Medication management can be an important strategy for managing pain. Pain medications are known as analgesics, but often get called “pain killers”.
Unfortunately, for people with persistent pain, medication rarely kills off their pain. The average reduction in persistent pain is usually less than 1 out of 10.
How can medication help?
Rather than reducing pain scores, pain medications can be more helpful to change the way you think or feel about pain, to reduce your sense of danger and to help you move better, with less protection.
Changing the way you think and move can change your pain scores far more than pain medication will alone. So combining pain medication with a pain rehabilitation program can be more effective.
Pain medication is often thought of as changing the body’s tissues, for example, anti-inflammatories to reduce inflammation.
In persistent pain, there is rarely ongoing inflammation and anti-inflammatories reduce pain by their action mostly on the brain, rather than the body. They are not necessary to reduce pain and hopefully with successful pain rehabilitation, they are needed less often or not at all.
Deciding to use medication – a conversation with your doctor
Because most medications can be harmful, a balance between benefit and risk needs to be weighed up.
If pain medications do not reduce your pain, help you move better or help you think or feel better, the harms or side-effects likely outweigh the benefits (and $). Discuss this with your doctor – many pain medications cannot be stopped suddenly – see the medication for pain topic below.
Mixing medications together can also have unintentional side-effects and this needs to be considered, even for over-the counter medications like anti-inflammatories. They can interfere with blood thinners, blood pressure lowering medication and anti-depressants.
The correct dosage of medication required to achieve a benefit can be different in different people. Overall, the philosophy of lowest possible dose, for the lowest possible time, is the best philosophy when taking pain medication.
