In our lives, certain activities add up to increase our pain. In turn, certain treatments add up to decrease pain. These concepts and relationships can be described in terms of a mathematical equation. On the other side of the equation, there are ways to reduce pain in people with these conditions. Body work reduces pain by decreasing soft tissue pain input to the brain.
Medication works by numbing the brain or healing the soft tissue in one way or another.
Nutrition is important because you get out of your body what you put into it. Home exercising and stretching reduce pain by decreasing the pain input to the brain from the soft tissue. The more you expose your body to the factors that add up to increase pain, the more you must expose your body to the factors that decrease your level of pain, or the net result will be an increase in your level of pain. As you examine your life, try to determine which activities are most important to you, and which of these factors relate to these activities. Also, try to learn more about what you can do to take care of yourself in an effort to decrease your pain.