How do people cope with pain?

[Cornfed]

As part of the joys of growing older, I have occasionally suffered from chronic pain conditions. In the weekend I had an attack of this particular condition, was in constant agonizing pain, couldn’t walk, couldn’t sleep, didn’t want to eat and this lasted for about two and a half days. Now it’s over I want to go around everywhere jumping for joy, but I learned the hard way that a man of my age and weight shouldn’t do that.

The thing is that I think I am a reasonably strong and stoic person. I can deal with these things. But how do average people deal with things like this without going insane? Perhaps they don’t, which is why they are, you know, insane.

[TruthSeeker]

The Bible says drink a little wine for your often infirmities (1 Timothy 5:23). I don't say become an alcoholic or get drunk, but drink a little wine when you're in pain. It will help you.

Wine also has a lot of antioxidants. It's God's prescription.

[gsjackson]

A few possibilities:

(1) Find Tom Brady's diet. He and his trainer guru go to extremes avoiding foods that create or exacerbate inflammation. Get checked for food allergies.
(2) Do resistance training, but without weights. Isometrics, dynamic tension, etc. If you lift, do very slow, controlled reps. You need the muscle as kind of a coat of armor for the internal organs. With isometrics you can get a workout while avoiding the developed pain angles and pathways.
(3) Get in the water -- swim, water jog in a floatation vest, etc. It's soothing.
(4) Replace joints as needed -- one of the few things western medicine does well. I didn't take a pain-free step for over 15 years, but with a new hip and knee I'm feeling pretty frisky.
(5) Get out in the sun a lot.
(6) Another vote here for wine. I guess some people have luck with hemp.

Most Americans go the pill route, which is one of the reasons so many are zombified now.

[Lindsey]

I fully understand you! I often have terrible headaches. I usually can't cope with the pain and take pills. I know it's not good but I can't manage this without meds. And what is the worst is that sometimes medication doesn't work and I feel even worse. Hate this feeling

[Contrarian Expatriate]

As part of the joys of growing older, I have occasionally suffered from chronic pain conditions. In the weekend I had an attack of this particular condition, was in constant agonizing pain, couldn’t walk, couldn’t sleep, didn’t want to eat and this lasted for about two and a half days. Now it’s over I want to go around everywhere jumping for joy, but I learned the hard way that a man of my age and weight shouldn’t do that.

The thing is that I think I am a reasonably strong and stoic person. I can deal with these things. But how do average people deal with things like this without going insane? Perhaps they don’t, which is why they are, you know, insane.

Just let karma have her way with you. She is undefeated you know!

[onethousandknives]

You might need HRT. Specifically pregnenolone. Pregnenolone is the base hormone made from cholesterol in your body all the other steroids are made out of. It has a lot of positive cognitive effects by itself. If you're hypogonadal and/or hypoadrenal you won't be making enough pregnenolone in the adrenal glands and testes. For pain specifically where this ends up working out is corticosteroids and cortisol.

Cortisol is painted as a "bad" hormone and in some ways it is, but you also need it to continue to exist. Medically the only other thing you can do after NSAIDs if opiates are out of the picture is use corticosteroids, like Cortisone (cortisol) and then others like Prednisone. However, this leads to lots of fluid retention and weight gain, and catabolism of muscle tissue and connective tissue. A lot of people will take Prednisone because it gives them pretty much manic energy levels, without making you "high" in the way opiates/etc will, and it relieves pain extremely well. Short term it's not a big deal, longterm you can just wreck yourself and put yourself in a wheelchair at 300lbs if you use said medicines. Pregnenolone wasn't studied much after they managed to synthesize cortisone and the synthetic corticosteroids, but it showed a lot of promise as well for pain relief and pretty much HRT in general. It's OTC in USA, so if you want to experiment on yourself, go for it. I've taken it for 4 years now, not for pain, just testosterone and cognitive benefits and it's been great.

Besides that, I think psychologically with pain a lot is psychosomantic and your perception of physical pain will be rooted somewhat in your emotional state of the time. Also psychologically but physiologically, pain is based on perception and your receptor sensitivity. One lady at my gym actually took my advice based on this hunch and cancelled a foot surgery. She worked out about 6 hours a day to battle depression/be a trophy wife. She started getting foot pain and took NSAIDs for a couple of years and kept upping the dose. I told her something like, go take a total break for a week or two, do something very light, and gradually ease back into your old training volume with no NSAIDs. She told me the pain went away totally. Nothing physiologically changed except maybe some tendinitis went down mildly. So in this way, NSAIDs or any "pain relief" is bad if you use it longterm, as your body never accepts a baseline level of pain and normalizes it to be homeostatic.

Physically, besides lifting, flexibility is probably most important. For back pain, 90+% is caused by poor flexibility, tight hamstrings and hip flexors cause anterior pelvic tilt, and your spinal discs to precompress. If the discs are precompressed, let's say you have 1cm where each disc can move. If they're precompressed to 8mm, then you now have 2mm, and then you crush a disc by picking up a bucket or something. It's the same with a lot of pains, it's basically muscle imbalances or tightness.