COVID-19: How to Ease Pain at Home

While staying at home right now, you’re helping protect yourself and your community by social distancing. However, just because you are now home around the clock doesn’t mean that your pain magically goes away. If you’re suffering from chronic pain, here’s how you can ease pain at home.

How to Ease Pain at Home

Pain can strike at any time, which is why you should keep a list of tips and tricks in your back pocket. If pain strikes at home, try some of these at home remedies to kick the pain the curb.

Gently Stretch

If you have sore or fatigued muscles from sleeping wrong, an injury, or soreness from a workout, gently stretch out the tired muscle. When stretching, be sure you hold each exercise for 30 seconds before moving on. If you’re not holding the stretch long enough, you’re not giving your body an adequate amount of time to respond. Alternatively, if you hold the stretch too long, you could injure yourself.

Stretching helps loosen up tight muscles. In turn, this helps them regain some of their mobility. Not only can stretching help you heal from an injury, but it’s also a proven prevention tool. When the muscles remain tight, you risk injury when performing exercise or even simple, everyday tasks.

Exercise

When you move your body, you’re helping keep your muscles and joints healthy. There’s a reason physical therapy is a tried-and-true therapy, because it works! If you’re suffering from lower back pain, for example, this could be caused from sitting in one position too long. To help prevent this pain from happening, get up and move around for 10 minutes every hour. This can be as simple as walking around the house or office, doing some jumping jacks, or even a few squats and lunges.

Exercise is also a great way to fight chronic pain. Conditions like fibromyalgia and arthritis can be hard on the body, but it’s been proven that exercise can help fight it. HuffPost explains that while exercise doesn’t work immediately for chronic pain, over time it will work to help people feel better long term. They suggest these 5 exercises to fight chronic pain:

Walking: this low-impact way of moving your body allows the blood to better circulate throughout the body, which can help ease pain and tightness in muscles and joints.
Swimming: if your joints need a gradual start into exercise, swimming will do the trick. The water helps ease impact on the muscles while helping you get in your cardio and increase your stamina.
Yoga: like we mentioned above, stretching is good for you. Yoga practices help stretch and strengthen every muscle in your body, and the meditation used in yoga can be great for your mental health as well.
Pilates: this practice heavily relies on your core. Your core is at the center of everything your body does, which is why it’s important to keep it strong. Pilates can help strengthen your core, improve your posture, and relieve pain.
Strength training: weight training can help control your chronic pain by making your muscles stronger. You don’t have to lift heavy, you can strength train with just your body weight.

Try Heat or Cold Therapy

Using heat or cold therapy can be a quick and effective way to treat pain on the spot. Do you know when you use heat vs. when to use ice? WebMD provides these tips on when to use each:

Heat: this promotes blood flow and nutrients to move towards the part of your body where you’re applying the heat. This is recommended to help with stiffness and to warm up muscles before activity.
Cold: this helps slow blood flow, which can help reduce inflammation and swelling. Cold is best used for short-term pain, like when you pull a muscle.

Massage

While it’s not the same, you can give yourself a massage at home to help get knots and tension out of your muscles. If you have a headache, gently massage your temples and face. If you’ve been working from the computer too long and have achy wrists, gently massage the base of your wrists. And for neck pain? Pull the shoulders away from the ears, relax, and place pressure on those tension points you feel in the muscle. With any massage, you should feel pressure, but not unbearable pain. If you need help walking through a self-massage, you can find tutorials online.

There is no cure-all solution for pain relief, and sometimes you have to try things like stretching and exercising for a few days in a row to get the most out of it. Consistency is important, and it can help you rule out what does and doesn’t work for you. If these tips and tricks aren’t working for you at home, make an appointment with Interventional Pain Associates today.

Ease Pain at Home with Interventional Pain Associates

If you try these tips and aren’t having luck finding pain relief, call Interventional Pain Associates. Dr. Saleemi and her team are skilled in pain management and relief. You don’t have to suffer in pain while stuck at home during quarantine. Now offering telemedicine services for medical pain management, Dr. Saleemi can meet with you virtually to discuss your pain. Call today: (512)-795-7575.