Endorphins and Pain

Chronic Pain: Are Your Habits Contributing to More Painful Moments?

You’re tired of dealing with chronic pain. Every day seems like a challenge. You wake up and go to sleep with pain. To break this cycle, examine your personal habits. They may be worsening your chronic pain. Health always begins with good personal habit and disease always starts with bad personal habits. Your personal habits to examine are in these categories:

• what you eat and don’t eat
• how you sleep
• your activities during the day, including exercise
• what you drink and don’t drink
• your posture

What Habits to Consider

Here are three bad habits that can contribute to symptoms of chronic pain.

1. Not drinking enough water. There’s an excellent book called “Your Body’s Many Cries for Water". A medical doctor who had been imprisoned writes it. While he was imprisoned, he discovered that inmates’ chronic pain was eliminated when they drank lots of water. It’s an amazing story that everyone who wants to get better needs to know about.Do you drink enough water? Are you drinking a minimum of at least one ounce water for every two pounds body weight per day? If not, start now! It’s easy to do, and can be done while you read the previously mentioned book!

2. Over-exercising. There’s a link between chronic pain and over-exercising; exercising increases your body’s consumption of oxygen. If you have lots of free radicals in your body, your levels of antioxidants will fall and you will feel more inflammation and chronic pain.Exercise reasonably. A twenty or thirty minute session every other day is recommended. Test yourself to find your ideal exercise level.

3. Lack of endorphins Did you know that endorphins are pain's worst enemy? It's true, endorphins are your body’s natural painkillers. Learn about what you can do to boost the production of endorphins in your body. Here are a few:
   • Listening to your favorite music (or singing or playing a musical instrument)
   • Praying
   • Exercising
   • Walking barefoot on the beach or grass
   • Smelling aromas like vanilla, cinnamon, lavender or coffee
   • Ginseng
   • Belly laughter
   • Love-making
   • Chocolate
   • Spicy foods

Use this article as your guide and start evaluating your personal habits. Work on the habits that will most improve your chronic pain first.