Saturday, September 5, 2020

What to Say to your Doctor When You’re in Pain

 It sounds like a simple thing, when you’re in pain just make an appointment to just talk to your doc about it.

Well, according to researchers at California State University in Northridge, there’s a way to talk to your doctor about your pain so that they really hear you.

Here’s what the researchers recommend:

1. Do your best to maintain a relaxed and pleasant demeanor where you’re looking at your doc as the person who can help you with your pain.

2. Describe your pain by using words and numbers. You want to use descriptive words, such as, stabbing, aching, throbbing and you want to put it on a number scale from 0 to 10, where zero is no pain and 10 means excruciating pain.

3. Describe your family history of pain, if other family members have the same condition or if any of them are just highly sensitive to pain.

4. Tell your doc when and how long you have had the pain. Tell the doc what started it and if there are things that make it better or worse. 

5. Consider keeping a pain diary before you even go to the doctor where you record your symptoms and their severity.

6. List things you enjoyed doing in the past but can’t do now because of the pain.

For readers of my blog, you know that after the diagnosis that I’ll then pursue alternative therapies before I will take drugs. What you may not be aware of is that I will always go to the doc for the diagnosis, so I know what I need to research to find effective treatments. 


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