Colorado Pain Management: What Are My Options?

By coloradopainexperts | November 4, 2021 |

Did you know that over 20% of adults suffered from chronic pain in 2019? It’s even more common for elderly adults to be at risk for lingering aches and pain. Ultimately, this can lead to poor quality of life and impact work and hobbies.

Certain Colorado pain management clinics are on the leading edge of medicine for combating chronic pain. There are many different non-surgical techniques out there. It’s important you have skilled clinicians on your side who’ve found helpful pain management treatments.

What Is Chronic Pain?

The big difference between chronic and acute pain is the length of time. Usually, with acute pain, you have immediate pain from an obvious injury. On the contrary, chronic pain lingers for weeks, months, or years; it can also sometimes be difficult to identify what has caused this pain.

Physicians diagnosis chronic pain after patients have dealt with it for three to six months. In some cases, medical practitioners can’t identify the cause of the pain.

The easiest example of chronic pain is arthritis.

Additionally, chronic pain is difficult to manage because of how it affects the nervous system. Over time, a person’s nerves are altered to become more sensitive to the pain – this makes it more difficult to manage.

Back Pain

Back pain is one of the most common causes of chronic pain. Northern Colorado pain management clinics specialize in providing ointments, over-the-counter medication, and cortisone injections for back pain.

Other injections that are commonly used in the back are nerve blocks and epidural steroid injections. This is useful when a physician can locate where exactly the pain is, however, it is not a long-term solution.

Physical therapy helps patients by giving them strengthening and mobility exercises. This is usually used in conjunction with non-surgical approaches. Your pain will be lessened and you’ll address weakened or stiff areas that contribute to the chronic pain.

Holistic approaches are becoming more popular such as electrical nerve stimulation and acupuncture. Sometimes, non-surgical approaches fail. There are, however, minimally invasive procedures to help manage chronic pain.

In fact, spinal cord stimulation is helpful in relieving back pain when other methods have failed, and it is also a treatment offered in Colorado pain management clinics.

This is done by placing electrodes onto the vertebrae and spinal cord; the generator is then positioned beneath the skin. Patients are able to trigger the electrical stimulation through a small, handheld remote when they feel pain.

Headaches and Migraines

Did you factor in daily headaches as chronic pain? It often gets overlooked since it often has no definitive cause.

Sometimes, poor posture and prior neck injuries contribute to headaches or migraines. What happens when it is impeding your daily life?

Some people find success in medication management through anti-seizure or beta-blocker medication. Others fail multiple treatments before finding one that works the best.

Sometimes, over-use medication can actually lead to more headaches. That’s probably not what you wanted to hear as someone who suffers from chronic pain.

What are other options are out there?

Luckily, the doors have opened in recent years to better address migraines. Botox injections are becoming popular for those who suffer from headaches more than 15 days a month. You can repeat this procedure every three months.

Muscle relaxants and biofeedback tools (such as measuring muscle tension) can also manage chronic headaches and migraines.

Muscle Pain

You’ve probably dealt with sore muscles at least once or twice in your life. A couple of days of soreness following an intense workout is one thing – dealing with daily, debilitating pain is a whole other issue.

Athletes have shed light on common strategies to address lingering pain. Do you remember watching the Olympics and wondering what the red, circular splotches on their shoulders and back were?

One way to address a muscle injury is through a treatment called cupping therapy. The therapist or clinician uses specialized cups that suction onto your skin. It is designed to improve blood flow and healing to a specific area.

Other treatments in a Colorado pain management clinic include acupuncture, physical therapy, and platelet-rich plasma therapy. If you have significant muscle pain, spasms, or immobility, then you should look into a clinic to manage your muscle pain.

Platelet Rich Plasma Therapy

Medicine is always looking towards cutting-edge research. Platelet-rich plasma therapy is a useful treatment to help soft tissue injuries. It is commonly injected in aching joints like your shoulder or knee.

Research is still studying how platelet-rich plasma therapy specifically works. It’s thought that using your own platelets contributes to the healing process. Additionally, the recovery time is very minimal since you’re using your body’s healing power.

Radiofrequency Ablation

Radiofrequency ablation might be a procedure you’ve never heard of before. This treatment addresses arthritis by using a probe to directly send electrical currents into the problem area.

This is a minimally invasive procedure with the ultimate goal to heat affected nerves and block pain signals. If you don’t want intensive surgery and other treatments have failed – this could be an option for you.

Patients report relief of symptoms from six months to a year; often, this is a lot longer than nerve blocks.