wWhen you feel an ache or pain anywhere, it can often have you reaching for the painkillers in your cabinet. Of course, that’s a reasonable response, and we don’t advise against it, especially when you’re experiencing an onset of pain or in isolated incidents.
But when that pain persists, and even worsens, masking the pain only provides temporary relief and allows the issue to progress further.
It’s hard to determine how long you should rely on painkillers rather than seeking pain management near Iowa City.
The advice we give our patients at Family & Sport Chiropractic is to visit our expert team as soon as possible. In this article, we explain why we recommend proactively seeking pain management, and what we treat at our center.
When to Seek Treatment for Pain
From our necks to our knees and everything in between, we’ve all felt an ache or pain from time to time. Sometimes, we can pinpoint the cause—sleeping wrong, lifting something improperly, or injuries like falling can result in inflammation and pain as your body heals.
Of course, self-care is important and sometimes effective. Using hot and cold therapy, taking over-the-counter medications, and resting can sometimes get you back on your feet feeling fine again in no time.
Other times, however, you become far too reliant on these methods and don’t see results. We recommend seeking pain management in the following instances.
Interference With Daily Life
The golf course is calling your name, but your back pain is keeping you from moving due to the burning sensation that’s radiating to your lower limbs. Or work tasks keep piling up, but the pain in your neck keeps you from looking down at your computer. Maybe you would like to enjoy the nice warm weather outside, but your hips feel stiff and swollen, and you’ve decided it’s best to sit inside and relax instead of straining them further. These are all instances when you should seek pain management near Iowa City.
Pain is your body’s signal that something is wrong, and if it’s keeping you awake at night or interfering with your life, it shouldn’t be ignored. Even if this is an acute incident, there’s no guarantee that it won’t resurface. It’s best to see a specialist who can diagnose the cause and help you prevent pain in the future.
Pain That Persists for an Extended Period of Time
We consider pain chronic if it lasts for more than 3 months. This is a personal decision that requires you to ask yourself, are you willing to grin and bear it for that long? We don’t think you should.
Not only because it can negatively affect your quality of life, but because the earlier we can address the cause, the quicker we can find treatment and stop the pain from worsening. Most people wait until their at-home remedies have stopped providing relief before seeking help. We say, why wait?
Pain That Doesn’t Have an Obvious Cause
Maybe you’re noticing some tingling sensations or tenderness in your joints. You can’t quite pin when this started occurring, but it’s been present and distracting enough for you to notice. While it may seem like a problem that will resolve itself, some conditions, like neuropathy, are chronic and require lifelong pain management near Iowa City. The longer you wait to address the symptoms that come with chronic conditions, the worse they will get.
Pain That Does Have an Obvious Cause
Sports injuries, work injuries, car accidents, and any other trauma to the body should always be addressed by a medical professional. While it may seem minor at the moment, it could become serious if you don’t know how to properly manage the pain. Our team offers physical therapy and rehab, which will teach you stretches, exercises, and techniques to manage pain and heal from the injury.
Pain Management Process at Family & Sport Chiropractic
We offer management for musculoskeletal pain that affects your bones, joints, muscles, and ligaments, as well as services to reduce inflammation and neurological pain. It all starts with a consultation.
Comprehensive Consultation
We start the process with a conversation. Next, we ask about your medical history, the onset and severity of your symptoms, and your pain management attempts so far.
We then conduct an examination to assess your condition and identify the cause of your pain. In some cases, we may also conduct neurological exams to assess movement, sensation, coordination, and balance.
This helps us tailor a personalized plan for pain management near Iowa City.
Treatment
Your treatment will include chiropractic services, physical therapy, and even a range of regenerative medicine treatments offered at Iowa Wellness Center, which shares a roof with our office.
You can’t expect to be pain-free after just 1 session, but in some cases, you’ll see noticeable improvements. Depending on your pain, you may require ongoing care from our team.
Results
For lasting relief, adopt new lifestyle habits. This includes being more mindful of your posture, your physical activity, and even your diet. We give you a lot of guidance regarding daily stretches and exercises to keep your pain at bay or gone, but relief can last as long as you keep up with this practice.
Pain Management Services
We recommend people of all ages come to Family & Sport Chiropractic. We offer services for prenatal care, sports care, and kids’ care. Injury and trauma can happen at any age or throughout any life event, so we accept every opportunity to help anyone find relief.
Neuropathy
If you look through our site, read our Google reviews, or scroll through our YouTube videos, you’ll find a lot of information regarding peripheral neuropathy treatment. That’s because we consider ourselves neuropathy specialists, dedicated to determining what causes neuropathy—your neuropathy, that is—and finding the best treatments to reverse and manage the symptoms.
Patients come to us seeking pain management near Iowa City for neuropathy with the following symptoms:
- Tingling sensations in the hands and feet
- Burning pain that may spread to the arms and hands
- Sharp, “electric-like” pains that extend into the hands and arms
- Drops in blood pressure
- Dizziness or lightheadedness
- Muscle weakness
Neuropathy results from damage to the nervous system, which can disrupt how your body interprets pain. There is no single underlying cause of neuropathy, which also means there’s no single common solution.
Neuropathy Pain Management
Once we determine the cause(s) of your neuropathy, we develop a targeted plan. This includes nutritional guidance and IV therapy, oxygen therapy, and much more.
We also employ physical therapy devices like Hako-Med Therapy, which uses electrical signals to stimulate nerves and improve circulation in the treatment area, like your hands and feet.
The ReBuilder is a device that was designed specifically for neuropathic pain, and uses electric pulses to reactivate and repair damaged nerves. It’s a minimally invasive and gentle therapy that allows us to customize your treatment for you.
Don’t just take our word for it! Hear about how this patient improved neuropathic symptoms by coming to us for pain management near Iowa City.
Hip Pain
When you feel pain or discomfort in your hip, it’s usually felt either in or around where 2 bones meet (your hip joint). Pain can be felt close to the surface of your hip, deep inside the joint, or even in the lower back.
Hip pain can result from injuries, like repetitive strain, fractures, or dislocations. However, it can also result from hip arthritis, which causes pain, swelling, and stiffness in the area, or bursitis, which affects the cushion spaces around bones.
Hip Pain Management
Our hip pain treatment will include physical therapy, lifestyle modification guidance, and chiropractic services.
For hip pain, we may also rely on PRP injections, which can accelerate your recovery and reduce pain. This involves taking a sample of your own blood and spinning it in a centrifuge to separate the platelets, which are parts of your blood that help with blood clotting and contain growth factors, nutrients, and proteins essential for recovery.
After we form this concentrate, we inject it into your hip to improve circulation and accelerate recovery. It’s one of many treatments that we refer to when asked how to reduce inflammation in the body.
Back Pain
Back pain can range in intensity from mild to severe. It can even radiate to your hips, legs, or buttocks. People feel a range of symptoms, including twitching, tingling, tightness, or aching.
For back pain management near Iowa City, we determine the cause: lifestyle, poor posture, repetitive movements, arthritis, or even obesity. From there, we develop a personalized back pain treatment plan.
Back Pain Management
We start with chiropractic care to stretch your vertebrae (stacked bones that make up your spine) and relieve pressure on the discs (cushions between the vertebrae) and nerves to reduce pain. This is an effective treatment to help you find back strain relief. We also have a few different therapy options for back pain relief.
Our Back on Trac chair from Ergo Flex Technologies is a hands-free spinal traction therapy that eases pressure on your spinal discs and nerves. We also rely on Hako-Med to stimulate your body’s natural healing response and alleviate muscle spasms and improve strength.
Of course, we teach you exercises and stretches to perform at home to help you reduce back pain daily.
Neck Pain
Neck pain doesn’t just affect your neck; sometimes, it’s the cause of your chronic migraines and headaches from tensing your muscles. But even without the aching or throbbing in your head, you might experience shooting, radiating pain that leads to the inability to turn your head. Neck pain stems from injuries, aging, stress, and muscle strains.
Neck Pain Management
To find your neck pain relief, we use targeted muscle techniques to alleviate strain, which can also help with migraines. We may also perform a series of adjustments, stretches, and massages to give you the ability to turn your head again.
Other options for neck pain treatment include ozone therapy, which uses medical-grade ozone to boost oxygen levels in your body. Oxygen helps improve circulation throughout your body and deliver vital nutrients to cells, which is necessary for healing your neck, or any part of the body. This is administered through a face mask or cannula, depending on your preference.
Don’t Wait to find relief from pain
We offer pain management near Iowa City for more than neuropathy and the hips, neck, and back. While those are the most common reasons people come in for our services, the list doesn’t end there. We recommend requesting an appointment to learn about our vast range of services to help you find relief.
If your chronic pain can’t wait, try our treatment planning tool. This allows you to streamline the process, and get help quicker.
