If the latter sounds like you, now is the perfect time to take the next step towards a naturally pain-free life.
With a new year ahead, many of us feel motivated to make healthy habit changes to reach our goals. If living pain-free is one of your dreams for 2021, consider these simple natural pain relief techniques that help you finally live pain-free.
7 Ways to Finally Live Pain-Free In 2021
1. Finally find an exercise you love.
Studies show that regular physical activity is an effective way to stay on top of pain and enjoy a wealth of other health benefits. Exercise releases pain-killing endorphins, improves circulation, and keeps your muscles and joints strong to prevent further injury.
But it can be hard to stay motivated to exercise when you don’t enjoy what you’re doing. The secret to making exercise a regular habit is to find an activity you love. If you’re still looking for your perfect match, make 2021 a year of exercise exploration. Try different cardio, strength training, relaxation, and stretching exercises to see what you like and what you don’t.
Note: If you’re actively in pain, start slow and steady. Progress from low-impact activities (like walking and light stretching) to higher intensity activities like running or cycling.
2. Finally ditch the inflammatory foods.
Does the cure to chronic pain lie within your own refrigerator? Food may not be the sole cure for pain, but it can certainly help (or hurt) your pain relief efforts.
Processed foods, sugar, red meat, sodas, fried foods, and food additives are significant causes of inflammation. Inflammation is a critical part of the body’s healing system. It calls the immune system’s attention to any invasive foreign body and allows the immune system to fight off any potential infection.
Inflammation helps to protect the body, but you may also know inflammation as a red, achy joint, that throbbing headache, or the unrelenting burning sensation in your back. Trouble starts when issues like diet or stress trigger inflammation rather than a pathogen. Here, there isn’t anything to defend against, and this misplaced inflammation wrecks havoc on healthy tissues.
Swapping highly processed foods that cause inflammation for anti-inflammatory foods that heal the body is an essential natural pain relief technique. Opt for a diet packed with vegetables, fruits, and healthy fats to reduce inflammation and quiet pain.
3. Finally make meditation your morning habit.
How long have you been thinking that you should try meditation? A few months? A few years? Just learned about it now? Perfect. No matter how long you’ve wanted to start a meditation practice (or how long you’ve been striving to meditate more regularly), there’s never a better time to start than now.
Meditation has been proven to offer long-lasting relief for chronic pain along with a laundry list of other helpful benefits (improved focus and concentration, stress relief, better moods, and more).
One of the ways meditation helps us relieve pain is by reducing stress. When we are stressed, the body releases increased amounts of cortisol and chemicals called cytokines. Cortisol increases our pain sensitivity and slows down tissue healing while cytokines ramp up inflammation and trigger pain.
Let’s face it, 2020 has been an all-around stressful year. We could all use the stress relief and calm that meditation provides – whether you are looking for natural pain relief or simply some peace of mind.
4. Finally stick to your acupuncture treatment plan.
Acupuncture works by regulating the central nervous system and interrupting the pain signals going to our brain. The stimulation relieves pain immediately, while the other benefits of acupuncture (increased blood flow, muscle relaxation, and release of endorphins) work to stimulate deeper healing for a fully restorative effect.
If you’ve tried acupuncture to treat your pain but haven’t had significant results, it could be that you didn’t follow through with a full treatment plan. Acupuncture works best with consistency (kind of like vitamins or exercise) and usually requires a full course of treatment (kind of like an antibiotic) for the best pain relief results.
Unfortunately, many people stop going to acupuncture after just a few visits. At this point in the treatment, we’ve established a solid foundation for healing, but the real, lasting benefits are just around the corner.
If you haven’t stopped into Wellnest Denver to try acupuncture yet, you may be wondering how needles could possibly help with pain relief? Here’s the good news: acupuncture is a safe, comfortable, and highly effective natural pain relief therapy – and it might even help you feel more focused, energized, and cheerful, too!
Whether you are getting back on track with your treatment plan or you are just trying acupuncture for the first time, the key to successful pain relief is consistency.
5. Finally give cupping and gua sha a try.
Have the mysterious practices of cupping and gua sha piqued your interest, but you have yet to take the leap and see what they’re all about? 2021 is the year.
Cupping and gua sha can be catalysts for healing and pain relief, especially for muscle and joint pain. Gua sha is an ancient technique that helps relieve sore or stiff muscles and joints or improve muscle tone in facial rejuvenation treatments. Gua sha promotes blood circulation through a specific area with a specialized tool to relax tense muscle fibers.
Cupping—like gua sha and acupuncture—is also an ancient therapy that stimulates circulation, healing, and pain relief. Cupping uses cups to create a vacuum, which flushes the area with fresh blood flow and deeply massages the tissues.
6. Finally get your at-home pain-relief self-care kit in order.
Self-care is essential for both physical and mental health, especially if you are managing chronic pain. This new year is the perfect time to create your comprehensive at-home pain-relief self-care kit.
Along with heating pads, your favorite natural pain-relieving balm, and stress-relieving herbal teas, essential oils make a great addition to a self-care kit. Studies show that aromatherapy and essential oils do more than just smell lovely – they also help relieve pain, reduce inflammation, reduce anxiety and depression, and improve sleep patterns.
Essential oils can be either inhaled or applied topically with a carrier oil. Here are a few of our favorite self-care essential oils and their uses:
- Joint and muscle pain: frankincense
- Stress relief: lavender
- Anxiety relief: chamomile
- Headaches: peppermint
- Brain fog: eucalyptus
7. Finally say goodbye to that *thing* that drives you crazy.
Whatever it is – a memory, a commitment, a relationship, an item, anything – 2021 is the time to let it go. The simple truth is that if it causes you stress, it’s likely causing you pain, too.
High stress and anxiety levels lead to increased cortisol levels and inflammation that cause higher pain sensitivity. Stress keeps our bodies in sympathetic mode or fight-flight-and-freeze, which gives us less time in restorative parasympathetic mode and prevents cellular healing.
This year, commit yourself to finally let go of that one thing that causes you the most stress, then focus your time and energy on stress-busting, pain-relieving activities.
Live Pain-Free with Wellnest Denver
You deserve to embrace all that 2021 has to offer without nagging or debilitating pain holding you back. Thankfully, with these simple resolutions and a strategic pain relief plan from Wellnest Denver, the pain-free life is within reach.
Wellnest offers acupuncture in Denver for pain relief, but we also design your treatment plan with your whole body, lifestyle, and big picture goals in mind. Book your visit today or contact us to learn more about how you can find natural pain relief with acupuncture!
