Helpful Tips For Exercising With Chronic Pain
If you’re living with chronic pain, the last thing you probably want to think about is exercising. However, significant research has shown that exercising regularly forms a significant aspect of treating chronic or persistent pain. Therefore, there’s absolutely no reason to allow persistent pain to turn you into a couch potato and cause your overall health to decline. At the same time, too much of the wrong physical activity can worsen your pain. Here are some tips to help you exercise despite persistent pain.
- Speak with your doctor
The first thing you need to do is speak to your doctor about your chronic pain. This way, you can identify the source of the problem, get permanent treatment, and start exercising regularly. If there’s no immediate remedy to the pain, your doctor can prescribe safe solutions to help you manage your condition. Some health experts even recommend using CBD products from companies like CBDistillery to help with pain management. Your health expert will also recommend the best physical activities for you, depending on your condition.
- Find the right routine
Once you receive clearance from your health expert, it’s time to find the right routine for you. Depending on your physical limitations, you may find some physical activities more friendly to your body than others. But in most cases, experts have revealed that exercise therapy activities like yoga, tai chi, walking, and swimming are great for people dealing with joint and bone pain. A movement-based therapy session like yoga, for example, is said to generally improve physical function, especially for people experiencing chronic lower back pain, headaches, neck pain, rheumatoid arthritis, and knee osteoarthritis.
- Start slowly and gradually
Regardless of how moderate your exercise routine is, you need to always start slowly and gradually. You can increase your effort and intensity as your body gains more strength and builds greater flexibility. Jumping right into any workout session, especially a moderately rigorous one, can easily worsen your pain. It’s also important to warm up before your exercise session by stretching. Regular stretching also increases flexibility, improves blood flow, and increases the range of motion through your joints.
- Aim at workouts that improve balance and core strengthening
A good balance is essential for going through any workout session, especially if you’re experiencing chronic pain. Aiming for exercises that improve your balance is a great way to build strong muscles. This will help prevent falls and assist you in managing some types of pain, especially back pain. Core training also offers similar benefits, as it works on strengthening your midsection’s muscle system. It can help stabilize your spine, lower back, and abdominal muscles while giving your body the support it needs to take on other exercises.
- Follow the two-hour rule
Exercising, especially for the first time, comes with some pain and muscle ache. However, if your pain worsens two hours after your exercise than before, that could mean that you may have overworked your body. And you’ll need to scale down the intensity the next time.
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