It is coming to the end of the week; you need to finish the project. You stay back late. Then slowly but surely that pain starts to develop in your head, your back, your knee or your shoulder. So what do you do? You open the desk drawer and there at the side are the pills you bought for this frequent chronic pain. You pop two of them into your mouth and within 15 minutes the pain is gone and you can continue your work late into the night.
A few months back when you had the headache, it was the doctor that prescribed you the medicine. He did check your blood pressure and say that it was normal. Now, you simply go to the pharmaceutical near your office or home to buy the medicine. These workhorse painkillers: aspirin, Paracetamol, ibuprofen or Panadol. They’re surely safe to take as long as you take them according to the recommended doses, right?
Studies have shown that they are dangerous if taken continuously over a long period of over 3 months. Patients who have taken it continuously for chronic pain suffered from internal bleeding. A mild overdose can already damage the organs; this overdose is when taking multiple medications within 24 hours, medications, which contain paracetamol.
So what can be done to prevent these chronic pains?
Basically taking more frequent breaks to drink water would help. Sometimes the body is simply dehydrated and sends the signal through an already inflamed muscle, joint or organ, otherwise you get a severe headache, so walking and drinking is a quick relief.
Doing less stressful work. There was a time when you could cover the roles of 3 staff that got you recognised and promoted. But after a while, you can’t keep doing it. You need more sleep and rest to recover from the damages caused to your body from stress and overexertion, so slow down.
Exercising. Eating healthy food. Doing stretching exercises to the joints that ache and tense up.
Improving your posture to prevent backaches and neck pains.
Lastly finding a way to release the tension in your joints, muscles and spine. While going for a massage does sometime relieve the pains at joins, which last for a couple of days, frequent chiropractic treatment improves and further prevents the tensions from becoming severe. In fact chiropractic treatment have been stated to be effective in treating these joint, back and neck pains and reducing chronic pains like headaches.
Now I don’t have a solution if you have headaches due to addictions. Like I still have a caffeine addiction. No coffee for a day and I get a headache. But you don’t need to be addicted to painkillers, which is harmful.
