Pain Relief Pharmacy

What are bodywork and manual therapy?

Bodywork and manual therapy are general terms that refer to body manipulation therapies used for relaxation and pain relief. Massage and chiropractic are well-known forms of manual therapy.

The idea behind bodywork is that people learn—or are forced by injury or stress into—unnatural ways of moving or holding their bodies. This unnatural movement or posture changes the natural alignment of bones, which in turn causes discomfort and may contribute to health problems.

The aim of bodywork is to realign and reposition the body to allow natural, graceful movement. Bodywork, along with identifying possible contributing causes of unnatural movement and posture, is thought to reduce stress and ease pain.

Some of the most common forms of bodywork are:

• The Alexander technique, which focuses on proper alignment of the head, neck, and trunk. It emphasizes improving health by increasing awareness of proper posture.
• The Feldenkrais method, a gentle form of bodywork that increases flexibility and coordination. Feldenkrais exercises are intended to help increase a person’s awareness of body movement and develop new patterns of movement.
• The Trager approach, which people use to help relearn natural movements and exercises so their bodies can function better. Practitioners teach gentle, rhythmic motions to improve flexibility and promote relaxation (called psychophysical integration) and dancelike exercises to increase awareness of body movement (called Mentastics).
• Deep tissue massage, which attempts to treat chronic tension in deep muscles of the body. Deep tissue massage is thought to relieve pain and increase flexibility.
• Rolfing, a form of deep tissue massage that practitioners use to realign the tissues that cover and connect all muscles and body organs (fascia). Bringing the body back into proper alignment is thought to reduce pain, improve flexibility and energy, and reduce muscle tension.
• Dance/movement therapy, which has many of the same characteristics as the bodyworks above with the addition of creative and expressive art elements.

What is bodywork used for?

People may use bodywork to promote relaxation, relieve stress, and reduce pain associated with certain disorders of the muscles and joints, such as arthritis and fibromyalgia.

Is bodywork safe?

Bodywork can be a safe form of therapy when a qualified and experienced practitioner performs it. Its effectiveness is not scientifically proven. Talk with your doctor before you start any bodywork program, so you can choose the most appropriate form of bodywork for your specific condition.

Many states license practitioners who provide bodywork therapies. Your doctor or local hospital may be able to help you find a qualified bodywork practitioner.

Always tell your doctor if you are using an alternative therapy or if you are thinking about combining an alternative therapy with your conventional medical treatment. It may not be safe to forgo your conventional medical treatment and rely only on an alternative therapy.

When To Call a Doctor

Call 911 or other emergency services immediately if you have been injured and you have:

• A severe neck injury, such as an injury caused by a:
  • Serious car accident.
  • Fall from a height of 15 ft (4.6 m) or more.
  • Major sports-related injury.
  • Very forceful blow to the head or neck.
  • High-energy strike on top of the head.
  • Penetrating injury, such as a stab or gunshot wound.

• Signs of a spinal cord injury, such as:
  • Weakness or inability to move the arms or legs.
  • Continuous numbness of one or both arms or legs.
  • Loss of bowel or bladder control.

• Neck pain that occurs with chest pain and other symptoms of a heart attack. These include:
  • Chest pain that is crushing or squeezing or feels like a heavy weight on the chest.
  • Chest pain that occurs with:
    • Sweating, shortness of breath, nausea, or vomiting.
    • Pain that spreads from the chest to the back, neck, or jaw, or one or both shoulders or arms.
    • Dizziness or lightheadedness.
    • A fast or irregular pulse.

Call your doctor immediately if you have:

• A stiff neck and/or severe headache, fever, vomiting, confusion, and/or difficulty staying awake or alert.
• Neck pain and severe arm pain.
• Neck pain and suddenly developing numbness, tingling, or weakness in one or both of your arms.
• Severe neck pain following an injury.
• Severe neck pain with no known cause.
• A new weakness in your arms and legs.
• A new loss of bladder or bowel control.

Call your doctor today if you have:

• Severe restriction of neck movements.
• Neck pain or stiffness after starting a new medicine.
• Constant numbness or tingling in one arm or hand.
• Constant weakness in one arm.
• Moderate pain following an injury.
• Arm weakness, numbness, or tingling that has become worse since you were evaluated by your doctor.
• Ongoing (chronic) pain that is getting worse.

Watchful Waiting

Watchful waiting is a period of time during which you and your doctor observe your symptoms or condition without using medical treatment. Most neck pain does not require medical care. In general, pain relief and neck movement should improve after a couple of days of home treatment that includes:

• Limiting activities that increase neck pain.
• Taking nonprescription pain relievers and using ice to reduce pain.
• Doing gentle exercises to keep the neck flexible.

If you have severe neck pain that has not gone away after 1 or 2 days and you are not able to do your normal daily activities, call your doctor.

What Happens

In some cases, chronic pain develops after an injury or illness. The pain continues even after you have recovered from the injury or illness. For example, many people who have had a limb amputated report feeling chronic pain in the missing limb (phantom limb pain). Chronic pain can also develop even though you have not had an injury or illness. The result, however, is often the same—a cycle of sleeplessness, inactivity, irritability, depression, and more pain.

Chronic pain may be mild to severe. You may develop pain that comes back from time to time over several weeks, months, or years. Occasional, mild to moderate pain can usually be managed at home. Exercise, good nutrition, regular massages, and pain-relieving drugs—such as acetaminophen or nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), such as ibuprofen or aspirin—may be enough to manage your symptoms.

On the other hand, you may develop constant chronic pain that is severe. You may be unable to work, and physical activity may be too painful or exhausting. Sleeping at night may be difficult, resulting in fatigue and irritability. Your outlook on life may change and strain your relationships with family and friends. Prolonged pain may restrict your daily activities and eventually lead to disability.

After treatment begins, many things can interfere with your recovery, such as dependency on drugs or alcohol, overwhelming stress, lack of motivation, depression or other mental health problems, or ongoing litigation because of a workers’ compensation claim. If your pain is disabling, you may want to seek an evaluation at a pain management clinic, where a team of health professionals works together to treat your pain.

The lives of your family members, friends, or caregivers can also be affected. The people you count on to help you may also need some support. Family therapy or involvement in a caregiver support program may help.

Other Treatment

In addition to medicine or surgery, other treatments can be helpful in reducing chronic pain.

Other Treatment Choices

Additional treatments for chronic pain may include:

• Physical therapy. This may include hot and cold therapy to relieve painful areas of the body. It may also include stretching and range-of-motion exercises to maintain strength, flexibility, and mobility.
• Transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation (TENS). TENS applies brief pulses of electricity to nerve endings in the skin to relieve chronic pain.
• Professional counseling (such as cognitive-behavioral therapy). This treatment focuses on your mental health and conditions such as stress and depression, which can accompany chronic pain and make it worse. It is important to be healthy emotionally as well as physically, to recover from chronic pain.

Your health professional may refer you to a pain management clinic to receive these treatments. These clinics provide a setting where you can receive treatment and learn to cope with chronic pain. Treatment is usually provided by a team of health professionals who work together to address the many possible causes of your chronic pain. You may also receive these treatments from your own health professional or from specialists who treat chronic pain.

Complementary therapies

Complementary therapies may reduce pain, help you cope with stress, and improve your emotional and physical well-being. These include:

• Acupuncture, a treatment based on traditional Chinese medicine, where very thin needles are inserted into the skin at certain points on the body to produce energy flow.
• Aromatherapy, or essential oils therapy, which uses a plant’s aroma-producing oils (essential oils) to treat disease.
• Biofeedback, a method of consciously controlling a body function that is normally regulated automatically by the body, such as skin temperature.
• Chiropractic therapy, a hands-on therapy based on the theory that many medical disorders (especially disorders of the nervous system) may be caused by subluxations in the spine.
• Guided imagery, a series of thoughts and suggestions that direct a person’s imagination toward a relaxed, focused state.
• Healing touch, which influences a person’s physical or emotional health without physically touching the person.
• Homeopathy, or homeopathic medicine, which is a medical philosophy and practice based on the idea that the body has the ability to heal itself.
• Hydrotherapy, which uses water, in any form, to treat a disease or to maintain health.
• Hypnosis, which is a state of focused concentration during which a person becomes less aware of his or her surroundings. Some people learn to manage pain through concentrating in this special way.
• Magnet field therapy, a treatment that uses magnets to stimulate areas of the body to try to maintain health and treat illness.
• Massage, which is rubbing the soft tissues of the body, such as the muscles, to help reduce tension and pain, improve blood flow, and encourage relaxation.
• Meditation, which is the practice of focusing your attention to help you feel calm and give you a clear awareness about your life.
• Naturopathy, which promotes using organic foods and exercise; maintaining a healthy, balanced lifestyle; and applying concepts from other areas of complementary medicine (such as ayurveda, homeopathy, and herbal therapies) to try to improve health, prevent disease, and treat illness.
• Yoga, which uses meditation and exercises to help you improve flexibility and breathing, decrease stress, and maintain health.

What To Think About

If you decide to try one or more of these complementary therapies to treat your chronic pain, find a health professional who has special training and, whenever possible, certification in the particular therapy. You may get a referral from someone you trust such as your health professional, family, or friends. Make sure all of your health professionals know every type of treatment you are using to reduce chronic pain.

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Acupuncture brought more relief to people with back pain than standard treatments, whether it was done with a toothpick or a real needle, U.S. researchers said on Monday in a study that raises new questions about how acupuncture works.

For many patients, that benefit lasted for a year, the team reported in the Archives of Internal Medicine.

“Our study shows that you don’t need to stick needles into people to get the same effect,” said Dr. Daniel Cherkin of Group Health Center for Health Studies in Seattle, who led the study.

“Historically, some types of acupuncture have used non-penetrating needles. Such treatments may involve physiological effects that make a clinical difference,” Karen Sherman of Group Health, who worked on the study, said in a statement.

The team, wanted to study the effects of different types of acupuncture in a large, carefully controlled study of 638 patients with chronic low back pain.

They divided patients into several groups. One got seven weeks of standardized acupuncture treatment known to be effective in back pain. Another group got an individually prescribed acupuncture treatment.

A third group was treated using a toothpick in a needle guide tube that did not pierce the skin as regular acupuncture does, but targeting the correct acupuncture “points”.

A fourth group just got standard medical treatment, which included medication and physical therapy.

After eight weeks, 60 percent of the patients who got any type of acupuncture reported significant improvement in their ability to function compared with those who got standard medical care alone.

But there was no significant difference in the pain relief people got from the acupuncture using needles or from toothpicks.

The researchers said there is some evidence that even needles were used 2,000 years ago in acupuncture treatment, and some imaging studies have shown that “superficial and deep needling of an acupuncture point elicited similar blood oxygen level-dependent responses,” the team wrote.

Another study even found that lightly touching the skin can induce some emotional and hormonal reactions, which could explain the benefit, they wrote.

Or, it may simply be the experience of visiting an acupuncturist for treatments that helps.

Regardless of how it worked, they said acupuncture appears to be a relatively safe and painless way of easing an aching back, especially when traditional medicine alone fails.

(Reporting by Julie Steenhuysen; Editing by Maggie Fox and Cynthia Osterman)