Treatment Options for Managing Your Pain

More than one-fifth of the American population lives with chronic pain. Pain is considered chronic when it lasts for three months or longer. Chronic pain may keep you up at night, keep you from work, or prevent you from engaging in the activities you love. 

Fortunately, our team at Alpha Care Medical in Seaford, Harrington, Dover, and Millsboro, Delaware, specializes in pain management. That means our experts are highly trained in evaluating, diagnosing, and treating all kinds of painful issues. Whether you’ve injured your back, have an autoimmune disease, live with fibromyalgia, or suffer from any type of musculoskeletal pain, we can help. 

The functional medicine approach

At Alpha Care Medical, we take a unique approach to health care called functional medicine. Instead of following the conventional formula that focuses on eliminating your symptoms, we embrace a more comprehensive philosophy that searches for the underlying causes of pain, and we consider every possible variable that may affect your health, including your job, relationships, lifestyle, age, environment, and other health conditions. 

We take a look at your pain from every angle and from multiple medical perspectives, and we pay close attention to how all of your body’s systems work — or don’t work — as a whole. This gives us a huge advantage when it comes to identifying the sources of pain.

So, if you’ve been living with pain and are frustrated with ineffective treatments, functional medicine is the next place to turn.

Your pain management options

Most traditional physicians rely on prescription medications to address pain, and medication certainly is an effective tool in many cases. However, there are inherent dangers with medications, including adverse side effects and addiction, particularly with opioids, which are the strongest painkillers. 

At Alpha Care Medical, we prescribe medications sparingly. We prefer to address your pain in ways that engage your own body’s natural ability to heal itself. That said, anti-inflammatory medications can assist you on your journey toward a pain-free life by alleviating your symptoms long-enough so you can participate in other treatments. Other pain management treatments we offer include:

Physical therapy

From simple ice and heat treatments to ultrasound and electrical stimulation, physical therapy encompasses a wide range of mechanical and physical modalities to address pain. Through targeted stretches and exercises, we can help your body improve circulation, reduce inflammation, and increase range of motion, all of which can help ease pain.

Massage therapy

This hands-on technique applies pressure to various muscles to help relax trigger points (muscle knots), reduce inflammation, and relieve pressure on nerves. Massage therapy can also lower your body’s production of cortisol (the stress hormone) and raise the production of serotonin (a mood-boosting hormone), all of which can help relieve pain.

Acupuncture

Based on traditional Chinese medicine techniques, acupuncture uses extremely thin needles to stimulate nerves, muscles, and connective tissues, all of which can help activate your body’s natural painkilling capabilities.

Nutrition

A bad diet can exacerbate pain. What you eat — and what you don’t eat — can affect your immune system and your body’s ability to fight pain. Certain foods can contribute to inflammation, and others can fight it off, so our team focuses on proper nutrition and dietary supplements, so you can achieve balance and pain relief.

Behavioral therapy

If you’ve been living with chronic pain, you may have wondered at some point whether it was all in your head. Rest assured, your pain is real, but your mind may be able to help you manage it. Your brain and your body are closely connected, and what affects one often affects the other. 

For example, chronic pain can cause depression, and depression can cause pain. Our behavioral health experts can help you understand this relationship, so you can learn to recognize and modify behaviors that are related to your pain.

There’s no reason to live with pain any longer. Our pain management experts can approach your condition from all sides and get to the source of your pain. To find out how our pain management methods can help you, book an appointment over the phone with Alpha Care Medical today.