Pain is defined as physical suffering or distress, due to injury, illness. When a person experiences pain they often experience different levels of it due to tolerance. With chronic headaches, not including migraines, pain can be severe due to several reasons. These reasons most often include stress, lack of sleep and dietary habits.
Three to five percent of healthy Americans experience chronic headaches, which are headaches that occur three to five days a week. According to the Mayo Clinic, these headaches have to occur, at the least, fifteen days per month for three months in a row. These headaches may be considered different things such as chronic tension-type headaches, new daily persistent headaches and hemicranias continua. These types of headaches are much different than migraine headaches, as they do not have severe sensitivity or severe vomiting and nausea involved.
Cognitive or behavioral management is an option to help subdue the pain that comes with headaches. There are many ways of doing this, such as redefinition, imagery and distraction. Pharmaceuticals can also accommodate the pain on a short term level, while a physician is trying to diagnose the root of the problem. Unfortunately, medications to dull pain, or pain killers, can often produce addictive results.
Cognitive behavior management for chronic headaches is a way to take the patients mind off of the pain that the patient is feeling. With redefinition, a cognitive approach, the client would learn to focus on positive coping management such as telling one’s self that they are strong and that the pain is not going to kill them. The pain will eventually diminish, or not as strong, because the person’s mind is stronger than he or she thinks. These are called coping statements. Reinterpretative statements also may help by having the patient tell him or herself that it is a learning experience and that there are worse things in life.
Acupuncture, which is a stimulation procedure, may also help with chronic headache pain. This procedure started in Asia, at the least, 2000 years ago and can be considered a slight analgesic for most acute pain and some chronic pain. With certain pressure points available to stop the pain of chronic headaches it could be possible through trial and error to find the correct pressure point to alleviate certain chronic headache ailments.
Pharmaceutical procedures do seem to be the most reliable part of reliving the pain associated with chronic headaches. For many years, when a person begins to get a headache they often opt for acetaminophen or ibuprofen. Both of these are over the counter medications that are the most common in most households. However, sometimes over the counter medications are not enough to take care of the pain. A visit to the doctor may be necessary and a prescription will be written to acquire something strong for the patient. Centrally acting analgesics or opiates, work exceptionally well for short periods of time. These medications alter the perception of pain by blocking the sensation of pain from reaching the brain.
Recommendations should be specific to each patient by the way that they feel the pain and the nature of the onset of the pain. With chronic headaches, over the counter medication should be used while a physician is trying to find out the cause. If the pain persists with over the counter medications, a last resort should be centrally acting analgesics, due to the addiction and non reaction o f the medication that happens in time with too much use.
Patients should look at having all four pain treatment management forms available to them in local hospitals or with their doctors. These four forms consist of surgical, cognitive, pharmaceutical and behavioral. Since everyone has a different tolerance to pain and higher and lower thresholds. Different ages and diagnoses are also important when a determination is being made on what kind of pain relief and how much is needed.
