Charisma Health 
  Professionals

Pain management comes from two types of pain sources: structual and functional.

 

1. Structual pain management is handling of pain in soft and hard tissues of a body which is the result of either traumatic injury or overwork. It divides into acute and chronic pain. The pain here we are talking about does not include the pain from internal organs or malfunction of visera.

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Acute pain is referred to when the injury happens within 24 hours. It accompanies with the 4 big signs --local heat, local redness, local edema/swelling, limited movement.

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Chronic pain is called when the injury occurs more than 3 days ago or the pain lingers for years from overwork/overuse.

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Cold compression is used for acute pain. It helps freeze the local blood circulation to ease up severe pain and swelling. 

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Heat application is commonly used for chronic pain and tenderness. Coldness can kill pain, but it at the same time slows down the blood circulation which is not helpful for recovery. As the injury steps into chronic, there will be no local redness or bleeding. Therefore, The injured tissues are ready for recovery process. Oxygen and healthy blood flow is really important to get the problematic tissues healed. Therefore, we need heat to get the circulation going and oxygen delivered to feed the local tissues. 

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2. Functional pain management mainly deals with headache which results from emotional trigger, i.e. stress or sudden emotional stimulation to brain. 

 

Stabbing headache along with systemic signs and symptoms such as bowel movement abnomality, vomiting etc. needs medical attention.

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Massage therapy helps with tension migraine and headache due to muscle hypertonicity which leads to blood supply deficiency to brain. Acupuncture is beneficial to headache due to blood-related issues such as menstrual disorders, perimenopausal headache, liver disorders, etc.

 

In daily life, personal management with stress is highly recommended.