Hurt.com

Alternative Treatment for Pain Management: Hot Yoga

2011-05-13T04:08:25Z

Yoga by Augusto Mia BattagliaBy April

Recently I have returned to my hot yoga practice, in some instances I realize I must strengthen my weaker arm consistently to restore my strength. I dare to hold each pose with real body power as I visualize a much more fit version of myself. I’ve listened to the hot yoga instructors words as we attempt each pose with much determination. I hear the instructor gently assist our inner doubts, “roll your arms under your body face down on the floor, this will be very therapeutic if you have any minor injuries”, she mentions. Ahhh… what a relief I think to myself. I am really assisting in my bodies recovery is what I am thinking during the entire 90 minute hot yoga class. I understand that to some extent, some injuries may not be gently healed in a hot yoga class. However, for minor injuries I believe some sort of yoga practice, including more gentle types of yoga may be therapeutic. Healing the body from pain takes a lot of energy, hydration in the body and determination. So be sure to give your body extra tender, loving, care as much as you can with your particular circumstance. Our bodies will thank us for consistently tending to it as our temple.

Bikram Choudhury started learning a Hatha type of yoga at age five. At age eleven Bikram was the youngest winner ever of a National India Yoga Competition. However at age twenty, Bikram suffered a weightlifting injury that crippled him. With the help of his guru, “Bishnu”, at age twenty Bikram created a twenty six posture yoga series and two breathing exercises that completely restored his health. This yoga is now called “Bikram Yoga”. Bikram Yoga is a 90 minute yoga class performed in a heated room, so being very hydrated is essential. Toxins are released during hot yoga, also the twenty six postures are all performed as a sequence to prevent illness, injury and limit the effects of aging. This type of yoga also creates balance and strength in the body.

If you find yourself interested in hot yoga for healing your body, find a local studio and try it out. I highly recommend checking with your doctor first before engaging in this type of exercise.

Here are a couple links for more information or to locate a convenient class:

http://www.bikramyoga.com

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bikram_Yoga

New Guide to Knee Pain

2011-04-09T06:51:15Z

Knee X-Ray, Scott Thieman, Flickr

Today we are publishing our new guide on knee pain designed to help you learn about the knee, understand the diagnosis of knee pain and then learn about alternatives to treat and manage knee pain.

Click here to read the Hurt.com Guide to Knee Pain.

New Writer on Hurt.com - Marion

2011-04-08T04:57:32Z

Welcome Marion to the Hurt.com writing team!

Name: Marion

About me: I'm in my mid-fifties and live with my husband on the Eastside of Lake Washington in the Seattle area. I’m a former academic researcher and now I work as a writer and volunteer. I'm passionate about helping people come through challenges and create better lives.

Experiences with Pain: Fibromyalgia, osteoporosis, knee and ankle injuries, osteoarthritis, back injury, Sjogren's Syndrome

Before I had cancer, I did a lot of hiking, backpacking and rockhounding. I also enjoyed a martial art, armored medieval foot combat re-creation. Over the years I had repeated ankle and knee injuries, plus the occasional back injury. I've re-conditioned and healed a great deal, but I have to be careful to stay in shape and not aggravate old problems. Staying flexible and maintaining good balance is important to me.

Around age 30 I began to have trouble with dry eyes, eventually diagnosed as Sjogren's Syndrome. Although my case is mild it requires that I actively manage dry eyes, nose and mouth and sometimes other symptoms. People with Sjogren's also have a higher risk of lymphatic cancer.

At age 35, I was diagnosed with Stage III Hodgkin Lymphoma. I underwent a chemotherapy regimen called ABV-MOPP. Thankfully, the treatment cured the cancer, but left me with fibromyalgia, osteoporosis and peripheral neuropathy in hands, arms and feet. Managing these and other aftereffects of treatment is a life-long commitment. I walk and do yoga to stay in shape, and still go hiking in summer.

Osteoarthritis runs in my mother’s family and I have it in my neck, knee and hands. My sister also has fibromyalgia and osteoarthritis.

I choose to manage my pain as much as I can with alternative therapies because I tend to experience side effects from drugs. Fortunately, there are many other ways to approach chronic pain!

Why Hurt.com: Making a commitment to Hurt.com lets me share what's worked for me, so that the knowledge can help others get a head start. Learning to work with practitioners, make lifestyle changes, engage with remedies and treatments and understand research is powerful "medicine" for managing chronic pain.

Favorite Pain Management Web Sites:

http://www.webmd.com/pain-management/default.htm

http://nccam.nih.gov/health/pain/chronic.htm

http://www.sjogrens.org/home/about-sjogrens-syndrome/living-with-sjogrens

Old, New, And Alternative Treatments For Pain Management

2011-04-08T04:44:05Z

Massage Therapy, Michael Oh, FlickrIce, Ice Baby!

Lying in a hospital bed, with close to twenty pounds on ice packed around my shattered leg, I wondered when humans first thought about using cold for pain therapy.

It has to have been used for thousands of years, in areas where it could be collected. At least the nurses covering me in ice didn't have to travel to a nearby glacier, chip away their supply, and haul it back to the sixth floor of Harborview Medical Center.

Reducing swelling, pain and inflammation resulting from injury using cold therapy is a balancing act. Many people cannot tolerate ice on or near an injury for more than ten minutes at a time, while others can fall asleep and need to be monitored to avoid frostbite. It is up to the individual to determine how long they can deal with the cold and try to work within a range of ten to thirty minutes per session. Avoid heat on injuries for the first twenty-four hours or as recommended by your physician. While it may feel nice at first, heat can create more problems down the road.

Alternating Hot And Cold

Using a cold pack first then a hot pack later ( +24 hours post-injury or at doctor's advice) can often help relieve muscle and joint pain for me in about half an hour. A quick note about heat pads - microwave and electric heating pads are great if used according to instructions. Seriously, read the instructions. Severe burns and a worsening of your condition can quickly follow improper use of heat. If you do not have someone monitoring you while using heat, use timers capable of waking you up, should you fall asleep. You can get a serious burn while asleep that won't wake you up until too late, if at all.

My wife fell asleep using an ultrasound device and suffered a serious burn to her shoulder that took weeks to heal, so be careful with other common machines used for pain control.

Seek medical attention if any unusual symptoms develop after a cold and heat session. Be sure to let doctors know exactly what you had been doing and for how long. Inform them of any and all medications, too. Don't forget about any herbal supplements or remedies in the disclosure as some have the ability to block or alter drugs and their effects.

Fish Oil

I had been taking a high quality fish oil capsule two or three times a day for about a year before I crashed my bike, and continue to take it daily. The main reason was for heart health and inflammation reduction. One of the unintended benefits seems to be rapid healing and fading of the scars at the repair sites.

The scars from the August 2010 surgeries are much less noticeable than my August 1979 football knee repairs. A woman who had a recent double knee replacement I would see at physical therapy asked me if I put some kind of anti-scar cream or something on my leg because she was noticing my scars fading much faster than hers. We had surgery about the same times and are roughly the same age.

While I will not name a brand of fish oil, I would recommend that any brand you try be of a high quality fish stock, like salmon or other omega-3 rich source fish, and a brand that is purified to remove unwanted elements. I works well for me, but my wife can't take any of the fish oil products without getting heartburn or the "fish burps".

Massage And Magnets

Healing massage can work wonders to get your blood and your joints moving again.

In my family, we have also used a couple of non-powered massage roller devices that have some fairly powerful magnets in them. I can't say that the magnets actually do anything, but the massaging action they give feels pretty terrific.

It is not unusual for the spouse receiving the roller massage to start snoring a few minutes into the session, so something relaxing is happening there.

The types of injuries I sustained were severe enough that blood clot formation was likely without blood thinner medication, so I could not use various massage devices until cleared to do so and neither should you, to help avoid possible complications. Check with your health care provider before using any device, powered or not, before using it anywhere near a seriously injured site.

Read Up On It But Don't Believe Everything You Read!

Check out your friends and relatives to see what they have tried out for pain relief then check that information against WebMD and other sites put up by the Mayo Clinic and the like.

Before subjecting yourself to additional risk of injury from an unproven therapy, Check It Out! Got it?

Thanks again for checking us out!

Dave

Shoreline, WA

Pain Management is a Family Affair

2011-04-01T04:45:15Z

Jordan Brock, FlickrGoing Home At Last

Recovery from a severe injury can take weeks or months, and usually means that even very independent people by necessity become dependent upon others for help.

Daily activities once taken for granted require assistance, such as putting on a sock, or getting help to rise up out of a chair. Yup I've been there, and not too long ago. I would need help doing almost everything for the first two weeks at home and it drove me nuts. It also helped me refine the ability to relax the pain down to a dull roar and to appreciate being home with family, including the dog.

The one thing I wanted most while in the hospital was to get out of the hospital. Don't get me wrong, the nurses and other staffers were great..

However, getting well enough to go home became an all-consuming drive and helped me focus on moving around and doing everything the doctors recommended for improving at each stage of the repair process. It was difficult to remain a positive outlook each time the doctors on morning rounds took off the dressings and I got a good look at my leg. I had to keep telling myself that "Hey, It's still there!" and by doing the walks I can go home sooner (nurses documented each walk on the chart ). I guess the hospital staff becomes an adopted family while you're there - at least if you get good ones like I did.

Tough Going

The hardest things to do were 1) getting out of the bed and 2) getting back into the bed. At first, it took two nurses to help lift me up and put the crutches under my arms. Then, it was a 75ft. trip out of the room and down the hall, turn around and go back. It took more will than I thought I had in me to complete the entire 150 ft. distance. The external fixator holding my leg in place until the actual surgical repair had two stainless steel pins drilled into my femur, through the muscles and two more in the lower portion of my tibia (the one big piece not broken). The fibula was only broken into two pieces, so no bionic hardware back there. Two carbon fiber rods about 18 inches long each were attached to a hinged joint in the middle and to the pins on each opposite end to spread the leg apart to the correct length (the impact had crunched it together - shorter).

The pins made my muscles behave like skewered chickens when I was up on the crutches. Muscles don't like to be forced to contract and stretch with something stuck through them. To keep the pain from getting the best of me, I would imagine I was riding on the bike in happier times. Just cruising along a nice, curvy two-lane mountain road, leaving the Corvette Club behind me in my dust. It worked until I became so tired I was ready to fall down. Talk about getting a bad feeling...

When I got to the point of exhaustion, it was very hard to keep the pain levels from rising. It became necessary to slow down a little and pay more attention to where the halfway point in the three daily walks. If I had to go more slowly or rest along the way, I would do it to remain on top of pain through breathing control, working on proper form on the crutches, joking with one of the nurses, whatever it took to both be distracted from the pain, yet focused on what I was doing to avoid a fall or get too tired to make it back to the room.

Yay Home Team !

It was not possible for me to change the dressings on the wounds on my leg, so it was my wife and son who took over the nursing chores. I can't thank them enough for helping me when I couldn't help myself.The leg wasn't pretty for a long time and they stepped up. Love you guys.

There's no time to feel sorry for yourself when there's a CPM machine to crawl over to later, the dog needs to be fed and let outside, to later make a call to the insurance company and see why they aren't paying out a proper value on the totalled bike.

Have your team leave stuff for you to do when they have to leave for work or errands. It will help keep you busy and distracted. Write out checks to pay bills, go online to e-mail distant relatives. TV will bore you after a while and feeling useful in even a small way is preferable to being a zombie couch potato.

Read a book between exercise sessions, while using timers and a log to track your meds on a daily basis. This will be helpful should any issues arise with pain management. If you have detailed records of what you've been taking and when, it can help the pain docs figure out a new strategy should the original one be insufficient.

Pets are great for getting you up when you may not really feel like doing much of anything. My dog became "Penny, The Nurse Dog" and she would not leave my side except to go outdoors when necessary. Having to open doors for her, feed her, and give her little treats and scratches would get me up and moving around, which would start me doing other things around the house. It took an hour and a half do unload and reload the dishwasher while on crutches, but it let me feel useful.

Positive Attitude

Remember to say thank you to anyone taking the time to sit with you and help you out. Common courtesy is still required even when you hurt like hell. Point it out to yourself in those down moments that while yes, it hurts, you are alive and able to gripe about it another day. Then move your frame of mind to a more pleasant place in whatever way works best for you at that particular time. What worked yesterday sometimes doesn't work for today, so experiment with something new, or maybe your grandma's remedy. As long as it does you no harm, test it out. So-called alternative therapies will often work better than some narcotic from the pharmacy, so don't be put off by a therapy simply because it is foreign to you. Use common sense and learn to listen to your body and to what is trying to tell you.

Dave

Shoreline,WA

State of Mind Can Turn Acute Pain to Chronic Pain

2011-03-30T07:01:41Z

Colin from Portland has written a very nice article on the differentiation between acute pain and chronic pain today on Hurt.com Here is a link to the article: Acute Pain vs. Chronic Pain.

Interesting research coming out of the annual meeting of the American Academy of Pain Medicine. Based on their most recent research, thoughts of fear, catastrophe, and depression are likely to contribute to acute pain becoming chronic pain.

Sean Mackey, MD, PhD, chief of the pain management division at Stanford University, commented, "Those who had more fear during an acute low back pain episode were much more likely to ultimately over-predict the amount of pain they had, which ultimately led to significant increase in fear-avoidance behaviors, with subsequent worsening of symptoms, increase in duration of pain, and increase in disability." Also, patients with depression and anxiety are 2-5x more likely to develop chronic pain one to eight years in the future.

One final interesting statistic is tha there are 34 million surgeries that take place each year. 10% of patients who undergo sugery will develop chronic pain. That's 3 million additional pain sufferers each year!

Here is a link to the article:

AAPM: State of Mind Can Turn Acute Pain to Chronic

Elizabeth Taylor, Pain Killers and End of Life Pain Management

2011-03-30T06:38:17Z

With Elizabeth Taylor's death this week, there has been significant discussion about end of life pain management and the use of pain killers. During her life, Taylor suffered many injuries, skin cancer, scoliosis, and 30 surgeries, before eventually succumbing to congestive heart failure.

ABC News has done a nice piece on the "Double Effect" or Taylor's challenge of using pain killers at the end of life when overuse or improper use of pain killers can actually hasten death. Many pain killers like morphine and benzodiazepines are prescribed to alleviate the pain caused by medical conditions, BUT can actually make it harder to breathe, causing death in some instances. Use of pain killers at the end of life is defended by many doctors. Proper use of pain killers at the end of life can reduce pain so that pain sufferers can properly say goodbye to their loved ones.

Three doctors had been accused of overprescribing pain medication in 1990 to help Taylor manage her back pain.

Acute Pain vs. Chronic Pain: Colin's Story

2011-03-30T05:13:05Z

Soccer Injury, Aquila, FlickrIf this seems like a simple topic, forgive my naivete. But I believe this is a very critical distinction to make and one that I failed to for a long time. This distinction is important because it can define how you are treated by medical providers and in turn dictate how you perceive it your injury/condition.

Chronic pain/injury/disease is something the progresses slowly, develops over time, and becomes a systemic issue often gathering momentum as it progresses. The cause and effect relationship is generally unclear.

Acute pain/injury/disease is something that has a rapid onset, short duration and often times (but not always) a result of a specific impact or traumatic event to the body. The cause and effect relationship is generally pretty clear.

These are generalizations of course, and there is much more nuance to be had. But for me, getting to these basic classifications more quickly would have gone a long way.

As an 18 year old I was injured playing soccer when I collided with a goalkeeper. To spare you the melodramatic details the end result was a trip to the Emergency Room, a referral to an Orthopaedic Doctor and a little physical therapy. There were some mumblings about hyperextension, cervicalgia, and contusions but nothing definitive. I was supposed to be fine. Nothing was broken or dislocated and plus I was 18, an athlete and in the prime of my health.

Unfortunately this has not been the case. I write this seven years later with much worse pain than at initial onset and an unclear future. But one thing I see looking backward is a fundamental misunderstanding of chronic vs acute pain.

For years I pursued treatments that were more appropriate for acute problems. I told people that this specific injury was the source of my problems. I saw the same chiropractors and therapists over and over. I wondered why I wasn’t healing. I blamed myself for not healing. I wondered how such an innocuous seeming injury could be so devastating. And I went in circles.

Now maybe I would have either way. But I do think that a considerable amount of time and energy was wasted on the wrong treatments and incorrect methods of thought. I now think of my problem as something that preexisted the “injury” and the “injury” simply gave an opportunity for the problem to manifest. I don’t advocate that everyone run out and demand some type of a diagnosis and throw around somewhat arbitrary terms like “chronic”. But a clear understanding of an injury or a medical condition is imperative.

My advice? Do a lot of research, don’t accept everything a doctor tells you, advocate for yourself, get multiple opinions, stay positive and most of all listen to your body.

Which brings me full circle to writing for Hurt.com. I am writing not from the perspective of an expert or someone with all the answers. If I had some type of panacea I would gladly give it to all of you, right now. Sadly I don’t have a panacea. I am simply someone who’s been through a lot and wants to share in the hope that my experiences can help others.

-Colin

Pain Management - Team Approach During And After The Hospital

2011-03-28T20:14:06Z

Hospital Team, ReSurge International, FlickrIn The Hospital, Down In The Dumps

Whenever a serious injury occurs to someone, there is often an associated feeling of being alone - even when family and friends are close by or still in the room with you. It may be a side effect of the drugs being administered to you or something to do with the injuries. Expressing your feelings can be difficult at an early stage of treatment and recovery, but can go a long way towards helping you deal with pain levels. Try to be more positive in outlook and not dwell on uncertainties to help keep your brain working in ways that diffuse and reduce pain.

Try to engage the hospital staff a little when your family and friends aren't around to keep your spirits up and to help avoid getting depressed about your situation. Should you already have issues with depression, let your nurses know about it if you haven't told any of the staff about it. The trauma center will have a variety of people available to help. You endured a physical trauma and are getting help - some help for mental trauma isn't beyond their scope or capability.

The Hospital Pain Management Team

At Harborview, there is an actual team of three doctors - two residents and an attending, who come around before surgeries proven historically to be painful and will go over the strategies in current use to help keep you from going over the pain edge. For me, it was the use of the standard intravenous pain meds with the addition of a femoral catheter block. This was inserted into my leg up at the inner thigh and threaded down to the nerves just above my knee to help block the pain signals that come from the repair sites below. From what I have read since about tibial plateau fractures, I'm glad they did the block. It's supposed to be one of the most painful recoveries imaginable without one.

The pain medications are not without side effects. Nausea is a big one for many people, including me. It took a couple of attempts at finding the right combination of pain reliever and anti-nausea drugs to work for me. The first attempts shut off my appetite and I continued to lose twenty five pounds of weight until we hit on the right mix. There is something to the old sage advice that a little extra weight isn't such a bad thing. Had I been at what I used to consider my ideal weight, I don't know how much weaker I would have become with my body using up more muscle instead of fat. Good thing I was a bit chubby, I guess.

The i.v. drip pain meds today have a controller that is a bit like the buttons used on "Jeopardy". Using this system taught me to identify the onset of pain when the medications would begin to wear off and the need to watch the clock to see how much time I would get from the dosage controller. It was set up to allow the patient (me) a dose every 15 minutes as needed, with one push of the button.

Pushing it more often or more times within the 15 minutes didn't work. This teaches one to pay attention to one's body signals, the machine and the clock.

Thanks to that infernal machine, I can now pick up on subtle clues that tell me it's time to grab some ice and Tylenol before the pain goes nuclear.

Stay On Top Of It

You may have had someone tell you about the difference in pain control when they either skipped a dose or waited too long to take something for the pain. It's true - heading it off at the pass, cowboy-style, does help keep it down to a dull roar. Once you let the pain get beyond control, it becomes much, much more difficult to reign back under to a manageable level.

Specifically, what I'm referring to is pain that started out as a twinge, a dull ache, or even a momentary pop, that then turns into a raging pain monster refusing to let go of your leg, arm, back,or whatever is ailing you. Keeping on schedule with RICE (rest, ice, compression, elevation) and your medications , as well as learning to identify the onset of serious pain and to deal with it in a timely fashion is the way to keep on top of it.

Don't Overestimate Your Strength

Before and after surgery you will be told what to expect in the way of recovery time estimates and how your progression though the different stages of recovery might go. The best advice I can impart to you at this point is to be acutely aware of weakness in the legs and back. You culd very easily injure another part of your body just when you need it the least.To enable my bones to start healing properly, I was non-weight bearing ( no weight whatsoever) on the repaired leg for three full months. After that, I was allowed gradual 25% weekly increases, while still using crutches. So, quads? What quads? The muscles that help stabilize knee joints were basically gone. I had to be extremely careful to not twist the leg when beginning to put some weight on it, and so should you if you find yourself in a similar situation. Yeah, it is necessary to push yourself a bit to improve and build strength, but don't be stupid about it. It takes time.

Here Comes Physical Therapy

In my case, the doctors had to bolt together a good portion of my lower leg.

Due to the high energy impact nature of the crash, the parts list of stainless steel screws, bolts and internal fixator was quite long, indeed (On more than one occasion, the x-ray techs at followup appointments missed getting a picture of the entire assembly since they rarely see one as big as the one that's a part of me now). A level VI (6) on the Schatzker scale tibial plateau fracture repair can have a high complication /failure rate, so physical therapy is no joking matter. You have to do it and do it correctly.

In order to keep your knee joint from freezing up and having significant loss of range of motion, many hospitals will start you on a CPM (continuous passive motion) machine right in the hospital bed. The idea is to get you moving the joint as soon and as much as possible before scar tissue starts to interfere with motion. The CPM machines kind of worked for me, allowing me to maintain a real range of about 48 degrees on the repaired leg. This in contrast to my other leg at 140 degrees.

When I started P.T. in earnest at the 48 degree point, every single movement was a challenge. I was still on crutches, non-weight bearing, with the hinged brace off for the sessions. Just doing simple stretches, then a few leg lifts was enough to have my leg remind me I was alive. (Yeow!) Looking back, it hurt but was absolutely necessary for me to be able to walk again without dragging my leg behind me. It took months, but I'm walking with only a small limp and can move my leg beyond 112 degrees. Not perfect, but I still have the leg.

Yay, Team !

You, your family, your doctors and nurses, and physical therapists all have to work together in order for a successful outcome after a major surgery or surgeries. Communication between everyone is a critical component to avoid relapses, re-injury or more surgeries. If you notice that something isn't working or there are differing opinions on how to proceed in your recovery, stop the show and hash it out. Get up to date information and make informed decisions. It's your body and you have the final say on what to do with it. It's your team and you are allowed to make substitutions where you deem appropriate.

No more sports analogies for now, I promise.

Dave

Shoreline,WA

My Trusty Arm & My Shoulder Pain - April, Our New Writer on Hurt.com

2011-03-28T02:54:35Z

Who likes to cook? I do most of the time. I vividly recall four years ago, rushing around in the kitchen to get breakfast on the table for my family. I wanted to make what we all consider a “Sunday” breakfast. Well, since at the time, my son was only one years old, I kept a baby safety gate up at the kitchen entry. I had the most wonderfully cooked breakfast made and ready to serve.

So, I like to believe I am not your average server. No, I am the ‘All mighty super mom super server’ right. I take not one, but two plates, one in each hand. I also have a tall cup of orange juice tucked inside my inner elbow on the right. If you can visualize that, I then attempt to step over the baby gate with two plates and a cup of orange juice in tow. The top of my right foot didn’t quite make it over the baby gate, and so I completely lost my balance. As I destabilized, there was no way for me to break my fall and since I was holding so much, my right shoulder had to break my fall. Ouch! My right shoulder slammed into the ground and the last thing on my mind was how much pain was to come from this injury.

I started to get chronic pain radiating through my right shoulder at night, it was sort of a burning sensation in the beginning. I noticed that my pain would come in waves. The pattern of when my pain would emerge was every few months. Since my pain was so seldom in the beginning, I found myself dismissing it or thinking it would just go away. After a year of having shoulder pain every few months, I noticed the pain occurrence had shifted to every month for a couple days long. I do not recommend ignoring chronic pain, or toughing it out, but that is what I did for the first two years and it was because my pain would come and go.

Mentioning my pain began one year ago at a regular yearly medical check-up with a Family Physician doctor. I brought up my concerns about my shoulder pain and surprisingly I didn’t get much response regarding a diagnosis. After my yearly medical check-up, I self referred to a Sports Medicine doctor to get an x ray of my shoulder. I remember being so excited when I went to see the Sports Medicine doctor. I thought, finally I am going to get a diagnosis and treatment options. X rays were taken, the doctor then told me that the x ray only shows bone, not tissue damage. So, I was told that nothing was fractured. That was good news to me for starters. However, I was told by this particular physician that the reason my pain would only surface a couple days a month is because of the water retention that women experience. She prescribed me a diuretic to decrease water retention. I chose not to try the diuretic she prescribed to me because I wanted the chance to look into Alternative therapies. I started reading books and doing a little research on Alternative therapies.

I started doing gentle stretches on my arm and shoulder, using smaller weights at the gym and naturally going easy on my arm. Over time, I notice my pain slowly decrease in frequency and duration. I also came across a sample of Tiger Balm, which created a cool, tingly sensation for pain relief. Tiger Balm is a balm made by a Chinese herbalist and is an analgesic remedy for pain relief. I found it to be a good product. Please check with your doctor before using Tiger Balm or any product though. To find out more information about this product, please visit: www.tigerbalm.com

WHY WRITE ON HURT.COM: I wanted the opportunity to share my experience with pain. I also wanted to share tips from how I dealt with pain. I believe there is more than one way to find pain relief and I believe in getting second opinions. Writing for hurt.com is a chance to share information, solutions, and to discuss the many remedies out there for pain relief. Although, I am highly interested in Alternative medicine, I do recognize the importance of seeing your regular Physician and taking medication as necessary.