7 Simple Ways to Manage Chronic Pain This Summer

7 Simple Ways to Manage Chronic Pain This Summer

Summer is a time for enjoying the outdoors. Camping, hiking, swimming and various sports are all activities best suited to the warm summer months. However, chronic pain can significantly limit our ability to take part freely in fun summer activities. Chronic pain takes many forms, from back pain to arthritis to neuropathic pain.

The season of summer also brings unique challenges to people who suffer from chronic pain. Learn about these challenges in this article and various chronic pain solutions to help you make the most of the warmer months!

How to Solve Chronic Pain: 7 Tricks to Try

If there was a one-size-fits-all solution to chronic pain, it wouldn’t be as significant of an issue. Fortunately, pairing solutions and trying them in different combinations may help you manage your chronic pain. In general, chronic pain solutions involve practices like eating well, exercising often and visiting your doctor regularly.

Here are seven important — and simple — ways you can manage your chronic pain this summer. These solutions can help you freely enjoy the outdoors with your family and friends.

1. Stay Hydrated

Staying hydrated is one of the most important things you can do to manage chronic pain during the hot summer months. Water plays a critical role in many bodily processes, including joint function, cartilage health and even how much pain we perceive.

The joints contain synovial fluid, a lubricating agent that enables smooth, easy movement within your joints. The components of synovial fluid use water in the composition process. These components include hyaluronic acid, collagen and various proteins.

In this way, water helps synovial fluid lubricate joints. When you’re dehydrated, your joints receive less lubrication. With less lubrication, your joints experience increased friction. Increased friction can cause varying degrees of pain whenever you move your joints. Besides decreasing joint lubrication, dehydration increases pain perception. When you’re dehydrated, your parietal lobe experiences elevated activity, which is the brain’s center for interpreting pain signals.

One study shows that hydrogen-rich water may protect your cartilage. These protective effects can slow the progression of osteoarthritis (OA). The cartilage protective properties of hydrogen-rich water seem to involve antioxidant and anti-inflammatory action. Since oxidative stress accelerates cartilage degeneration in your joints, the antioxidant properties of hydrogen-rich water inhibit that activity. The anti-inflammatory action keeps your cartilage soft and pliable.

Approximately 70-75% of our body’s water absorption comes from beverages, while the other 30% comes from food and our metabolism. It’s essential to drink plenty of water during the hot summer months. Staying hydrated keeps your joints lubricated and neural pain centers functioning normally. If you’re dealing with OA, you may want to consider investing in hydrogen-rich water, which can keep your joints lubricated while enhancing your cartilage health, helping with chronic OA pain in several ways.

Here are some tips for staying hydrated during the summer months:

Start your day with a glass of water.
Set reminders and alerts on your smartphone to drink water.
Make a goal to drink a certain amount of water every day. Experts suggest men should drink 13 cups of water daily, while women should drink nine cups.
Keep a hydration journal to record how much water you drink each day.
When snacking, opt for fruits and vegetables with high water content. These include cucumber, watermelon, tomatoes and strawberries.
Purchase a reusable water bottle and take it with you whenever you leave the house.

2. Stay Cool in the Shade or Schedule Pool Time

Since dehydration can negatively impact your pain perception and joint function in significant ways, it’s wise to find ways to limit your exposure to the hot sun when spending time outdoors. Too much time in the hot sun will cause you to sweat and lose water.

Two ways of limiting your exposure to the hot sun are finding shade and scheduling pool time. Whether you’re hiking, camping or throwing a ball around outside, it’s a good idea to spend your breaks and down time in the shade or water, if possible.

Besides helping you retain water by keeping you cool, spending time in the pool is great for your joints. Water makes your body more buoyant, which lessens the weight-bearing load on your joints. The decreased weight-bearing load on your joints can help you move your joints easier. As such, stretching and exercising in water promotes less risk of pain and injury. Water can also soothe joint pain by increasing blood flow to your joints and reducing inflammation.

3. Keep an Eye on Air Quality

Exposure to poor air quality increases oxidative stress in our bodies. Oxidative stress typically has adverse effects on chronic pain. Here are some of the ways oxidative stress impacts chronic pain:

Elevates pain sensitivity
Increases inflammation
Triggers cell damage and death, also called apoptosis

Through high oxidative stress, poor air quality can increase the perception of chronic pain and worsen the conditions that cause it. As a result, it’s a good idea to keep an eye on air quality as you make daily plans throughout the summer. If the air quality is poor on a particular day, you may benefit from staying indoors. Your local weather forecast should have information on your town’s air pollution levels.

4. Boost Your Immune System With Fresh Summer Foods

Fresh summer fruit is delicious on blazing hot afternoons. These foods also help with chronic pain. Most fruits boost your immune system with a powerful influx of various minerals, vitamins and antioxidants.

Summer fruits are also abundant in anti-inflammatory compounds called polyphenols. Polyphenols are organic compounds that different plants produce and are what give plants their colors. Research shows that polyphenols disrupt processes leading to oxidative stress by increasing your cells’ antioxidative capacity. This disruption can help with chronic pain.

Here are some ways polyphenols work in different fruits:

Apples, grapes and pears: Apples, grapes and pears contain dietary polyphenols known as flavonoids. The flavonoids in these fruits — procyanidins and catechins — have been shown to reduce chronic nerve pain. Apples, grapes and pears also contain supple amounts of fiber, vitamin C and pectin, which boost your immune system health.
Berries: Dark-colored berries like blackberries, blueberries, cranberries and strawberries are like a natural dessert that happens to be healthy. The primary polyphenol in these berries is anthocyanin, which is known to have anti-inflammatory effects on joint tissue.
Citrus fruits: Enjoy that glass of lemonade as the sun beats down. As long as it’s not too sugary, lemonade should benefit your joints and improve your chronic pain experience. Citrus fruits like grapefruit, lemon, limes and oranges are rich in a flavonoid known as diosmin, which has potential as a drug for treating chronic pain. Citrus fruits are also abundant in B vitamins, vitamin C, calcium, potassium and fiber.
Pomegranates: Pomegranates contain anthocyanin and are rich in vitamins C and K, potassium and fiber. This fruit is great for joint and immune system function.
Stone fruits: Stone fruits include apricots, cherries, peaches and plums. These fruits contain fiber, vitamin C, potassium and a variety of polyphenols. The compounds in these fruits can help reduce pain associated with exercise or gout, particularly with cherries.

As you boost your immune system and reduce inflammation with fresh summer fruits, it’s also vital to avoid tempting treats rife with inflammatory compounds. These treats often include candy and other sweets, deep-fried foods such as French fries or onion rings and soda.

5. Exercise When You Can

Understanding that some people experience chronic pain worse than others, it’s important to exercise as much as possible. Whether that involves a brief walk around the block or high-intensity interval training (HIIT), every little bit counts. Exercise as much as your body allows, whether the calendar says June or January.

When exercising, it’s fine to feel some discomfort — especially if you’re dealing with chronic pain. That said, if you experience significant pain with exercise, it’s time for rest and recovery. You should also consider scaling back the intensity of your workouts.

There are several reasons why exercise is important when you’re dealing with chronic pain. These reasons include:

Better sleep: Research shows that exercise can significantly improve sleep quality. In turn, sleep quality is linked with improved chronic pain. Sleep and pain share similar pathways in the brain, so when one isn’t functioning correctly, it affects the other. Similarly, exercise also reduces fatigue.
Boosted mental wellness: Besides sleep quality, anxiety and depression are linked with increased pain perception. Exercise has long been a significant help for these conditions. By reducing anxiety and depression and boosting mental wellness, exercise can reduce the amount of pain you experience.
Decreased pain sensitivity: Although exercise often takes you out of your comfort zone, it can reduce pain sensitivity. Research shows that exercise releases natural painkillers in our bodies and promotes proper nerve signal function.
Enhanced strength and flexibility: It’s common knowledge that exercise increases muscle strength and flexibility, but what’s less known is how this impacts chronic pain. Muscle weakness often correlates with increased pain levels, while stiff muscles increase pain when using them. As such, stronger and more flexible muscles can limit chronic pain.
Improved range of motion: With enhanced muscle strength flexibility comes improved range of motion, as well.

When exercising in the summer, take extra care to drink plenty of water before, during and after you exercise. Doing so will help prevent dehydration and heat-related illnesses like heat exhaustion or heat stroke.

Here are some helpful exercise tips when you’re dealing with chronic pain in the summer:

Start slow and gradually increase efforts at your own pace as you gain strength and flexibility.
Consider aqua therapy — exercising in water — to reduce joint pain and workout-related injury risks.
Have a varied workout routine that involves strengthening, flexibility and cardiovascular exercises.
Be patient with your progress and accept that some days will be better than others.
Be careful not to overexert your muscles, which can worsen pain and cause setbacks.
Try low-impact exercises like yoga to limit injury risks and maximize workout benefits.
Consult a physical trainer who can help you know your limits and when to push yourself.

6. Take Your Pain Medication as Prescribed

This advice isn’t unique to summer — taking pain medications as your doctor prescribes them remains important in any season. To combat the unique challenges that summer brings to people who suffer from chronic pain, continue to take pain medication per your doctor’s instructions. If you have questions or concerns about the pain medications your doctor has prescribed, talk with your doctor before making any changes to your routine.

Taking pain medication as prescribed can also help you engage more fully in exercise routines. It’s important to supplement pain medication with healthy habits like exercise and eating well. Try to see pain medication as part of a support system that enables you to make healthier choices that have healing effects on chronic pain.

7. Bring Your Own Chair

Invest in a high-quality portable chair and take it with you whenever you plan to sit for long periods of time. A chair can make the difference between temporary relief from chronic pain or exacerbated symptoms. The difference between sitting on wooden bleachers at the baseball game versus an ergonomic chair that supports your back is massive and can significantly impact your day — or week.

Find a chair that can be a trusty companion for helping you manage chronic back pain on the go.

Find Chronic Back Pain Relief With Metropolitan Pain & Spine Institute

At Metropolitan Pain & Spine Institute, we help our patients realize that pain-free life is possible. Our board-certified spine specialists and pain management doctors have abundant experience and expertise to help you manage and overcome whatever chronic pain condition you’re dealing with.

If you’re dealing with a chronic back pain condition, we’d love to help you find relief at Metropolitan Pain & Spine Institute. We welcome you to speak with one of our spine specialists or learn more about how we can help you find chronic back pain relief today!

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7 Simple Ways to Manage Chronic Pain This Summer