness & Meditation – Physical therapy is training for your body, but your mind also benefits from some exercise of its own. Since chronic pain can be emotionally straining, learning how to mediate through different relaxation strategies will help you better manage depression, irritability, and frustration related to your chronic pain.

Diet – There is an old saying “you are what you eat,” well, there is some truth to that. Some diets are highly inflammatory—especially those with lots of processed foods. Since this food causes inflammation, it is much more likely to aggravate your chronic back pain when you eat it. Eating healthier will guide you away from inflammatory food while also helping you get to a healthier weight, which puts less stress on your spine.

Lifestyle Modifications – From big changes to small ones, changing your routine is a good idea if you are dealing with chronic pain. Maybe make a few trips when carrying in groceries instead of trying to bring everything in at once, quit smoking, and take breaks when doing physically taxing tasks.

Injection-Based Treatments – Advancements in medical technology means there are now many injection-based procedures to help you with chronic back pain. When your physician knows the source of the pain, they can target the area with the goal of stopping or lessening your pain with nerve blocks, epidural steroid injections, or nerve ablations.

Alternative Treatments – Some might turn to alternative treatments, such as acupuncture, biofeedback therapy, massage, laser therapy, or electrical nerve stimulation, to address their chronic back pain. Talk to your spine specialist before signing up for any of these treatments to see what they recommend.

Pharmacologic Treatments – Anti-inflammatory drugs, analgesics, muscle relaxants, and other medications can sometimes help you control your chronic back pain. However, these are not long-term solutions since they can have unwanted side effects.

Radiofrequency ablation in Orange Park, FL, is an impressive treatment option often used to manage pain originating from your spine and joints, especially in your neck and lower back area. How does it work? When it comes to pain management, RFA sends radio waves through a precisely placed needle to heat an area of the nerve and destroy the tissue. This prevents pain signals from being sent back to your brain. That makes this pain management an option for dealing with long-term pain conditions.

In your spine, nerves branch off from your spinal cord and travel to the facet and sacroiliac joints. These facet joints are located between the vertebrae in your spine and allow for flexibility and movement of your back. Sacroiliac joints, on the other hand, are found near the bottom of your spine and send pain signals from the spine to your brain.

With radiofrequency ablation, doctors are able to treat the targeted medial branch nerve in the facet joints or the lateral branch nerve in the sacroiliac joints to decrease the amount of pain signals that reach your brain. Typically, the goals of RFA are to:

Stop or Reduce Pain

Improve Function

Reduce the Amount of Pain Medications You Need to Take

Avoid or Delay Surgery

Whether you’re new to migraines or you’ve been suffering from them for years, you’re likely seeking out ways to reduce your symptoms without relying entirely on drugs. The following are some suggestions from the team at Florida Pain Physicians. Visit us to learn more or find out if you’re a candidate for Botox migraine treatment in Jacksonville, FL.

Adjust Your Diet: Many people’s migraines are triggered by certain foods. Keep a food diary tracking what you eat and when migraines occur to determine what may be triggering you and then eliminate it from your diet.

Try Essential Oils: Some people report getting relief from lavender oil and peppermint oil. You can either inhale these oils directly or dilute them with a carrier oil and apply small amounts to your temples.

Schedule Acupuncture: Research indicates that routine acupuncture sessions could help prevent migraines and reduce their symptoms. You can learn more about acupuncture’s potential by contacting our pain management clinic.

Eat Ginger: You’ve likely heard that ginger helps with nausea—that includes nausea that some people experience due to migraines. Some research also suggests it may have pain-relieving benefits for migraines as well.

Start a Yoga Routine: Yoga isn’t just good exercise; it can also be an important part of your migraine treatment plan. Some scientists believe this is because it can help you release tension in migraine-trigger areas and improve your vascular health.

Steroid injections can be an effective way to treat conditions like osteoarthritis, inflammatory joint disease, and other conditions affecting your hips or knees. However, they are not a magic cure-all. Read on to learn what you should know before seeking guided steroid injections in Orange Park, FL, for your knee or hip.

Efficacy

Many patients experience significant pain relief from a single injection; most see symptom improvement in just a few days, and the pain relief often lasts for several months. However, you may need multiple treatments. Likewise, you might need to incorporate the injection into a broader pain management plan, such as combining it with pain-relieving drugs or physical therapy. If you do not see any lasting improvement, you may want to talk to your doctor about other options.

Safety

Steroid injections are clinically proven to be safe and effective at relieving joint pain and inflammation. However, like any injection, you may experience temporary discomfort. If you’d like to use a local anesthetic to numb the target area prior to injection, talk to your doctor.

Side Effects

Some patients experience a temporary joint pain flare-up within 24 hours of their guided steroid injection. Other infrequent side effects reported include bruising, skin discoloration, and infection, but these are infrequent.

Until recently, little was known about the relationship between smoking and migraines. While science had confirmed that smoking posed several health concerns, some still believed the habit might be beneficial for migraine sufferers. However, modern research indicates that tobacco use is anything but beneficial for most people. If you’re a smoker undergoing migraine treatment in North Florida, here is what you should know about the latest research.

Migraine Sufferers Are More Likely to Smoke: A study in Spain found that of the people surveyed, 20% of non-migraine sufferers smoked compared to 29% of migraine sufferers. Likewise, a study in Detroit uncovered that 33% of migraine sufferers used tobacco. Furthermore, the number of cigarettes smoked per day correlated with the frequency of their migraines.

Smokers Experience More Intense Headaches: A study conducted at a headache pain management clinic found that headache intensity was higher for smokers than non-smokers. Their data suggested that smoking was detrimental to the treatment program as well, meaning smoking patients saw less effective results.

Quitting Probably Won’t Cure You—But It Could Help: Chronic migraines are complex. While it would be nice to have a simple answer like “Just quit,” current research shows that smoking doesn’t necessarily cause migraines. However, the habit does seem to contribute to their frequency and intensity. Plus, smoking is detrimental to other aspects of your health. If you quit, you will likely find that you feel healthier overall and that your migraine treatments are more successful.

Millions of Americans suffer from chronic pain, and not all can—or want to—rely solely on medication for relief. When you’re looking for drug-free chronic pain relief in Orange Park, FL, consider trying yoga. While it may seem counterintuitive to do any kind of exercise when you’re sore, gentle movements and stretching will reduce stiffness and increase circulation. Plus, strengthening your muscles allows your body to be better supported and less prone to injury.

Yoga is an excellent way to get the low-impact exercise you need. It comes in many forms and can be easily adapted to suit your goals and challenges. Plus, you can do it anytime and anywhere with little to no equipment. Furthermore, yoga promotes better mental and emotional well-being, which may help with chronic pain relief.

Getting Started

Before attempting yoga as part of your pain management plan, you should talk to a doctor. They can help you understand what kind of exercises are safe for you. You may also want to seek advice from an experienced yoga instructor to tailor a program for your needs.

It’s best to start with the absolute basics and do them regularly. Even a simple routine yields effective results if done well and often. If you’re unable to sit on the floor or stand for long, you can research yoga exercises that can be done seated in a chair. Don’t advance to any new techniques until you’re confident in the fundamentals.

Migraines can be an enormous obstacle when it comes to trying to live your best life. Still, many people who experience these intense headaches feel somewhat lost when trying to find the right migraine treatment in North Florida. One of the many options out there is migraine surgery, but as with anything with “surgery” in the name, it can make you take pause and wonder if the treatment is actually worth it.

The first thing to consider is the statistics. Approximately 40% of migraine surgery patients are able to achieve complete relief from their headaches. The vast majority, even if they don’t get complete relief, have expressed life-changing improvements after the surgery has been performed. In many situations, former migraine sufferers are able to beat back their headaches post-surgery with just some simple over-the-counter medicines, such as Advil or Tylenol. A staggering 93% of all migraine surgery patients feel that they are much better off having had the surgery.

So, what exactly does migraine surgery entail? In most situations, the surgeon at your pain management clinic will create an individualized treatment plan based on your specific symptoms. The surgery itself is focused on making small incisions around trigger sites. This is a minimally invasive procedure; your doctor will help you choose if local anesthesia, intravenous sedation, or general anesthesia is best for your situation. The incisions are closed using sutures, skin adhesives, tapes, or clips, and you will be able to leave when the surgery is completed.

Are your bad habits causing you unnecessary pain in your back? You might be surprised at just how much damage we are able to do to ourselves in our daily life. Thankfully, back pain treatment in Orange Park, FL, can help alleviate much of this discomfort. But is there a way to avoid doing the damage in the first place? Our pain management clinic has created a short list of five habits that are hurting your back.

Sitting Hunched – When you find yourself sitting at a desk for long periods of your day, it is easy to let the body start to hunch or slouch over. This sitting position goes against the natural alignment of your spine and begins to put more pressure on your lower back. Make sure every 30 minutes or so you gently stretch and move your head and neck up and down and to the right and left to alleviate that pressure, and try your best to sit straight in your chair.

Sleeping On the Wrong Mattress – How good is your “good night sleep?” If you are sleeping on the wrong mattress, the answer is pretty apparent when you wake up each morning with back pain. The best type of mattress is firm enough to support your back but soft enough to fit the shape of your body. Your sleeping position can also change the type of mattress you should use. Talk to a pain management professional to learn more about finding the right mattress for your back.

Sitting Too Long – Slumped sitting isn’t the only problem people with desk jobs might face—they could also find themselves not getting up enough. If you sit in a chair for many hours of the day, getting up and moving around for a couple of minutes every 30 minutes is essential to give your body a break.

Smoking – Did you know that smokers are three times more likely to develop lower back pain? Smoking can curb blood flow to your spine, which will cause the cushioning disks between your bones to break down quicker. Smoking can also weaken bones and give you osteoporosis. So, if you smoke, it is time to make quitting a top health priority.

Overeating – Every body type is different, but if you put too many extra pounds on your frame, you can strain the bones and muscles in your back. The key to reducing the amount you eat is to eat slowly. This gives your body a chance to let you know it is full. You should also pick nutrition-packed treats and meals so you can feel satisfied with fewer calories.