Hey everybody it's Doctor Jo, and today I'm going to show you the top five ways
to relieve chronic pain so let's get started.
The first way to help relieve chronic pain is doing
gentle stretching. so if you have a specific area that has chronic pain, you
definitely want to stretch that specific area. I'm going to show you just a couple
stretches that kind of stretch the whole body and it's a nice way just to relax
your muscles throughout the whole body. so if you're having that chronic pain,
it's going to help kind of just gently stretch everything out and make you feel
a little bit better. so the first one is just going to be a prayer stretch or the
Child's Pose, and so you're just going to kind of roll
over. now a lot of times if you have that chronic knee pain make sure you put some
extra padding under there like a pillow or something. you might not be able to
sit back on your feet like me, that's okay, you can kind of start up this way
and then put your arms back, but if you can come back on your feet that's
usually how I like to start. make sure your feet are down on the floor because
that's going to help stretch out the ankles, and then this is stretching out
the knees, and as you go down that's going to stretch out your lower back and
then your shoulders as well. so that's why it's a great whole body stretch. so
you're just going to come down and kind of I like to walk my fingers out
sometimes because that helps stretch out my shoulders. and so just staying in this
position. if you can go all the way down and rest your head you can. you don't
have to, but just holding this stretch for about 30 seconds. if you want a
little bit more you can go a whole minute because this is a really really
good stretch for the whole body. I can feel it down to my toes all the way out
to my fingers, so it's just a really really good stretch. and then after that
30 seconds to a minute, you come back up and you can do that three times. so just
getting that nice stretch in there. another great whole body stretch is just
to kind of push your feet down as far as you can and push your arms up as far as
you can. so you're just trying to almost make yourself longer if that makes sense,
but I'm pushing my toes down pointing them taking my arms and just stretching
them as far as I can. so again this is a whole body stretch where I feel it and
my arms my shoulders, my stomach, the core area,
all the way down to my legs and my toes. so again this one you can just hold this
stretch as long as you're comfortable 30 seconds to a minute. you can do some nice
breathing, just some deep slow breathing, while you're doing it and just get your
whole body nice and relaxed because if you're having a lot of pain, usually
those muscles tighten up and they they get really tense and that causes even
more pain. so if you can relax your body by some gentle stretching that's really
gonna help make you feel better. and then the last just kind of general one is a
little bit of a twist. it's gonna be piriformis, the hips, again the shoulders
and the legs a little bit. so I like to put one leg straight out. some people
keep it bent, but it's a little more comfortable for me, and then you're just
going to cross one leg over that straight leg, and then just do a little
twisting motion. so I'm feeling it a lot in my trunk getting that twisting motion,
but I'm also feeling it in my shoulder area. I'm feeling in my hips with the
other leg straight out, you feel it a little bit down there as well. so this is
another just really nice stretch. you can use your elbow on your leg to twist a
little bit more, but if it's slightly uncomfortable you don't have to go far.
just go as far as you comfortably can and hold that stretch for about 30
seconds. so again this is one that just gets a little bit more than one specific
area, but if you are having chronic pain in a specific area, I have a whole bunch
of videos so you can go check those out for those specific ones if you want to
because that gentle stretching, not pushing hard, not going to the point of
pain, but just going to you kind of feel those muscles starting to relax is
really the best thing to do to help get those muscles calm down and get some of
that pain out of there. so the second one is just going to be some deep breathing
exercises. this is one you have to really try it to see that it does work when you
get a good breathing pattern using your diaphragm to breathe, which is the
stomach breathing. it really helps relax your whole body. so I always tell my
patients and people, take time for yourself this is the time where even if
you're busy and you're doing stuff all day and you're helping out other people,
take a few minutes for yourself to do this because it really helps relax the
whole body. so what you want to do is breathe with your
belly. and a lot of times people like to kind of put one hand on their chest and
one hand on their belly, and the hand on your chest really shouldn't move because
if you're breathing normally with your chest then your top hands gonna move, but
you don't want that one to move, you want your belly to move. so what I like to do
is usually you breathe in for about four seconds, then you're gonna hold that
breath for about five to seven seconds, and then you're gonna let it out for
about five to eight seconds. so you're actually breathing out at the end longer
than what you've came in, so you really have to push that air out, and that helps
give that new oxygen in there and helps relax the body. so I'm going to do it for
you, so you want to see this hand going out. it sometimes it doesn't go out a
lot, but you want to see the hand on your belly moving. so when you breathe in and
making stomach noises, sometimes that's what you're doing it's breathing out. so
you breathe in for four seconds then you hold it and then let it out and then
your hand should go back in. I must be hungry, but that's the movement that you
do. so going out four seconds, holding it for five to seven, and
then letting it back out when your hand is going you back in for about five to
eight seconds. so if you just do that three to five times you'll notice the
difference. it will really just relax you and if you're hungry you'll probably
hear that too. so the third thing is a treatment that the folks at Silk'n
cure sent me, and this is the Silk'n relief. what is so cool about this
product is it gives you relief in three different ways. so it has a bipolar radio
frequency, it has a low light laser, and it also has infrared heat, so it gives
you a combination of stuff to help relax those muscles. so for me I've been having
a little bit of IT band issues and so it's not a chronic thing this can be
used for anything. it can be used for sore muscles, it can be used for chronic
arthritis, it just really helps to relax and relieve that pain, and so it's really
cool because it has those three different components to it it really
gets deep into the area and gets that heat in there to help relax those
muscles. when you get that heat nice and deep in there, it increases the
circulation to help the healing process. the heat relaxes everything so it's kind
of a combination of a lot of things and it's really really nice and it's FDA
approved so it's safe for you as well. it comes with a conduction gel and
the key is you have to have this on there or it doesn't work. so it's got a
nice safety piece to it where it's not working unless it has good conductivity
on the skin, and if you take it off it turns itself off as well. so just take
some of the gel and get a nice thin layer over the area that you're going to
use it on because you want it to be able to go smoothly and again get that
conductivity, and so it's got three different settings a low setting where
you're not really going to feel the heat, so if it's in a spot that's really
tender, you might want to try that first if it's got some swelling and stuff. and
then there's a moderate one if you're looking for like a specific area, and
then it's got the the three which is kind of for general for everything. so I'm
going to do that one. I'm gonna have it on the three and you can see the the
lights go up there. and then as you can see nothing, and then when I put it on it
turns red, that light comes on. And so what you want to do is, you can either just go
in a straight line back and forth or you can do some circles, and it takes it
doesn't take very long before you start feeling that heat. so it's really nice. it
feels good it relaxes, but as soon as I lift it up it turns off. it's not
overpowering, it's not uncomfortable, I'm not feeling any pain or anything, I'm
just feeling that nice warmth in there. and so if you've got a spot as a
specific spot, mines kind of right there at the end of the IT band, you can
focus on it a little bit, but you want to keep it moving. you don't just want to
hold it in one spot, but you can do a nice slow pass through straight lines or
you can do those nice slow circular motions as well. but again I like that as
soon as you take it off it turns off, it needs to have that
connection, so that's really nice as well and if you're interested in purchasing
the Silk'n relief, you can click on the link up here. so the fourth way to help
relieve chronic pain would be isometric exercises, and what
isometric exercises are is when you're activating the muscle, but you're not
actually moving the muscles. so a lot of times the way we have people do it is
you're pushing into something to make that muscle contract, but you're not
going through the full movement that might be painful for you. so let's say my
hamstrings under here were really bothering me. they were hurting and sore,
but you know maybe like a big pull movement like that to exercise it would
be painful because there's a strain in there, I can take my heel and just push
down into the floor which activates those hamstring muscles, but I'm not
actually moving anything to cause that pain or some of that chronic pain that
might already be in there. so with an isometric exercise you usually want to
push down and hold it for about 3 to 5 seconds and then relax, and you can do
five to ten of those at a time. but the thing with the isometric exercises is
just start off pushing maybe about 50% of your strength, you don't want to push
down as hard as you can because it's gonna activate the muscle. so if you're
pushing down really hard you might end up making it more sore. so the first
couple of times you do it, just push down enough where you feel you can even feel
that muscle underneath activating and then when I relax it relaxes. so if you
want some feedback, put your hand there so you can feel that muscle contracting,
and again just holding for about 3 to 5 seconds, and then relax. you can do that
isometric exercise anywhere so let's say my neck is hurting over here, I can still
do that isometric exercise. let's say this movement is painful well if I put
my hand on my head to stop it from moving, but still do this motion that I'm
pushing into my hand activating that muscle and then relaxing, and a lot of
times that just kind of helps reset that muscle. sometimes if some maybe some of
the spine is out of line at the cervical spine, if you do a little isometric
exercise, you might feel a little pop and it's just readjusting this.
so sometimes it helps that way as well, but three to five second hold five to
ten times and you can do that almost anywhere on your body, and if you're not
sure just check out some of my videos I have some videos for that as well. so the
fifth treatment way to relieve chronic pain is aquatic therapy. so you can see
here I don't have a pool, but I do have a whole bunch of videos for aquatic
therapy and the reason that aquatic therapy is so great for chronic pain,
especially if it's a whole body thing, when you're in the water the water is
therapeutic because one it's warm. it helps loosen up those muscles - the
buoyancy of the water takes away a lot of gravity. so you're not getting that
impact that sometimes causes the pain. so if I'm just waist-deep, that takes away
50% of my body weight pushing down on those joints, and then the resistance of
the water also is great because it helps you strengthen those muscles, but it's in
a nice fluid way, so it's not painful on the joints. it's not that repetitive
pushing on the joints. so it's just a really great way to feel better. so if
you haven't tried aquatic therapy and you have access somewhere, a lot of times
they have classes but make sure you take one of those slower maybe arthritis
classes because you'll really feel good when you're doing it, and I think you'll
see the difference. so make sure and check out some of those videos up here
for that aquatic therapy. so those were your top five ways to relieve chronic
pain. if you're interested in purchasing the Silk'n relief make sure you click
on the link up here. and don't forget to subscribe by clicking down here. and
remember be safe, have fun, and I hope you feel better soon.