Tag: pain relief

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Simple Pain Relief Tip – Move Your Feet and Fix Your Neck

Neck pain can come all the way from your feet!

Moving your feet while you lay in bed can help you get rid of a stiff back, stiff neck or tight hip muscles.  Moving your feet actually causes movement in all of the muscles up to your head.  Why?  Because they are all attached!

Here are some simple pain relief movements you can do.

Lay on your back.  Uncover your feet if you are in bed.  Hold one foot toes up and swish your foot from side to side.  Pretend your foot is the windshield wiper on a car.  Do this movement until Continue reading “Simple Pain Relief Tip – Move Your Feet and Fix Your Neck”

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Massage and Pain Relief – Does Massage Help Get Rid Of Pain?

Massage therapy can be an excellent way to get rid of physical aches and pains.  It’s likely that 90% of our pain and dysfunction is caused by muscles, according to at least one solid researcher, so it makes sense to help your muscles with massage.

If you have back pain or headaches or other pain, maybe you have already seen a massage therapist.  Perhaps it helped  a lot and perhaps it didn’t.

If your massage did not help much, you will Continue reading “Massage and Pain Relief – Does Massage Help Get Rid Of Pain?”

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How To Find A Massage Therapist Who Can Relieve Your Pain

When you have muscular pain and want relief, how can you find a massage therapist who will give you the most benefit for your money?

A nice “feel good” massage has many benefits but not when what you want is pain relief.

There are many types of massage and a few different professional organizations and lots of massage schools.  There are all types of different philosophies, personalities, beliefs and training.   Some massage therapists have a ton of Continue reading “How To Find A Massage Therapist Who Can Relieve Your Pain”

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Yoga and Head Pain: 6 Ways Yoga Helps You Get Rid of Your Headache

How can yoga help relieve your headaches?  Oh, let me count the ways:

  1. It relaxes the muscles around your chest, ribs, shoulders and neck.  These are the same muscles that get tight and cause headache symptoms.
  2. Yoga helps reduce your stress.  When you’re feeling all stressed, your muscles “clamp down” on nerves that go to your head.
  3. It helps strengthen the muscles of your backside, and makes you long and strong; it creates muscular balance.  A strong back and a long, strong body helps you have good posture.  Good posture, with your head over your body instead of out in front, reduces headaches.
  4. Yoga gets your circulation moving and that helps move the metabolic (body) wastes out of your body.  It reduces Continue reading “Yoga and Head Pain: 6 Ways Yoga Helps You Get Rid of Your Headache”
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Pain Relief Radio Answers Your Questions About Muscle Pain!

Got muscle pain?  You can get answers for your questions–even the questions you didn’t know you had–at Pain Relief Radio.com.  And don’t worry if you can’t listen live.  The replays are always up within minutes so you can listen at your leisure.

Muscle pain happens for reasons. On this Internet radio show, I’ll share those reasons with you.  I’ll also give you simple pain relief techniques that you can use to become pain-free.

Your body is smart and it wants to be well.  When you have aches and pains, it’s giving you a message:  HELP ME!

You can get plenty of help right here at Simple Pain Relief and also at Simple Strengthening.com.   At Simple Strengthening, you can discover how to exercise easily in your bed!  You’ll also find out which are the most important muscles to strengthen.  Hint:  They’re not in your chest.

Now you have another option for natural, simple pain relief information.  It’s at Pain Relief Radio.com.

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Get Rid of Your Muscle Pain by “Break” Dancing!

Muscle pain starts when we stop moving.  When you were a little child you were always moving.  You used all of your muscles all of the time…unless you were asleep.   Maybe even then.

As you grew you stopped using all of your muscles and that was the start of aches, pain and dysfunction.

Here’s a guest post from my friend Gini Maddocks.  She’ll explain why “break” dancing will help you get rid of your muscle aches and pains:

Do you take breaks during your busy day?

You should.

Research shows that the human brain is more efficient when allowed to rest in intervals.

Try this:
Turn on upbeat, familiar music–the kind you like to dance to.

Now let yourself Continue reading “Get Rid of Your Muscle Pain by “Break” Dancing!”

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Flexibility Helps Relieve & Prevent Painful Stiff Backs

Is your back a little stiff?  Do you wish your posture was better?  Are you as flexible as you’d like to be?

Are you feeling “stuck”?

I will always believe that massage is the best thing to help muscles relax but stretching is the next best.  So, here’s something that’ll help you get “unstuck” and relieve your stiff back.

Are you familiar with the stretches called “cat” and “dog?”  I’ve also heard them called “camel” and other variations.

Sometimes they are done on all fours, on the floor, but I’m going to share a seated version with you.  If you are so stiff that it’s hard to get on the floor, you will appreciate this version.

These are good movements because they get your spine moving from front to back and your ribs moving.  These movements warm the muscles of your back and whole torso, or trunk.  They get your circulation going and can help to strengthen your back.

Here is the seated version:

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Stiff Neck? 3 Natural Steps to Get Your Neck Moving Again

Did you wake up with a stiff neck?

It’s amazing the crazy things we can do to ourselves in our sleep!

Sleeping with your neck tilted forward, or to one side or the other, can cause your muscles to get unhappy and become tight or go into a spasm.

Being in one position for a long time without moving (like sitting with your head turned toward someone) can aggravate your neck muscles, too.

A hard jarring sneeze or cough can cause a stiff neck, and this may be even more uncomfortable than the one that comes during your sleep.   An accident that whips your head from side to side or front to back might cause pain in your neck, too.

When the muscles go into spasm, or seize up and keep you from moving your neck, that can be a protective step by your body to prevent injury.

Be mindful as you apply the following steps and pay attention to what your body is telling you.  If something doesn’t feel appropriate, don’t do it.

Here are the 3 natural steps you can take to help your neck relax:

1.  Use heat on the muscles on the tops of your shoulders.  You can also apply heat to your upper chest and upper back.  If heat is not the best treatment for you to use, you’ll be able to tell; you’ll feel slightly worse afterward.  If you use a hot shower, direct the water to your upper back, tops of shoulders (each separately) and the front of your upper chest and neck.

2.  Use ice on the muscles at the back of your neck.  Also, wrap the ice pack around your neck to benefit the muscles on the sides and front.  It may feel like the pain is in the back of your neck, but there’s a good chance that all of the neck muscles are involved.  Some muscles run from your collar bone to the back of your head.  If you only have a small ice pack, your muscles will just have to take turns!

The rule of thumb is:  Heat for tight muscles and ice for nervy symptoms.

Since a stiff neck may involve the nerves in your neck, go for ice around your whole neck and upper chest toward the middle.  Ice will relax the muscles and also helps numb the pain.

3.  Gently, slowly move your neck into Continue reading “Stiff Neck? 3 Natural Steps to Get Your Neck Moving Again”

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The Sitting Disease

It’s a serious problem, and lots and lots of us are affected by it!  The Sitting Disease is caused by…too much sitting!

All that sitting causes lots of muscle and body malfunctions and aches and pains and premature aging.

Knots in your back, problems breathing, constipation, carpal tunnel syndrome, osteoporosis, back pain and headaches and MORE are caused by “The Sitting Disease.”

It’s practically an epidemic!  But there is a simple, natural cure.

Walk.

Can’t get much more simple than that, right?

When you walk correctly, you use almost all of the muscles in your whole body!  Pretty cool.

My friend, Rosalie, had the sitting disease.  At first, she could only walk around her own back yard and then, eventually, around the block.  And then she ended up race walking and had a ton of health benefits!

All from walking, even though she didn’t want to, and from gradually ‘stepping up’ her walking distance as her ability increased. 🙂

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3 Common Causes of Aging and the Pain of “Old Age”

You’ve seen people who are only 40 who already look “old.”  And you’ve probably seen folks in their 80’s or 90’s who still have a spring in their step or a sparkle in their eyes.

Why do some of us grow old so quickly and other stay youthful?

Here are 3 reasons:

1.  Attitude.  Optimists may not always have the most realistic outlook, but they live longer, healthier lives than pessimists and enjoy living more.  Attitude can be learned and unlearned.  A healthy attitude includes gratitude and happiness.

2. Nutrition.  People who give their bodies all the nutrients it needs are much more likely to be healthy and feel better longer.  This gets harder and harder as more of our “food” comes from factories rather than farms and gardens, but it CAN be done.  The best place to buy your groceries is in the produce section, and if possible, the best ones to buy are organic.  Try to eat a lot of different colored foods (and Froot Loops don’t count.)

3.  Posture.  When you lose the fight to gravity, and gravity is winning, your heavy head moves in front of your body.  Then, gravity can pull you forward even more!  Your posture can be corrected, at least enough to relieve some of your pain.  Posture is a BIG key in aging.  When you collapse forward, your organs gets squashed.  How can your heart function its best when it is being compressed?  How can your intestines and stomach do their best job?  This is a common cause of constipation.   You can overcome poor posture by stretching the muscles in the front of your body and strengthening the muscles in the back.

George Burns, the comedian, said:  “It’s okay to get older, as long as you don’t get old.”  I’m sticking with George!

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When Muscle Pain Won’t Go Away, Look For Trigger Points

If you have muscle pain or other symptoms that just aren’t going away with conventional (medical) treatment or with massage therapy, there’s a reason.

The reason could very well be “trigger points.”

Here’s an example: Carpal Tunnel Syndrome is very often caused by trigger points in your muscles.  The trigger points in this case are in the neck, upper chest, front of the arm and lower arm.  They “fire,” or refer, pain into the area of the carpal tunnel in the wrist.

A “syndrome” is a collection of symptoms.

Symptoms are things like pain, numbness, tingling.  If you can get rid of the symptoms, or the causes (triggers) of the symptoms, you get rid of the syndrome, too.

Trigger points are hyper-irritable (very irritated or crabby) areas of muscle.  Trigger points can also be found in other soft tissues like skin and organs.  Soft tissues are everything except our bones.

What do trigger points do?

They cause pain and symptoms in other parts of the body, sometimes at a far distance from the trigger point.  This is called “referred” pain.

We ALL have the potential to have them, because we all have soft tissues.

When a nagging pain or symptom won’t go away with treatment, that most likely means that a trigger point is causing the pain and needs to be released.

Whatever caused the trigger point also needs to be corrected.  Everything has a cause!

When I was making my notes for a recent Carpal Tunnel Radio show, I noticed a relationship between Carpal Tunnel Syndrome and trigger points:  All of the things that cause trigger points also cause Carpal Tunnel Syndrome!  And, so it is with a lot of our body pain.

A great deal of our pain and other uncomfortable symptoms are caused by trigger points.

Trigger points and muscles are largely overlooked by the medical community (your doctor) as a cause of pain.  It’s just not widely taught in medical schools.  In fact, very few doctors understand the roles of muscles in pain syndromes and fewer still understand trigger points.

Here are some of the things that cause (create) trigger points:

* abnormal bone structure that Continue reading “When Muscle Pain Won’t Go Away, Look For Trigger Points”

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Migraine Headache Help – 7 Simple Pain Relief Tips for Your Migraines

The best thing to do for a migraine is not to let it start!

There are many things we can do to prevent migraines, at least a lot of the time.  In the meantime, if you have a migraine, or feel one coming on, here are some tips to help you feel better.

As you know, aspirin generally doesn’t do a thing for a migraine headache.  However, there are 2 over-the-counter remedies that might help.

1.  Aleve (or its’ generic, naproxin) may work for you if you take a dose (1 or 2 tablets) at the onset–follow the directions on the label.  In 2019 or so, it became added to sumatriptan prescription medication.  That also caused the cost of the prescription to go up a ton, so just add it separately yourself if you take sumatriptan.

2.  Alka Seltzer may work, because it gives you a fully-dissolved dose of aspirin all at once.  Follow directions on the label.

Here are some other simple pain relief remedies to try:

1.  If the muscles on the tops of your shoulders are all “jammed up,” try a heating pad or heated cloth bag filled with rice to relax your shoulders.

2.  Lie down with an ice pack or cold pack comfortably positioned under your neck and the base of your skull.  Place a cold, wet cloth over your eyes.  If the cloth warms up, keep a basin of cool water next to your bed to refresh it.

If the cloth is drippy, that’s fine.  It’s actually good, because the cold drips will affect more of the nerves and muscles on your head.  Just put a plastic bag and towel under your head and shoulders to catch the drips.

3.  Don’t be shy about pushing or pulling on the muscles around your ears, temples, forehead, back of your head, or anywhere you can reach.  Sometimes the migraine is from the inside out, and sometimes it’s from the outside in.

4.  Pull your hair.  The soft tissues around your whole head get tight with a migraine.  By clasping your fingers in your hair, close to your head, and pulling outward, you can use your hair as little levers to help relax your scalp muscles.

5.  Try to straighten up.  Your heavy head pulls on the muscles around your neck and shoulders when it’s in front of your body and can cause head pain.  If you can lift your chest, your head will move back and be more over your body and take some of the strain off your muscles & nerves.  Do this when you DON’T have a headache or migraine, too.

Here’s hoping that at least one of these tips will help you have less migraine pain.  And I wrote an easy-to-use book for you to help get rid of or reduce those miserable headaches and migraines naturally.

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Yoga and Headaches – 6 Ways Yoga Gets Rid of Head Pain

How can yoga help relieve your headaches?  Oh, let me count the ways:

  1. It relaxes the muscles around your chest, ribs, shoulders and neck.  These are the same muscles that get tight and cause headache symptoms.
  2. Yoga helps reduce your stress.  When you’re feeling all stressed, your muscles “clamp down” on nerves that go to your head.
  3. It helps strengthen the muscles of your backside and makes you long and strong; it creates muscular balance.  A strong back and a long, strong body helps you have good posture.  Good posture, with your head over your body instead of out in front, reduces headaches.
  4. Yoga gets your circulation moving and that helps move the metabolic (body) wastes out of your body.  It reduces swelling which can also be a cause for head pain.
  5. It helps you become more “in tune” with your body.  When your muscles start to complain or your head starts to hurt, you will be able to figure out the cause and correct it.
  6. Yoga can help reduce your blood pressure, but if you are having high blood pressure headaches, you’d better get to a doctor immediately!

Yoga is a full-body stretching and strengthening movement program with a lot of benefits.

If you take a class, always remember:  It’s your body.  If a move doesn’t feel appropriate to you, or feels like it will make your head hurt or your headache feel worse, DON’T DO IT.  Instead, practice a different movement (pose) or breathing.

So, yoga helps take the pressure off the muscles around your head and neck, and helps you relax, and reduces stress, and improves your breathing (shallow breathing could also be a cause of your headaches by not giving you enough oxygen.)

That’s how yoga can help you get rid of your headaches.

Here’s another way I can help you get rid of your migraines and headaches:  Head Pain Natural Relief

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Chronic Back Pain and Muscle Strain – Is There a Simple Pain Relief Answer?

You are not alone. Millions of people suffer from chronic back pain.

Sometimes your back pain is caused by something that you do.

Other times, it’s caused by something you DON’T do.  Okay, I’ll be totally honest:

There are a LOT of reasons for chronic back pain. It could be caused by:

  • Foods that causes inflammation (swelling in your muscles and soft tissues.)
  • Additives (chemicals & toxins) that are in your food.
  • Vitamin & mineral deficiencies.
  • Artificial sweeteners (chemicals & toxins) (Oops!  Did I already say that?)
  • Muscles that are “out of balance.” That means muscles on one part of your body are not in balance with the muscles that oppose them.  Some of your muscles are “too tight” and some are not strong enough to keep you where nature designed you to be.  This creates muscle strain.
  • Injury to a muscle or area of soft tissue from incorrect use or an accident.
  • Anger and sadness; strong negative emotions.

Let’s just stick to muscle strain here.  We can talk about the other causes at a different time.

Can muscle strain can be caused by doing things over and over?

Yes, and especially when the same movement is done over and over again incorrectly.

Here’s an example:

I was at the airport and I was watching the men who Continue reading “Chronic Back Pain and Muscle Strain – Is There a Simple Pain Relief Answer?”

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Muscle Pain & Nutrition: Will Organic Food Stop Your Pain?

Pain in your muscles and soft tissues can be caused by many things.  One of them is most surely the additives and unwanted additions to the food we eat.

When your muscles are happy–getting what they need from your diet–they are able to function better.

Humans used to eat “natural.”

We ate what grew on trees, bushes in or on the ground.  We ate “wild caught” fish and meat.  Your body was designed to eat real food.

And now?

A lot of the things we eat come out of factories. Yum.

Our bodies just don’t know how to process the chemicals, petroleum products and other additives that are added for shelf life and flavor.  (Did you know there is a whole chemical industry devoted to developing new flavors and scents so we will buy more processed “food” products?)

There are lots of reasons you should consider organic food for pain relief but here’s my wrap-up:

Yes, organic food WILL help you feel better!  It WILL help your body heal and function better!

Eating organic, fresh fruits, veggies, eggs, and whatever else you like to eat WILL help you get rid of your muscle pain because you won’t be pumped full of chemicals.

You are worth it!

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