CHRONIC PAIN
Chronic pain is the pain that we experience for a long period, from weeks and months to years. Many people notice that from a certain age onwards something in their body constantly hurts and especially if the pain concerns the same parts of the body and in the case that is continuous and unjustified, it causes confusion and frustration to the person. Some pathological conditions such as rheumatoid arthritis, ankylosing spondylitis, fibromyalgia, etc. involve chronic pain and can appear from a young age. In these cases, however, the etiology of the pain is obvious and the pain is expected. The difficulty lies in people who, while most of their lives were particularly active, strong and with excellent endurance, are now forced due to pain to limit many of what they did and especially their exercise.
The form of chronic pain is often similar to that of an injury, something that all old athletes or long-time exercisers have experienced in their active lives. Only now this feeling of pain, or burning or tingling or fatigue or a combination of all of these in different parts of the body simply does not go away! You feel like you are losing your body and your identity, you feel like you are getting old and frustrated and at the same time you miss everything you did or still doing but with much more warm-up and with a price to pay later…
The usual approach of these people to pain is to try to ignore it and persist- false approach! We need to think that pain is the body’s self-protection alarm. Possibly we reached this state due to overusing our body. We did not respect its need for rest and recovery and gradually it reached an irreversible point. The right approach is to offer our body what we have been depriving it of for so many years while we have been tormenting it. Respect and care are the key elements to a healthy body. We continue to exercise but taking breaks during training and giving 2-3 days rest between workouts. Massages and thermal baths would be good to integrate into our lives systematically and, above all, the physiotherapy center of nature: the sea! The diathermy of the sun and the cryotherapy of water in combination with low intensity swimming could dismiss muscleskeletal inflammation.
Movement is essential! We shouldn’t give up everything we were usually doing that we were taking joy out of it, because we get frustrated. After all, there are not a few people who, following the advice of their doctor, turn to exercise as an alternative way to deal with chronic pain. Studies have shown that regular light exercise releases serotonin, the hormone that relaxes us and makes us happy. Exercise improves blood circulation and eliminates toxins that cause inflammation and pain, lubricates the joints and maintains them in a good condition. Even pathological conditions that include chronic pain can benefit from light exercise with frequent breaks. Clinical pilates, yoga, swimming would be good suggestions. But not running or walking – standing and moving involve an excessive effort on the part of the body to cope with gravity and balance on two feet. If the goal is to relieve the body, it is better to relax it a little.
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