A program that focuses on rehabilitation for chronic pain sufferers will only truly provide benefit if the lessons learned during treatment are continued in everyday life. As with any rehabilitation program, it is important to implement consistency and carry out the methods developed during the program. Here at Recovia, we equip our patients with successful tools and techniques to practice daily at home.
Our final discipline in our 5-discipline program is lifestyle counseling. Lifestyle counseling is a part of our mission, we want to ensure that patients leave our facility feeling better and healthier. We believe that as a patient, hope and pain relief should not end when the program ends, but rather that it continues long after.
Our specialists are trained to teach coping skills for difficult situations and triggers. As a patient at Recovia, you will learn management and coping techniques to handle pain flare ups and stressful situations. Various aspects contribute to lifestyle counseling and may include any of the following.
Nutrition
Another aspect of lifestyle counseling is informing each patient about the importance of nutrition and a balanced diet. You may not realize the impact that diet has on pain. There are certain foods that we eat daily that may actually increase inflammation and cause chronic pain to flare up. Foods that are deep-fried, high in sugar, reside in the nightshade family, and even some dairy can cause inflammation. It is important to keep track of foods that you may show sensitivity to. You can do this by tracking your daily food intake, such as what time you ate, how you felt afterward, etc. On the other hand, there are foods that are anti-inflammatory and can decrease chronic pain flares. Fruits and vegetables, fish, whole grains, and many others can calm inflammation, decreasing aches and pains. Each individual’s body responds differently to various types of foods, so consulting with a trained nutritional counselor may help you determine which foods your body will respond to best.
Restorative Medicine
While it is important to eat healthy and follow a diet plan it can also be helpful to incorporate restorative medicine into a care program. Restorative medicine targets the body as a whole, not just treating specific symptoms. The goal is to rebuild the body’s chemistry so that it is equipped to repair itself. One form of restorative medicine that is practiced here is yoga. Yoga integrates physical movement with mindful breathing practices that address the various components of pain. As sufferers know, chronic pain can trigger changes in the brain that may lead to depression and anxiety. Yoga can have a reverse effect, helping to relieve chronic pain, in turn relieving depression and anxiety.
Breathing and Stress Management
Along the lines of incorporating breathing and calming techniques, our specialists have found that HeartMath is also beneficial. Heartmath is a technique that measures your breath and the way that you breathe. A small digital device, known as the M-Wave, is commonly used to help train your breathing and stress management habits. This device simply attaches to your ear and records the waves of your breath. This becomes multipurpose: it can calm the mind when in a stressful environment and provides a training mechanism to teach the mind how to reduce stress, balance emotions, and increase performance. Through this technique, you can learn to transform feelings of anger and frustration into ease and clarity of the mind. This is quite helpful in restoring the emotional state following stressful situations.
Recovia has created a program built on five primary disciplines. Each discipline is important and crucial in the success of the patient. These disciplines where created with the goal of equipping individuals for life after the program that involves less pain and more fulfillment. The final discipline is created solely for this purpose. Although each discipline is preparing each patient for life after the program, the lifestyle counseling discipline plays a significant role in maintaining gains accomplished during the program.
Recovia is a functional flex-care program that aims to maximize recovery for individuals suffering from chronic pain, injury, or dependency. The mission is to provide a compassionate, comprehensive, cost effective, and individualized functional rehabilitation program. For more information, please contact us at 480-712-4600 or visit our information page.
The advice and information provided herein is for educational purposes only and should not be used for the diagnosis or treatment of any medical condition. A licensed medical professional should be consulted for diagnosis and treatment of any and all medical conditions. Links to other sites are provided for information only -- they do not constitute endorsements of those other sites.
