Chronic Pain Management Through Healthy Diet Exercise and Sleep

Managing Your Chronic Pain With Diet, Exercise, and Sleep

Chronic pain doesn’t just hurt physically. It affects all areas of your life. When you’re in pain, it’s harder to concentrate at work, which can be dangerous if you’re doing physically demanding work or work that requires your full attention, like operating machinery or vehicles. Chronic pain also affects your personal life, making it harder to have a good time and relax with friends and family. You might find yourself skipping out on social events or activities and hobbies you once loved. This disconnect from what makes life fulfilling can lead to decreased quality of life, isolation, and even depression. If you’re experiencing chronic pain, don’t hesitate to seek treatment. In the meantime, there are changes you can make on your own to take the power back from pain.

Causes of Pain

It would be great to never feel pain again, but pain is a necessary response to injury or illness. It’s our body’s way of telling us that something is wrong. It also serves to preserve our survival. When you fall off of your skateboard and scrape your knee, it hurts, and that pain is your body’s way of telling you, “Next time, wear kneepads.” When you get sick or injured, your immune system kicks in to fix it, sending white blood cells to the affected area. When the body is healing, you experience inflammation through soreness, swelling, fever, or heat. Acute inflammation of this kind isn’t necessarily bad; it is a sign that your body is healing. 

Chronic inflammation, however, which results from a chronic injury, an autoimmune disease, or chronic diseases like diabetes, can lead to mood disorders, rashes and sores, and weight changes. Chronic pain management often requires medical interventions, but they don’t always involve surgery or medications. Your healthcare team will often have diet, exercise, and sleep recommendations that will get you on your way to leading your best life.

Healthy Diet

The first step to reducing inflammation and managing pain at home is a healthy diet. The right foods can reduce inflammation by supporting your immune system. Unhealthy foods—those high in saturated fats and sugar—can worsen inflammation and pain symptoms. Vitamin deficiencies can also worsen your chronic pain. 

An anti-inflammatory diet includes foods high in zinc, iron, and vitamins A and E. If you’re suffering from neuropathic pain (a symptom of diabetes), healthy fats and vitamin B12 can help lessen your symptoms. You’ll find all of these nutrients in whole fruits, dark green leafy vegetables, legumes, and whole grains. You’ll find healthy fats in olive oil, nuts, and seeds. For zinc and iron, you don’t have to turn to red meat. Crab, shrimp, and oysters are rich in zinc, and tuna, haddock, and the dark meat of poultry are all high in iron.

If the thought of cooking a healthy meal makes you think, “Maybe I can just push through the pain after all,” try meal prepping. Set aside one night a week to prepare a week’s worth of lunches and dinners at once that you can easily reheat (or eat cold, in the case of foods like salads) throughout the week. If you can make the time for it, cooking can be a fun hobby and a great source of light exercise, as you’ll be on your feet moving around the kitchen.

Exercise

Exercise? Wait, shouldn’t I be resting if I’m in pain? Won’t exercising make things worse? Exercise is indeed a necessary component of pain management. When you’re dealing with a chronic condition like arthritis, your doctor’s recommendation to exercise more seems like a paradox. My knees hurt when I walk, but I have to walk more to make my knees stop hurting?

Pushing yourself to the absolute limit isn’t the kind of exercise we’re recommending. You don’t need to lift the heaviest weights at the gym or run a marathon to gain the benefits of exercise. Moderate, low-impact exercise like yoga or swimming is all you need. 

Exercise builds muscle strength and eases the soreness and stiffness caused by neuropathic pain. It releases endorphins, the body’s natural painkiller. And it decreases inflammation by activating inflammation-fighting T-cells, as a recent study published in Science Immunology found. It may seem counterintuitive, but moderate exercise is one of the best tools at your disposal for fighting pain.

Sleep

Getting a good night’s sleep is probably the most important thing that none of us seem to have time for. Not only do we sleep less than we should because of commitments to work, family, or study, chronic pain makes it hard to get comfortable, fall asleep, and stay asleep through the night. And the next morning, it can make getting out of bed its own excruciating ordeal. As this 2022 study puts it, experiencing pain makes your sleep worse, and sleeping poorly exacerbates your pain symptoms.

Medication is just a short-term solution to insomnia. Good sleep hygiene habits are the key to enjoying better sleep. Try to go to bed and get up at the same time every day, and don’t linger in bed too long after waking up. While exercise will relieve anxiety, tire you out, and give you that sense of accomplishment that helps you get in bed stress-free, avoid strenuous exercise right before bedtime. If you’re a worrier, the silence of the bedroom tends to be a place where all of those anxiety-inducing thoughts start to creep in. Take some time in the evening to write your thoughts down so you can deal with them tomorrow and go to bed without worry.

Alertive Has Your Personalized Pain Management Plan

These general guidelines will get you headed in the right direction, but only your healthcare team can work with you to develop the exact diet that’s right for you, the exact exercise routine that’s right for you, and the exact sleep habits that are right for you given your age, activity level, medical history, and other factors.

If you’re experiencing chronic pain, book an appointment with Alertive. Our team of pain management experts will work with you to develop a personalized pain management plan that will improve your quality of life. For more information on our pain management philosophy and interventions, visit this link.