by Lorelei Cohen

Created on: August 01, 2007

The chronic inflammation of arthritis and its accompanying pain can at times seem unbearable. When the illness is in a very active stage no amount of medication can relieve the pain, even the blessed respite that sleep should provide becomes impossible to find, the pain is so extreme that it jolts you awake more often than you are able to sleep.

Although there are solutions for chronic pain, there is no one magic cure for it. The key to fighting this kind of pain lies in a number of factors, all of which begin with understanding your illness, and fighting it on its own terms. There are over 100 forms of arthritis, and although each is unique to itself, all seem to carry with them some degree of inflammation and pain. In order to battle your illness and the pain that comes with it, you must empower yourself with as much knowledge on your illness as you are able to. Knowledge is indeed power.

1. Lifestyle change is perhaps the easiest and safest pain reliever for people with arthritis. You are not the same person that you were before you became ill so do not expect your body to follow the same routines that it did when it was healthy. Allow yourself to adapt to the person that you have now become. Know what foods or activities irritate your illness and avoid them. Know what exercises and therapies are best for your type of illness and participate in them. Treat rest as a form of therapy and use it accordingly. Use aides to prevent or reduce further damage to inflamed tissue. With inflammatory illnesses never doing too much or too little of any activity seems to reduce the stress or inflammation involved. Living life in bits and pieces, or a little of this and a little of that, might now be a viable lifestyle adaption to reduce the pain from inflammation. Empower yourself. Learn everything that you can about your illness, learn how to fight it on its own terms, this will greatly reduce the stress of your disease on your body, and thereby reduce the amount of pain that you live in!

2. Take your physician prescribed drugs as they are currently the best known treatments for your illness. But also add in alternative therapies that are specific to your type of illness, begin a vitamin therapy such as vitamin B,C,or E depending on your type of arthritis. Eat foods rich in magnesium / potassium such as cherries or molasses or that are strong anti-oxidants such as spinach or blueberries. Choose natural anti-inflammatories such as omega-3 fatty acids, green Tea, turmeric and ginger extract. Other valuable resources for arthritic sufferers are manganese and glucosamine. Always check with your doctor first before beginning alternative treatments.

3. Smile. When you put that silly little grin on your face your brain does a wonderful thing and it releases something known as "endorphins". They are your body's own natural pain killer. These endorphins give you a nice warm fuzzy feeling of "well being" and can actually reduce feelings of physical or emotional pain. So if you are not in a good mood when you start to smile, you will be when you finish smiling. Try it. The more that you smile the better you will feel.

Remember to research your illness as well as any and all treatments for it. Discover everything that you can about it so you have the power to fight it. This will be your greatest tool in your ability to reduce the amount of pain that you exist in.

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