Chinese Association of Idaho State University (CAISU)

How To Avoid Knee Pain While Running - Prevent Knee Injuries - Secrets to Success

I understand your situation. It hurts everyday. It interrupts and prevents Arctic Blast you from the things you used to love to do, and keeps you from activities you'd like to try. You may even get depressed and angry from the constant agony and inability to function normally. Believe me, I'm no stranger to pain, and I've gone through it myself.

It is true that we all have different thresholds and tolerances for pain. This is part an individual physiologic phenomena where one person can simply bear a higher level of pain stimulus before coming to tears, and part learned response by cultural and social influences. Whatever it is however, no one should live in chronic agony. Yes of course I believe we can all "suck it up" a little, and I of all people recognize that western medicine has created generation of "less robust" citizens who have the expectation to live in a constant state of comfort. I say "I of all people" because I work in an hospital emergency department of a major hospital, and my specialty is trauma. so if you were to come to my hospital and you cut your hand open, broke your leg, had a migraine headache, or some chronic pain, chances are you'd be seeing me. So now that you know what I do for a living, I'm going to share with you perhaps a different way to look at and deal with your aches and pains.

Try to digest this concept: Pain is an idea. That's right. No matter how you slice it, pain is literally the recognition of a nerve impulse that is thought of as uncomfortable. That nerve impulse can be coming from anything, for anything, such as a cold/hot receptor, to a touch/pressure receptor, or many other things. It's not until that nerve impulse is processed and recognized by your brain as pain that you actually feel pain. Got it? OK then, so the million dollar question is, can we change your "ideas" about pain?

Most people that are in chronic pain, have been treated in the past with narcotic medications. While this treatment modality is a quick fix, and highly effective, it doesn't come without it's own set of unique problems. Narcotic dependence has become a huge problem in the United States. Whether it be from inadequate pain control making it necessary to increase dosages, or whether the drug crosses from being a pain reliever to a recreational drug, the outcome is always the same. Narcotic medications in chronic pain treatment leads to narcotic dependence and drug seeking behavior. So what are the alternatives medications that actually work?

In the old days, when someone came to the ER for pain relief, the easy thing to do was give them a shot of Demeral or Morphine. These days, with the increase of ER abuse, law suits, and drug seeking malingerers, there is an increasing adoption of policies in hospital emergency departments to use alternative medicines for the treatment of pain, especially when the initial dose of narcotic medications seem to have little or no effect.

Remember in the old movies where the psych patient would be freaking out and the doctor would bark, "Nurse, give him 50mg of Thorazine!", after which the patient would instantly become comfortably numb and become compliant and docile? These are those same medicines, we just give them in smaller doses! These medications include hypnotics and antipsychotics drugs from the phenothiazine group of medicines, many of which got their start as psychiatric pharmaceuticals. Drugs like thorazine, haloperidol, droperidol, compazine and even phenergan are medications routinely given by IV or as an muscular injection, and seem to work magically, with overwhelming success. Outpatient medications include antidepressants such as neurontin, or even prozac.