What is pain? It is the fifth most important vital sign after whistle, pulse, blood pressure and body temperature. The International Association for the Study of Pain defines pain as “an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience caused by actual or potential tissue damage”.
Be alert to your body’s alarms
Pain is a sensation and a protective response. The body sends an alert message through pain to tell you that there is an injurious injury and you need to act quickly to prevent the injury from expanding. The incidence of chronic pain is more than 30% in the general population and even higher in the elderly population, yet most people ignore this signal, said Dr. Jin Xiaohong, deputy chief of the pain department at SUU Hospital. Acute pain left untreated may gradually turn into chronic pain and then into neuropathic pain, at which point the patient’s quality of life can be greatly affected. “Many patients think they are strong-willed and ‘bravely’ carry on after the pain symptoms appear, and as a result, the minor problem drags into a major problem, and such cases are very common.”
Which doctor should I see if I have pain? Many people are not clear about this. The pain department is a new intersection between traditional medical and surgical treatment, crestal bone and joint pain, neuralgia (such as herpes zoster, trigeminal neuralgia, etc.) and cancer pain and other chronic pain diseases are the main direction of the pain department, for pain symptoms that have not been identified or even if the cause is identified but there is no cure, you can also go to the pain clinic. For the chronic pain mentioned above, the pain department can diagnose painful diseases through clinical, imaging and electrophysiological methods, and treat painful diseases with drugs and interventional medical methods, “treating the symptoms as well as the root cause”.
The body will be more sensitive to pain if you carry it for too long
Cancer pain patients are the main target of pain treatment, and the pain caused by cancer is often more unbearable than the cancer itself. However, many cancer patients prefer to suffer very great pain rather than using analgesics. The saying “bear it, you won’t feel pain if you carry it through” does not hold true for the vast majority of people. Most people who endure pain for a long time will cause pain hypersensitivity, that is, the body’s sensitivity to pain will increase, and what was only a little pain will become more painful to the individual over time, for the same pain. Jin Xiaohong said that the doses of some analgesics used in the clinic now are cumulative, so patients do not have to worry about the analgesic effect of the drugs at all. In addition, there are also anesthesia pumps, plexus destruction and other means that can help cancer patients relieve their pain.
”It may not be normal to have joint pain in old age, but it is too late to delay treatment until you can’t move.
Shoulder pain and knee pain are common joint pains in the elderly, which are caused by common age-related arthritis such as frozen shoulder and knee arthritis. 50% of the elderly have worn out knee joints, and frozen shoulder is also known as “fifty shoulder” because of its common occurrence in the elderly. People think it is normal to have joint pain as they get older, so they put up with it. Because these pains are so common and neglected, they delay joint treatment for many older people and eventually make it impossible for them to lift their arms or climb stairs, which is considered normal. This is not the case.
Keeping the pain untreated ends up being so painful that you can’t sleep at night. Over time, it turns into a “frozen shoulder,” where the entire arm on the painful side can’t be lifted and the shoulder can no longer be opened. “If treatment is given at an early stage of detection, it may only take one or two treatments to cure, but after a long delay, there is less and less hope for a cure. What’s more, the human body has a miraculous self-healing function, and if the right treatment is taken, even if it’s just choosing the right self-exercise, it can slow down the development of the disease.” Jin Xiaohong said that the progress of frozen shoulder and knee arthritis to the late stage, it will cause the elderly can not lift the hand, can not walk, the loss of self-care ability, which in turn affects the quality of life of the elderly, but also to the burden of family care. Massage, too much force pressed into the disc herniation
Joint pain stalking young people
”Most of the elderly for pain is tolerated not to cure, young people are not tolerate the pain blindly.” Jin Xiaohong said that now pain is not only high in the middle-aged and elderly groups, the majority of young people have also joined the army of joint pain. Cervical pain, back pain is a common symptom of many young people, long-term ambulation, lack of exercise and other bad habits are the culprits of these pains.
To deal with these pains, massage relaxation is the preferred way for many young people. But not long ago, Jin Xiaohong met a patient, feeling back pain to massage, after pressing but found their legs have no strength, can not lift, can not walk. A check, the lumbar spine on a huge disc protrusion, the original massage “too hard” to the original orthogonal disc to “squeeze” out, the nerve compression, resulting in nerve damage, and finally only through surgery to remove the protruding disc.
”Over the past few years, because of the chaotic massage to paralyze themselves according to the news is common,” however, long-term, regular massage will make the body “tolerance” to improve, requiring “the more vigorous the more comfortable “, and too vigorous cervical spine massage is a certain risk, in case the force is too fierce damage to the crestal nerve is irreparable. Moreover, incorrect massage on the muscle itself will also cause damage, causing muscle fibroplasia and inflammation, so there will be more and more pain.
Teach you a trick how pain is measured?
Facial scoring method
Compare your facial expressions when you are in pain with the expression chart of the facial spectrum scoring method, you can determine the level of your pain, if it is so difficult that you can’t even look at it anymore, please go to the hospital.
Number Scoring Method
Use 0 – 10 to represent different levels of pain, with 0 being no pain and 10 being severe pain.
1–3: Mild pain, does not affect sleep, can be observed by yourself
4–7: moderate pain, affects sleep, suggest you go to see a doctor
8–10: severe pain, you will be awakened by pain or painful to sleep, please go to the nearby hospital quickly.