Chronic pain is one of the most frustrating issues that someone can deal with. Although there are things that can be done to help alleviate symptoms, a lot of people deal with chronic pain throughout their entire lives. There have been some big breakthroughs in some areas of treatment of pain over the years, but there hasn’t been a lot of progress that can help a lot of people completely beat their pain symptoms.
A new study that looked at something called “scrambler” therapy hopes to fix this issue and help those who suffer from chronic pain live a higher quality of life.
Scrambler therapy is a noninvasive therapy that administers electrical currents through the skin above and below the area of the body where chronic pain occurs. The currents help to “scramble” the pain so that the body’s nerve endings are confused, effectively making the parts of the body experiencing pain think that there is no pain present. For those that suffer from damaged nerve endings, this research indicates that they body can be made to believe that the pain has left.
New research indicates that this can help about 80 to 90 percent of people that suffer from chronic pain. The same research also indicates that this is likely to be more helpful than a TENS unit, which is another widely used noninvasive treatment method.
The team, based out of Johns Hopkins University, published their findings in The New England Journal of Medicine. This could be really good news for those that suffer from chronic pain–hopefully these findings can be used to spur pain treatment research forward and help more people live a higher quality of life.
Helping a loved one who is dealing with chronic pain can be difficult. When it’s done for a long period of time, day after day, it can take a toll on someone. This is normal and certainly not a reflection on how much you love your parents or grandparents. But it can make it so that applying care well becomes tougher.
Your loved ones deserve the best care. Recognizing that you might not be able to do this on your own is a big step toward ensuring that they have the resources that they need. Professional care might be exactly what you need to give them the high quality care that they deserve.
Care will look different for different people, depending on what their needs are and what the whole family needs. You might find that the occasional respite care is all that is needed for your family to thrive. Maybe full-time in-home care is needed. This will be something that will need to be determined on a case by case basis.
Whatever your needs might be, we’re here to help. And if you don’t know what those needs are, we can help you figure it out. We’re happy to talk more–that’s precisely why we offer a free consultation service. If you’d like to talk more, please feel free to reach out and schedule your conversation today.
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