Pain management is something that most people at one point in their lives will have to deal with. After all, pain is a common human condition – not a lot of people can say they’ve never encountered a physically painful situation at any time in their lives. For some people, however, they have to live their lives with pain, as the sources of their condition are constant and have been dealt in various ways, to no avail. This is especially true as people age, and women in their senior years are more prone to pain. With a lot of conditions and illnesses that cause pain seemingly impossible to solve already, it is hoped that at least, the pain that patients live is handled, so that they would not have to suffer badly and continue to live more normal lives.

Strategies for pain management include medications that relieve pain, occupational and/or physical therapy and alternative or complementary therapy. Let’s look through them one by one.
Pain-relieving medications have been one of the oldest pain management techniques used throughout mankind’s history, since the establishment of medicine and pharmacy. As of the moment, the most common medicines used to management pain, some of which most of us have already used at one point in our lives include

• Paracetamol
• Aspirin
• NSAIDs (short for non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs like ibuprofen which aim to reduce inflammation of body parts that lead to pain
• Codeine, morphine and other opioid drugs that in most countries, can only be administered by medical professionals
• Anesthetics

For proper pain management using medicines, a patient has to be given the right medication that would be related to the kind of pain felt. For the right medicine to be administered, the patient should give his or her doctor the right information, especially in terms of where the pain is felt, the intensity of the pain, avoidance of any activity that would worsen the pain, and the impact that the experienced pain has on the patient’s lifestyle, including appetite and sleep. Other medicines already being taken by the patient should also be considered so that the doctor can choose the safest and most effective medical pain management option.

Occupational and physical therapy as pain management methods include both physical and psychological methods. For some patients, increased physical activity like stretching, walking, and doing aerobic and strength-building exercises can aid in pain management as it reduces pain, depending its cause. Some pain suffers can employ the services of a physical therapist or a chiropractor to increase bone and muscular strength, including arthritic and osteo-arthritic patients and those who have suffered from a sport-related injury or some sort of accident.

A branch of pain management also relates to a patient’s attitude and the way he or she copes emotionally with chronic pain. Counseling aids a lot in making a patient strengthen his or her resolve to not be defeated by the pain present in his or her life.

Complementary and alternative pain management strategies include acupuncture, stress management, and alternative (herbal, natural) medicine, among others, which have been attested by a lot of patients to help a lot on alleviating the pain they feel.