1 in 5 adult Americans deal with ongoing, chronic pain of one sort or another, pain that just doesn’t go away. This can be exacerbated in people over 50 who often deal with pain from multiple sources.
Health providers aren’t really equipped to deal with chronic pain, which is one of the reasons many people end up being prescribed addictive pain medication. Another problem is that what works for one person may not work for another or may not work for long.
New technologies are being developed to help measure pain beyond the old method of asking someone to rate their pain from a 1 to a 10. Additionally, many researchers are looking into ways of reinforcing one method of pain relief with other methods.
In short, no one approach will benefit everyone. Trying multiple methods of relieving pain is often the best way of finding what works in a particular case. And taking pain medication should never be the first course of action.
Learn more at https://www.aarp.org/health/conditions-treatments/info-2018/pain-management-without-prescriptions.html