Tips for Managing Chronic Pain
Living in chronic pain can often feel like a life sentence with no possibility of parole. Sufferers would do anything to get some measure of relief, searching high and low for the best pain relief cream or the best pain relief topical that could help them.
If you’re looking for a cream for pain relief, the most important thing is finding the ingredients that target your pain specifically. In addition to the best pain cream you can find, there are some healthy lifestyle choices that you can make to work toward a life with less pain.
Consequences of Chronic Pain
Taking steps to begin managing chronic pain can help transform your entire life. Chronic pain doesn’t just mean living with physical hurt. Long-term chronic pain can negatively impact so many other aspects of your life and health, including:
- Sleep
- Mood/mental health
- Brain function
- Cognitive processes
- Cardiovascular health
- Sexual funciton
- Overall quality of life
Suffering from chronic pain and the cascading consequences can feel like a quagmire that’s impossible to escape. Sometimes the pain can be so overwhelming that it could feel easier to give up on finding the best pain cream and instead take oral pain relief medicine.
Unfortunately, painkillers are notorious for their addictive quality, and opioid addictions are running rampant. If you are able to, trying natural techniques for pain relief, or finding yourself the right pain relief topical could be the healthy pain management protocol that can help you take control over your life again.
Natural Lifestyle Hacks for Chronic Pain
Finding the best pain cream is just one of the ways to build a sustainable plan to ease your chronic pain. There are also some easy, natural lifestyle tips that can help with managing chronic pain as well.
Stretching
Stretching can prevent excess strain on the body, muscle tears, and pain symptoms. Even if your mobility is limited due to pain, stretching even just a little bit can be a calming, healing practice. There are all sorts of safe stretches you can do at home. Find your favorites and commit to stretching for a few minutes each day.
Nutrition
Your pain could also be amplified by poor eating habits. While it can be hard to think about preparing healthful meals when you’re struggling with chronic pain, it could be worth the effort to eat carefully and mindfully. A healthy and balanced diet can help with inflammation and your immune system, which in turn can help ease your pain.
Meditation and Deep Breathing
You might think that meditation is a little bit “woo-woo,” but studies have shown that mindfulness meditation can significantly reduce chronic pain symptoms through multiple psychological and neural processes. Breathing meditations are a common entry-point for those new to mindful meditation practices, and deep breathing has the added benefit of helping your body feel better through calming and providing more oxygen, even if your mind can’t help wandering.
Reduce Stress, Anxiety, Depression
Living with chronic pain can amplify the effects of other invisible pains that many people struggle with, including stress, anxiety, and depression. Taking care of your mind will help you take better care of your body. By reducing stress, anxiety, and depression, you may help ease chronic pain.
Chronic pain can be an isolating experience, but thousands are dealing with it, just like you. That’s why a support group chronic pain might be a great option to help you compare notes about your progress and other tips for pain-free living, like new stretches or the best pain relief topical on the market.
Find Ingredients that Treat Your Pain
If you’re looking for a cream for pain relief, the most important step is making sure that you’re getting the best pain relief cream for your specific pain. Learning more about the causes and symptoms of your pain can help you determine the best ingredients that will most effectively target and relieve chronic pain.
Neuralgic Pain
Neuralgic pain is nerve pain that presents as increased sensitivity in your skin, localized sharp or stabbing sensations, either sporadic or a constant burning, or muscle weakness.
Neuralgic pain could be caused by:
- Nerve damage
- Nerve irritation
- Infection
- Other diseases
While finding and treating the root cause of your neuralgic pain could be the best course of action for eliminating chronic pain for good, it’s still important to find the best pain cream for neuralgic pain in the meantime, in order to keep yourself comfortable. Sometimes, finding the perfect solution can be the enemy of finding a good interim solution.
The best ingredients for treating neuralgic pain are those that work to relieve pain from the nerves, instead of simply numbing your skin.
Ketamine
Topical ketamine is a great option for the treatment of chronic pain, because it relieves pain without systemic effects.
A long term study from 2006 to 2013 showed that topical ketamine showed great promise in the treatment of complex regional pain syndrome. Topical ketamine has no serious side effects and can be also safely used to help manage other pain states, such as neuropathic pain.
Incorporating ketamine into a cream pain reliever gives your pain cream a powerful analgesic and anesthetic boost.
Diclofenac
Diclofenac is a medicine with antipyretic (fever-reducing), analgesic, and anti-inflammatory properties. Studies show that diclofenac significantly reduces pain and inflammation. They also show comparable pain control to morphine after open chest heart surgery.
It relieves pain from arthritis and osteoarthritis, making it an excellent ingredient in the best pain cream for arthritis.
Diclofenac works by reversely inhibiting cyclooxygenase-1 and 1 (COX-1 and 2) enzymes, which results in decreased formation of the precursors of prostaglandin, which contributes to pain from inflammation. It also alters lymphocyte activity linked to chronic inflammation, inhibiting the aggregation/activation of neutrophil, a cell which plays a strong role in inflammation. It also decreases proinflammatory cytokine levels, which also helps decrease inflammation.
Basically, topical diclofenac is a powerhouse ingredient that relieves pain on multiple fronts.
Lidocaine
Lidocaine is a well-known analgesic and topical anesthetic that’s excellent for treating pain, and is a commonly included ingredient in creams for pain relief.
It works on the internal surface of nerve cell membranes and prevents nerve depolarization on the sodium ion channels. Sodium channels left unchecked can lead to membrane depolarization, which has a critical role in several pain syndromes, including inflammatory pain, neuropathic pain, and central pain.
Lidocaine is efficient and safe-to-use for pain conditions such as post-herpetic neuralgia, postsurgical pain, diabetic peripheral neuropathy, carpal tunnel syndrome, chronic lower back pain, and osteoarthritis.
7Cells Neuralgic Pain Cream
Our Seven Cells Neuralgic Pain Cream brings together the powerful ingredients listed above (ketamine, diclofenac, and lidocaine) in order to be the best cream pain reliever for neuralgic pain we could possibly compound.
It relieves pain quickly and easily after you apply it to the localized site of your pain. Its smooth and non-greasy formula makes it an easy choice for the best pain cream for arthritis and other pains you may be experiencing.
Neuropathic Pain
Whether looking for the best pain cream for sciatica or other types of neuropathic pain, you should once again familiarize yourself with the causes and symptoms of your unique pain, in order to find the best ingredients to serve you.
Neuropathic pain has a wide variety of causes, including:
- Diabetes (30%)
- Alcoholism
- Facial nerve problems
- Central Nervous System (CNS) disorders (stroke, parkinson’s, MS, etc.)
- Complex regional pain syndrome
- Postherpetic neuralgia cause by shingles
- Chemotherapy or radiation
- Amputation
- Spinal nerve inflammation or compression
- Nerve damage from trauma or surgery
- Nerve infiltration or compression by tumors
The symptoms of neuropathic pain can manifest with a lot of variety as well. Neuropathic pain is tied to the following symptoms:
- Spontaneous pain: electric-shock, burning, stabbing, shooting, numbness, or pins and needles without any sort of stimulation
- Allodynia: pain that’s evoked by stimuli that typically don’t cause pain, like gentle pressure, brushing against skin, slight temperature changes, etc.
- Hyperalgesia: increased pain from typically painful stimuli
- Dysesthesia: unpleasant abnormal sensation, either spontaneous or evoked
- Hypoalgesia: pain lessened from typically painful stimuli
- Sleeping, mood, and emotional problems due to disruptive pain
Neuropathy can feel like an insurmountable obstacle, but with the right ingredients, you can target and relieve pain that you might have thought impossible to ease.
Gabapentin
Gabapentin is a superstar ingredient for any topical that relieves pain, especially neuropathic pain. It may produce local antinociception. Nociception is painful feedback from the central nervous system, which can be either acute or inflammatory, and is common with neuropathic pain symptoms. Basically, gabapentin helps bring the nerve response back to normal.
Topical gabapentin is also associated with “significant relief” for women suffering from vulvodynia. Vulvodynia is chronic pain in the vulva, including general discomfort, pain, burning, and irritation. The pain can become so bad that having sex or even sitting down could be extremely painful.
By working with the dental nervous system to relieve pain, topical gabapentin is a great candidate for treating neuropathic pain.
Cyclobenzaprine
Another way to relieve pain in neuropathy is by helping your muscles relax. Cyclobenzaprine is a muscle relaxant that works on the main nerve centers, making it extremely effective in loosening muscles and preventing tightness.
It also reduces local pain and tenderness, improves muscle spasms, painful musculoskeletal conditions. Topical cyclobenzaprine is a great addition to any pain cream.
7 Cells Neuropathic Pain Cream (NPC-1)
The Seven Cells Neuropathic Pain Cream (NPC-1) is one of our proudest achievements. We get excellent feedback from people who have “tried everything” for their neuropathic pain before finding real relief with NPC-1.
It includes cyclobenzaprine, gabapentin, diclofenac, and lidocaine for a powerful cream pain reliever that could be the best cream pain for sciatica, the best pain cream for neuropathy, or even just the best pain cream in general. And it gets better with consistent application.
If you’ve tried everything and nothing relieves pain the way you need it to, NPC-1 might just be the ease you’ve been looking for.
Life After Pain
If you’re looking for the best pain relief cream for neuralgic pain, or the best pain relief topical for symptoms of neuropathy, Seven Cells has you covered. Part of optimizing your wellness lifestyle includes finding safe, effective ways to ease the burden of living in chronic pain.
Like everything else our medical professionals prescribe, these compounded pain creams are made with the highest quality ingredients, and rigorously tested before they’re made available to you. If you think that you’ll never be pain-free again, do yourself a favor and pick the best pain cream for you based on your causes and symptoms. It might just be the change you’ve been searching for.
Learn more about our neuralgic pain cream here.
Learn more about our neuropathic pain cream here.
Want to learn more?
Sign up for our newsletter for everything pain.