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Everyone experiences pain at some point in their lives – in fact, pain is the most common reason why people visit the doctor or require health care services.

What type of people must deal with pain?

* 80% of hospitalized patients
* 37% of cancer patients in long term care facilities
* 55% of home health patients
* Heart attack sufferers: 1.2 million
* Those with headaches: 5 million
* People with acute lung diseases: 4 million
* Dental problems: 3 million
* Digestive problems: 10 million
* Musculoskeletal disorders: 6 million
* 26 million people between 20 and 64 years of age that suffer from back pain
* 80% of people over 65 are affected by arthritis and musculoskeletal pain
* 1 American in 6 has painful arthritis

In some instances pain is a natural part of life that you can control with over-the-counter painkillers, meditation, or other methods. For others, such as those suffering from arthritis, pain is an everyday occurrence, and can be quite severe and more difficult to manage.

There are three main types of pain:

Somatic pain: Occurs in the skin, muscle or bone. Ever felt an aching, throbbing or feeling of pressure? Then you have probably experienced this type of pain.

Visceral pain: Affects the body's internal organs and cavities. This is a pain that creates a gnawing, cramping or sharp sensation.

Neuropathic pain: Results from damage to the nervous system. Can be experienced as a burning, shooting, or pins-and-needles feeling.

Pain can be characterized as mild, moderate, or severe. Pain categories are used to help physicians select the most effective pain medication.

Mild (BPI rating of 1-4): aspirin, acetaminophen (Tylenol), or NSAIDs (non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs such as Motrin and Aleve.)

Moderate (BPI rating of 4-6): tramadol (Ultram), codeine, hydrocodone (Vicodin), or oxycodone (OxyContin)

Severe (BPI rating of 7 or above): morphine, hydromorphone (Dilaudid), or fentanyl (Actiq).

Pain management is important if you want to live each day to its fullest without unnecessary suffering. Pain can negatively affect all aspects of your life and inhibit your ability to carry out simple tasks, such as eating regular meals. It can impact your sleeping patterns, drain your energy, alter your mood and make it difficult or impossible to accomplish daily chores and responsibilities.

Pain management, if done right, makes it possible to lessen or eliminate pain and suffering. The best way to achieve this is to treat the cause of the pain, through the proper use of pain medication. Other pain relief techniques, such as relaxation, can be used in conjunction with medicine to achieve the best results.

Often, doctors prescribe more than one medication to achieve adequate pain relief. Combining two different pain medications is an effective control method because you can give the patient a good dose of medicine, thus providing optimum relief, without administering too much of one drug. Just remember: it’s always best to deal with pain as soon as possible. The longer you wait, the more difficult it will be to control, so make sure you communicate well with your physician and/or caregiver to attain the best results.

How you handle pain and medication depends on your personal physiology, so caregivers are never 100% certain what method of pain control will work for you. Medication may not be able to rid your body of pain entirely, but if it significantly alleviates the amount of pain you experience, enough to allow you to eat, move, and breathe easily, that is considered successful pain management.

Article Keywords: Pain Relief

A Quick Note From The Publisher... If you like the article above, you may be interested in the following article which is also related to Pain Relief... People Ask Which is the Best Natural Pain Remedy? If one searches the web looking for the right natural pain relief, it is likely to get a bit confusing as there are about 2,630,000 web pages to chose from. When people search the web for products or services they seldom search all the pages to decide which they are going to use. With that many pages on natural pain relief they could spend a lifetime reading before deciding on the right one for them. Not all pain is the same and internal organ pain and external muscular or joint pain need different approaches. Internal organ pain needs a doctor's opinion to make quite sure that it isn't something serious like a cancer, which, in turn, would need a totally different treatment regimen. Muscle or joint and ligament pain on the other hand respond to a number of other topical methods of treatment. The old stand by of heat and ice alternately still work well, but new developments like a natural spray made exclusively of natural ingredients has a much quicker result and with continued use often handles the pain permanently. Pain can cause a dramatic lowering in our quality of life. Finding effective relief makes all the difference. With so many advertisements for pain remedies on TV and magazines, we often take the easy way out and use off-the-shelf products that every grocery store stocks, ignoring the side effects that many of these products can cause. With a little patience and fortitude it is possible to find a natural pain remedy that will do the job of relieving the pain and not affect us detrimentally. "Many years of research and study into alternatives to prescription drugs paid off," said Judy Cutler, a well known nutritionist based in Southern California. "We formulated a spray we called 'Naturally Painless' that gives perfect natural pain relief without any...