Living with pain can make each day feel like a curse. Living with pain that, for some abhorrent reason, isn’t treatable with modern medicine can be even more frustrating as you can be left feeling like things are hopeless, and you’re just going to have to keep on living with the agony.
Modern medicine is highly effective at treating some forms of illness or injury, but often, when it comes to chronic problems or unexplained issues, there is a tendency to assist with symptoms and leave the root cause untouched. Sometimes, when the root cause is extra poorly understood, the symptoms also cannot be treated. Other times, symptom treatment comes at such a high cost that you’re left wondering if you can deal with all the side effects of the only solution you’re being offered.
The following will explore several alternative pathways worth exploring if modern medicine has left you feeling like there’s nothing that can be done. As with anything pertaining to your health, it is critical that you always listen to your body and your instincts. If a solution feels wrong for you, it might well be. Keep looking for something that feels right.
Anti-Inflammatory Diet
A small step you can be taking no matter what other medical pathways you pursue is to embrace an anti-inflammatory diet. Most pains can be made worse by inflammation in the body, and unfortunately, the average diet is rife with processed foods that cause inflammation. Not only can an anti-inflammatory diet help ease pain, but it also is incredibly healthy for you and can reduce your risk of other chronic illnesses so there’s no losses in pursuing this option.
Osteopathy
An osteopath is a physician with a license to practise osteopathic medicine. Typically, osteopathic treatments involve the movement of someone’s body with an emphasis on muscles, tissues, and bones. This often involves an osteopath physically moving your limbs. For example, if you have back pain and you decide to let Brisbane Osteopath help, you will be treated using an Osteo Diagnostic platform that aims at tending to the root cause of the pain. Something like a disk bulge or other biomechanical issue in another part of the body, like the pelvis, might be the cause and this is what the movements will focus on. The goal here isn’t to give you something to manage the pain but to end the source of the pain overall.
Acupuncture
While no one is quite sure why acupuncture works, studies have found it is effective at eliminating certain types of pain. Acupuncture is an ancient tradition that involves inserting needles into different parts of the body.
Get Into The Psychological
There are many branches of alternative medicine that place much higher importance on your mental state’s connection to your physical state. Though theories vary, one common throughline is that most health “problems,” whether physical or mental are actually your mind and body adapting appropriately to the information it has been given. The idea is to ask your pain what it is attempting to accomplish in your life. If you’re not used to speaking to separate parts of yourself, this might feel funny at first (and you might find it easier to attempt to journal “as your pain”). Sometimes people get some profound psychological realizations when they open their perspective in this way. Pain is a highly complicated thing, and sometimes it is our body literally saying to us: you need to stop and rest. Sometimes it’s our body saying: no one has ever taken care of you, and that’s heartbreaking and unfair, and you deserve to be cared for, so I’m going to make sure someone takes care of you by making you need care so desperately. Yes, many of the things that arise can be huge emotional releases, meaning this is not an easy task.
If you find answers this way, seek out alternative ways of meeting the need your pain is attempting to meet for you. Though this might seem really cartoonish and fairytale-like, many studies have found a direct link between the emotional and mental experiences we have and physical pain. If you’re still in doubt, remind yourself that the placebo effect is real, and so obviously, without a doubt, your mind can influence your physical, bodily experience.
The above information is just the beginning. Alternative medicine is rich and varied and well worth exploring, particularly if you haven’t been helped by mainstream medicine. It is worth reminding yourself that different medical systems evolved at different times in human history and are focused on different elements of healing. You do not need to settle for pain, discomfort, or terrible side effects. Keep searching. You will find something that works for you.
