Senior Care: pain, pain, go away

Senior Care

Pain, Pain, Go away

By Karl Karch

September is National Pain Awareness month . Pain is that uncomfortable feeling telling you something may be wrong. It can be steady, throbbing, stabbing, aching, pinching, or described in many other ways. Sometimes, it's just a nuisance, like a mild headache. Other times it can be debilitating. As we age, the creaks and kinks get more noticeable and frequent, often indicating something is wrong and, if left undiagnosed and untreated, leads to pain. Pain can bring about other physical symptoms, like nausea, dizziness, weakness, or fatigue. It can cause emotional effects like anger, depression, mood swings or irritability. Furthermore, it can even change your lifestyle and impact your job, relationships, and independence. Pain falls into two categories: acute pain and chronic pain. Acute pain may be mild and last just a moment, or it may be severe lasting weeks or months. In most cases, it disappears when the underlying cause of pain has been treated or healed. The bigger culprit is chronic pain which lasts longer than three months according to the U.S. Center for Health Statistics and often is under treated. Chronic pain can range from mild to severe and can be the result of an initial injury or infection, or a disease such as arthritis that may require ongoing treatment. Chronic pain persists even though an injury has healed. One-third of the people who are living with chronic pain describe it as debilitating in relation to daily tasks. The extent to which pain can negatively affect how a person functions can easily create a ripple effect and lead to other adverse conditions. Chronic pain can: lessen the ability to function and increase dependency on others, create poor quality of sleep resulting in exhaustion and prompting other health issues, limit social activities leading to isolation and depression, and decrease capability for physical activity leading to loss of muscle strength and flexibility and increasing the risk for injury. About 1 in 5 American adults (50 million) and up to half of adults over 65 have chronic pain. The problem is compounded for older adults who often have more than one type of chronic pain. Opioid use is becoming more prevalent among aging adults creating a potential health hazard that could impact professionals as well as family caregivers. AARP found that 40 percent of older adults have chronic pain that is often treated with opioids, yet the American Academy of Pain Medicine found only 58 percent of patients say prescription painkillers effectively treat their pain. In a 2018 study published by the Journal of the American Medical Association, patients with stubborn backaches or hip or knee arthritis found that opioids worked no better than over-the-counter drugs and other nonopioids at reducing chronic problems with walking or sleeping, and they provided slightly less pain relief. Staying active is one of the top ways experts recommend addressing agerelated aches and pains, especially when it involves back, knees, hips, and shoulders The following website provides some simple and effective exercises to help relieve pain in various parts of the body: www. a a rp . o rg/h e a l th /c o n d i ti o n s - treatments/info-2019/best-exercises-forpain.html. In addition, walk more and climb stairs rather than taking an elevator or escalator. Another way to increase walking is to park your car further away from an entrance. A side benefit is avoiding dings in your car. Addressing pain early will help maintain quality of life later.

Karl Karch is a Gerontologist and local franchise owner of Home Instead Senior Care, a licensed home care organization providing personal care, companionship and home helper services in the Fredericksburg and Culpeper region.

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