As the year is ending I am looking back and noticing that this past year I have experienced more pain flare ups than usual.  As I look for patterns I noticed a couple of important clues.  On the physical side I was trying to see why I have been experiencing frequent migraines for the first time in my life.  I’ve had sporadic migraines in the past for sure but this past year I have been experiencing from 5 to 10 migraine episodes per month. 

After meeting with my primary care physician we think it may be due to my blood pressure being higher than it has ever been.  So now I’ve been working on that for the past month; even to the point of needing medication.  As a result my episodes of migraines have decreased.

I’ve also noted that part of the reason for my high blood pressure is a result of higher than usual stress and not exercising as much as usual because of a knee injury.  The injury came from NOT practicing what I teach—appropriate activity pacing.  I sometimes forget that I have a chronic disability and push too hard. 

Now that I’m seeing all this I have re-aligned my healthy living and pain management plans to address the stress, the pain and the high blood pressure.  I believe that effective chronic pain management requires a biopsychosocial plan so I have now initiated my revised plan and am already starting to see the results.

One of the important tools I try to teach my patients is to listen to their pain and learn from what it is trying to tell them.  As a person living with chronic pain I want to move beyond just surviving my pain; I want to thrive and most of the time I do.

It is very unfortunate that many people living with chronic pain begin to suffer and become depressed, hopeless, and helpless.  I want to invite you to read a story about Jerry who was able to move out of his personal despair pit.  To read this story please read From Despair to Hope: A Recovery Story that you can download for free on our Ariticles page.

You can learn more about the Addiction-Free Pain Management® System at our website www.addiction-free.com. If you are in recovery and want to learn how to develop a plan for managing your pain and medication effectively go to our Publications page and check out my book the Addiction-Free Pain Management® Recovery Guide: Managing Pain and Medication in Recovery. To purchase this book please Click Here.

To listen to a recent radio interview I did conducted by Mary Woods for her program One Hour at a Time please Click Here to go to this interview.

To read the latest issue of Chronic Pain Solutions Newsletter please Click here. If you want to sign up for the newsletter, please Click here and input your name and email address. You will then recieve an autoresponse email that you need to reply to in order to finalize enrollment.