It’s just about as simple as it sounds! The #1 non-drug therapy I turn to when I need relief from pain is heat.
Heat is a great therapy to fall back on when you don’t want to have to take medicine, or when you can’t take medicine, or when you’re already taking too much. (Ahem. I take fourteen pills a day before any painkillers even enter the picture. I like to limit my need for them as much as possible.) It’s not often when a chronic pain patient can feel genuinely good, but heat provides for at least a small reprieve. The relaxation is an obvious benefit on its own, and it can also help reduce pain that comes from muscle tension (like those pesky migraines of mine), but it also helps relieve pain that isn’t related to muscle tension at all.
There are any number of ways to use heat…
- I’ve got a box full of heating pads stowed in my closet, including:
- The electric heating pad. Mine is, uh, decades old, and should probably be replaced. You can control how hot you want it to be, and you can use it for as long or short a time as you feel like, but you’re tethered to the electrical cord while you’re using it.
- The gel packs. I have several, in different shapes and forms, to be applied to different parts of the body. It’s very easy to find the rectangular ones, but I also keep around the long strip-shaped ones for use on my neck and shoulders (very helpful for those migraines, given they are exacerbated by tension, and my shoulders have been subject to remark from multiple doctors for their excessive tenseness). These can be microwaved or kept in the freezer, depending on whether you want the pack to be hot or cold. These usually last about a half hour or so; they stay “warm” for up to an hour or longer, but past thirty minutes it’s a very weak, lukewarm temperature, at which point the sheer heaviness of the pack triggers more pain than the “heat” relieves.
- The rice socks. They come in several forms, the simplest of which is, literally, dried rice (or other grain) in a sewed-up sock (hello cheap home remedies!), but naturally the sort you buy in a store is a bit fancier than that. A lot of them are scented to be “therapeutic” but with MCS-like symptoms it just makes my headache worse. Like the gel packs, you throw these in the microwave for a few minutes. The advantage with these is that they’re lighter, so not as much weight on your body, and they are a moist heat, which IME penetrates deeper and relaxes muscles more. The disadvantage is that they don’t last long. Five minutes tops. That means a lot of return trips to the microwave.
- Let’s file this one under “Why yes, I have a cat picture for pretty much every purpose.”
See e.g. WarmWhiskers. (Mine is from some novelty store in Exeter, CA, not sure of its origin. It is substantially heavier than most of the rice sock sorts but it covers more territory. It also lasts a bit longer.)
- These are kept with my medicine stash, but I can’t recommend them enough: ThermaCare Disposable Heat Wraps. When I am on my period, I pretty much cannot leave the house without one of their menstrual wraps stuck to the front inside of my underwear. (As an aside, I have been using these things for eight or ten years now, and I remember when they changed their packaging so that the menstrual one was all pink and shit. I was Very Displeased.) Their neck and shoulder wraps have served me well in the past but I actually prefer WellPatch’s version now, because it better covers the area that needs heat most for me. These are not for everyday use — God I can only imagine how expensive that would be — but they are wonderful when you need heat therapy while you’re out of the home, or when you need consistent heat for at least several hours without repeated trips back to the microwave. There are several varieties — back, shoulder/neck, knee, elbow, wrist, etc. — from several different brands. You’ll find a wider selection in an honest-to-goodness drug store; I’ve rarely seen Wal*Mart&co (Target, KMart etc.) carry more than one or two varieties if any at all.
- Those warming massage oils are definitely nice. Of course, you’re also getting a massage, which definitely helps matters 😉
- There are creams and lotions of various sorts that work by providing a warming sensation. They aren’t my favorite, personally, but they have helped many other people.
- Warm water. This takes any of a variety of forms:
- Warm water pool exercises. I have done this during physical therapy in the past, and it definitely feels good! Unfortunately it was also when I was young (early teens) and I did not have a good gauge on my pain at the time, so it was hard for me to tell what helped and what didn’t. Regardless, this comes recommended highly by many people (doctors and patients alike) so if the opportunity presents itself, don’t be afraid to try it. It has done good for many people.
- Showers/baths. Tread cautiously: I can’t take baths because I can’t be trusted not to fall asleep. There is such a thing as too relaxing, unfortunately. (I also just don’t care for stewing in all the dirty stuff I just washed off myself.) I used to take extremely hot showers, but my tolerance for extreme temperatures has taken a plunge in the last couple years. It definitely helps relax the muscles, but showers are precisely when I need strength, not noodle-legs. Still, this is a place where you can take advantage of the benefits of heat on a regular basis. Just be careful while you’re doing it.
- If you have access to a hot tub, well… ’nuff said.
- I am in physical therapy right now, and one of the techniques they are using is called ultrasound. This form of treatment penetrates deeper into the soft muscle tissue which can make it more effective. I walk out of PT every time sort of wobbly, because the muscles in my back are so relaxed I have trouble holding myself up 🙂 Like warm water pool exercise, this is something that would be used short-term, usually to help in rehabilitation after injury or trauma.
Cryotheraphy — the use of cold rather than heat — can also be beneficial, and many of the products and techniques listed above can be used cool (most of those heat packs, for instance, can be cooled in a freezer in addition to being heated in a microwave, and there are menthol creams that provide a cooling sensation rather than warming). I, personally, can’t use cool therapy. Cold has always been synonymous with pain for me; the only time I can handle cold water or wind is when it is extremely hot outside (something I have also lost tolerance for over the past couple years; I used to be most comfortable between 80 and 100 degrees, whereas now anything over 80 is creeping toward miserable). And cold tends to be indicated more in injury than in chronic pain. Still, those therapies exist and they shouldn’t be hard to find if you are interested.
There are some cautions: Make sure you keep tabs on the temperature, because you can suffer burns if you let it get too hot. There are contraindications for use of heat in general, too; nerve damage, poor circulation, skin issues. And they bear cautions for use during pregnancy (I am not sure of the reason for this, but better to mind it than not). If you have any questions about whether it is safe to use, bring it up with your doctor. If you feel like you can’t discuss these sorts of things with your doctor — get a new doctor! (That’s a whole ‘nother post.)
Are there any heat therapies I missed? Have any of these helped you, or have they fallen flat? Share your experiences in comments.