Sucking up the Pain

I had an epiphany a few days ago. About pain. I read somewhere...and then right around the same time a friend told me...that I should not just suck up and deal with pain. It needs to be treated. The body is under stress when there is pain. Not just the mental stress, but also physical stress. If you let the body continue in pain it pretty much just wears it down.

I really should try to figure out where I read that.

I have never been one for popping pain medications like ibuprofen or Tylenol or anything else. It's not that I have any particular resistance to them, but I guess I think our society overuses them and I never want to be average! I've always held the belief that one should correct whatever it is that is causing the pain and then the pain will go away. And one should just deal with it until the correction is made.

But in the case of inflammatory pain, you really should take some medication for that.

Here's something I just figured out a couple of nights ago. I was telling my chiropractor that I like my new pillow with the sunken spot in the middle (it's for sleeping on your back, which I'm trying to teach myself to do), but I can only use it some of the times because I have this pain from the pressure on my spine from lying on my back. We both just went 'hmm...'

So Monday night I lay down on my back, a pillow under my knees, like I do every night and immediately the back pain just got too distracting. Instead of just swapping the pillows back out and turning to my side, I got up and took two Tylenol tablets.

Slept like a baby! And woke up refreshed, which I haven't in many months now. Apparently the pain in my body, while it hasn't been severe at night, has been enough to keep me from sleeping deeply enough to awake refreshed.

So last night I just popped two ibuprofen when I went to bed and here I am, feeling pretty good again this morning!

DUH!