Doctors treating patients with chronic pain approach pain management from different angles. For example, a strictly pharmacological approach relies on medications and medical devices to relieve pain. A pain management approach would look to other strategies, including restoring function.
Lone Star Pain Medicine is a Weatherford, TX pain clinic that specializes in chronic pain management. A quick visit to their website reveals that one of their primary goals is to restore function. Lone Star’s pain specialists understand how important function is to both managing pain and helping patients lead the most normal lives possible.
Losing Function Makes Matters Worse
Understanding why restoring function is so important begins by looking at the issue from the opposite direction. In simple English, losing function in any part of the body tends to make things worse. A chronic pain sufferer will only experience more difficulties as function is lost. Therefore, a good pain medicine doctor seeks to limit functional loss and, where possible, even improve function.
Pain medicine doctors tend to employ functional restoration programs (FRPs) to that end. FRPs are interdisciplinary approaches that address both the limitations chronic pain imposes and the need to restore function in hopes of reducing any such limits on daily life.
4 Key Reasons for Restoring Function
Doctors clearly understand the ramifications of losing function. But pain medicine doctors actively try to do something about it. According to Lone Star, pain medicine doctors key in on four reasons for restoring function:
1. Better Physical Health
FRPs focus on restoring function by improving strength, endurance, flexibility, and mobility. Improving on these things can help reduce pain significantly. More importantly, however, they improve a patient’s overall health. A patient can never go wrong with stronger muscles. Having increased flexibility and endurance isn’t bad, either.
Restoring function allows some chronic pain patients to start climbing stairs again. Others are able to get exercised by walking. Still others can go back to work. The physical benefits of restoring function are undeniable.
2. Improved Mental Health
Chronic pain often comes with mental health baggage. Living with chronic pain daily can lead to frustration, anger, depression, and anxiety. Mental health struggles are only made worse when loss of function prevents a patient from enjoying the things they used to enjoy. By restoring function, doctors give that portion of life back to patients. Patients respond positively as a result.
3. Reduced Reliance on Medication
The physical and mental benefits of restored function often contribute to less of a reliance on medications. increased strength and endurance reduce physical pain and the dependence on painkillers. Meanwhile, improved mental health can reduce a patient’s reliance on antidepressants and antianxiety medications.
4. Social Improvements
Chronic pain can be socially limiting, especially when function is lost. Consider a chronic pain patient losing function in his legs. Getting out of the house requires the use of a scooter or wheelchair. But using a mobility device comes with its own issues. So rather than put in the time and effort, the patient stays home.
Restoring function for that patient means getting out and doing things. It means getting back to those social connections that make life fulfilling. For that reason alone, restoring function is critically important.
Because restoring function is so important to pain management, it is in a chronic pain patient’s best interest to hook up with a pain management specialist rather than simply seeing a GP. GPs provide a valuable service, but pain management and functional restoration are not their specialty. Pain medicine doctors are the specialists, and they know how to restore function.
