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4. COMMIT TO PHYSICAL THERAPY Physical therapy — exercise, movement, heat/cold treatments — addresses pain, strengthens muscles, ligaments and joints, and helps you move in better ways. “I’m
a huge believer in physical therapy,” says Timothy Furnish, M.D., a pain management specialist at the University of California San Diego. PT is a long-term commitment: “One of the things
about physical therapy is that you have to do it for a while and commit to doing the exercise regimens at home,” but people often give up on PT too quickly, he says. To make this work,
you’ll need to have frank conversations with your doctor and physical therapist about what’s possible for you in terms of transportation, schedule and cost, Ashburn says. “You might not be
able to go to physical therapy multiple times per week, but arranging a home exercise PT program once a week might be more doable—and that’s way better than nothing,” he says. And if you’re
not meshing with your physical therapist (this can happen), look to make a change until you find one that fits your style. A TENS unit may interrupt nerve impulses. Getty Images 5. SCRAMBLE
YOUR PAIN Easy to pick up at your local drugstore, transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation, or TENS, devices are budget-friendly, typically battery-operated, over-the-counter tools that
use electrodes to send gentle electrical currents across the skin. TENS can interrupt nerve impulses that relay “danger” signals, which your brain can interpret as pain, from getting to
the brain, explains Mark I. Johnson, professor of pain and analgesia at Leeds Beckett University in Leeds, England. The buzzy skin tingle generated by TENS distracts your brain away from
twinges and tenderness. In a systematic review and meta-analysis in _BMJ Open_ in 2022, Johnson and others analyzed data on more than 2,400 TENS participants; their results indicate that
TENS showed an effect on pain reduction during or immediately after treatment. The catch with TENS? Pain will likely come back shortly after you take the device off. “Think of TENS as
something that soothes pain in the moment so you can do other things,” Johnson says. You might hook up to it before exercising or seeing friends. It can also be helpful at bedtime, providing
the TENS device has an automatic timer so it switches itself off when you fall asleep. A more effective and longer-lasting treatment is Scrambler therapy, which is administered in a
doctor’s office and typically used to treat chronic or neuropathic pain. “Scrambler therapy appears to actually reset the brain to inhibit pain for hours, days, weeks, even months after a
few sessions,” says Thomas Smith, M.D., Johns Hopkins Medicine oncologist and palliative care physician. Smith estimates that in his experience, 60 percent of people get significant help
with their pain for up to several months after 10 or fewer treatments; another 20 percent may get some relief. 6. CONSULT AN EXERCISE SPECIALIST “One thing pain tells you to do is to stay in
place, rest and not move,” Warraich says. Who wants to walk with a knee twinge or try to lift weights with a bum back? But being sedentary encourages muscles to weaken and muscle mass to
decrease, accelerating the risk of age-related muscle loss and frailty. As you grow weaker, there are fewer activities that you can participate in that bring you joy, like walking in a park
with friends. And that can take you down the road of depression. “Exercise is one of the things I recommend to the vast majority of patients with chronic pain. Exercise improves your
functionality, which improves your pain, and your quality of life gets better,” Warraich says. You may not be playing full-court basketball or pickleball, but other options include tai chi,
yoga and stretching, Smith says. If you’re not sure what you can do safely, a visit with an exercise specialist or physical therapist can come in handy. 7. MASTER MINDFULNESS The emotional
anguish caused by pain presents a big hurdle in recovery, says Eric Garland, distinguished professor in the College of Social Work at the University of Utah. It’s natural to experience
invasive thoughts such as: * _This isn’t fair._ * _What if this pain never goes away?_ * _What if my pain means that something bad is happening in my body?_ “These emotional reactions turn
the volume of pain up and make it more intense,” Garland says. “Mindfulness is a way of observing this process of reacting negatively to pain and removing the negative emotions we place onto
pain. When we learn how to use mindfulness to see our pain as pure sensation rather than emotional anguish, it can be easier to cope with and manage the sensation,” explains Garland, who
developed a mindfulness program supported by the National Institutes of Health. The Mindfulness-Oriented Recovery Enhancement (MORE) program serves as a treatment for chronic pain and
opioid misuse. The relief isn’t forever. Garland compares it to taking an ibuprofen. “When it wears off after a few hours, you take another dose. The same principle holds for mindfulness.
You have to practice it again to refresh the pain relief.” A similar technique is hypnosis. “We’ve shown that 15 minutes of hypnosis has pain-relieving effects comparable to mindfulness,”
Garland says. There are various types of hypnosis, but in Garland’s research, patients were asked to imagine creating pleasant sensations in the body, then superimposing those sensations
onto the parts of their body that hurt. In a hypnotic state, you’d visualize spreading comfortable warmth or coolness, for example, to the problem areas. One thing worth remembering is that
chronic pain is not necessarily an indicator of tissue damage or poor health. “As a human, you want pain — pain is a protector, it’s good for you in certain situations,” Johnson says. “But
sometimes the brain becomes overprotective and amplifies and prolongs pain when tissue damage has healed.” Ultimately, the goal is to live well despite your pain status. “It’s not resigning
to the fact that you’re in pain but focusing on prioritizing other aspects of your life and what matters most,” Warraich says. “The harder you try to control pain, the more powerful it
becomes.” For many, letting go of the idea of being pain-free at all costs and focusing on what you can do to take back your life is what truly leads to healing. Rate your pain from 0 to 10,
with 0 being pain-free to 10 being the worst pain possible. AARP Staff IS THE PAIN SCALE BS? Have you been asked to use the pain scale? It’s ubiquitous in doctors’ offices and hospitals,
but what does it actually tell you? “Pain is a completely subjective and personal experience,” says Timothy Furnish, M.D., a pain management specialist at the University of California San
Diego. “Every person will experience pain and deal with pain a little differently.” Along with actual tissue damage, biological, psychological and social factors combine to create your pain
experience, including: sex, race and ethnicity, age, genetics, disease, nervous system sensitivity, inflammation, brain function, mood, catastrophizing, stress, ability to cope, culture,
social environment and support, and economic factors. Think of the scale as a baseline before treatment, and revisit it during and afterward to get some sense of how your pain is affected.