Slouching at Your Desk

iVillage.com: Everyday Habits That Make Pain Worse

Sitting hunched over your computer at work or over the steering wheel in your car puts stress on your spine and the muscles between the shoulder blades. This can cause back or neck pain, or exacerbate it if you already have it, says Dr. Gross. Poor body posture also has been linked with headaches, jaw pain and other forms of chronic or recurring pain.

Solution: If you work at a computer, sit with your upper back against a firm, supportive chair, a hollow in your low back and your thighs parallel to the floor. Make sure your computer screen is at eye level and situated so your head stays in a neutral position (not tilted, turned or flexed). Be sure to “get up and move around every 30 minutes,” suggests Dr. Gross. “Our bodies are not meant to be in any one position for too long.”

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Change Habits Th...

When you’re in pain, whether it’s from a migraine, a kink in your back or a flare-up of arthritis, you probably do everything in your power to make it go away fast. But even if you’re conscientious about taking your meds and modifying your activities, your everyday habits could be thwarting your efforts to control your pain effectively. Here are 10 lifestyle habits that could be making your pain worse, plus sound advice from pain experts on how to change them.

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Expecting the Wo...

It’s easy to entertain worst-case scenarios when you’re in pain: Did my doctor miss something serious? Is my condition getting worse? Will I become incapacitated? Will this excruciating pain last forever? Besides making you feel distressed and anxious, “catastrophizing” about pain can actually make it worse. Negative thoughts can trigger muscle tension and “increase pain by increasing inflammatory substances in the body,” explains Ronald Kulich, Ph.D., attending psychologist at the Massachusetts General Center for Pain Medicine in Boston. “Pain is processed in the brain, and there’s a wealth of research that suggests pain can be influenced by your thoughts.”

Solution: Remind yourself that chronic pain often comes and goes, and the fluctuations don’t necessarily mean anything. Focus on what you can do to relieve flare-ups: adjust your medication (with your doctor’s help), use relaxation techniques (like meditation) or apply heat or cold. It also helps to distract yourself by engaging in an engrossing activity.

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Being Sedentary

When you have nagging aches and pains, exercising may be the last thing you feel like doing. “Often when people have chronic pain, they’re afraid that physical activity will make the pain worse,” says Jeffrey Gross, M.D., a clinical associate professor of rehabilitation medicine at the New York University School of Medicine. But being inactive can backfire, and lead to stiff muscles and joints, as well as shortening of the muscles and tendons, which can worsen pain. By contrast, using your muscles normally can improve your ability to function, which can reduce your pain.

Solution: Get moving in some way (walk your dog, dance, ride a bike) as often as you can. If you have arthritis in your lower body, try swimming or water aerobics; the water’s natural buoyancy cushions the joints. Whatever activity you choose, start at a comfortable pace, rest as needed and gradually increase the duration or intensity of your workouts.

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Smoking

New research from the University of Kentucky College of Public Health suggests a link between smoking and musculoskeletal pain syndromes in women, including fibromyalgia, sciatica, chronic neck and back pain, joint pain and frequent pain in other parts of the body. This may be partly because smoking decreases blood flow and depletes the delivery of oxygen to the muscles, nerves and tissues, which puts these areas in need of continuous repair and slows the healing process, Dr. Gross notes. Plus, smoking creates free radicals (unstable molecules) that damage cells and cause inflammation.

Solution: Kick those butts now, for the sake of your pain and your overall health. All sorts of aids (smoking-cessation support groups, antidepressants, nicotine patches, gums, inhalers, nasal sprays) can make breaking the habit a little easier.

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Carrying an Over...

If you lug a too-heavy purse, briefcase or backpack (and carry it on the same shoulder), you’re probably throwing your spine out of its proper alignment, disturbing your natural gait and tiring your back, neck, shoulders and/or hips, Dr. Gross points out.

Solution: Weigh your purse. If it weighs more than 10 percent of your body weight, it’s time to clean it out, says the American Chiropractic Association. Choose a purse or briefcase with a wide adjustable strap that’s long enough to place over your head to distribute the bulk of the weight more evenly across your body. Switch shoulders frequently to avoid overburdening one side.

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Skimping on Slee...

Doctors agree: Getting too little or poor-quality sleep can intensify the hurt by lowering your pain threshold and making you irritable the next day. It can also increase the risk of depression, if you have chronic pain. This may be partly because “the same area of the brain that mediates sleep also mediates pain, anxiety and depression,” Kulich says.

Solution: Make good-quality sleep a priority. Set a consistent bedtime and wake-up time so you get the seven to nine hours of shut-eye per night that most adults need. Exercise at least four hours before bedtime to put yourself in the mood to snooze. Create a soothing sleep environment that’s dark, quiet and comfortable, and do something relaxing like take a warm bath or listen to music before turning in. If you suspect you have a sleep disorder, see a sleep specialist.

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Toting Around Ex...

Carrying excess weight strains the body, especially the back and weight-bearing joints (like the hips and knees). Besides affecting your posture, those unwanted pounds put greater pressure on the spine and accelerate some of the degeneration that normally occurs in the discs, Dr. Gross explains.

Solution: Talk to your doctor or a nutritionist about creating a diet and exercise regimen. In a recent study in Ottawa, Canada, researchers had obese adults with low-back pain follow a yearlong weight-loss program that included calorie restriction and 60 to 90 minutes of physical activity per day; by week 53, the participants showed significant improvements in their pain and functionality as well as substantial weight loss.

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Slouching at You...

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Letting Stress G...

When you’re stressed out, depressed or anxious, your pain may feel worse, and it’s not because you’re blowing it out of proportion in your head. The truth is that stress has a significant influence on the experience of pain, Kulich says. For one thing, when you’re stressed out, you tend to clench or tense your muscles, often without realizing it, which can trigger or aggravate pain. For another, your body releases inflammatory chemicals that can exacerbate existing pain.

Solution: Find your personal pressure-release valve and use it often, by meditating, doing deep breathing, using self-hypnosis or engaging in another activity that helps you decompress. This will help prevent stress from taking a toll on your head, neck, back or other areas that are vulnerable to pain -- and keep your wits about you when pain does flare up.

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Rushing Around, ...

The way you perform everyday tasks, from carrying shopping bags to taking out the trash to loading or unloading the dishwasher, can have a significant effect on how your body feels. Every motion has proper biomechanics, and if you don’t heed them, you can place undue stress on certain body parts and end up making your neck, shoulder, back, hip or knee pain worse, says Dr. Gross.

Solution: Slow down and pay attention to how you move. That means: Don’t twist your spine while standing or sitting for long periods (because this strains the back), and always bend from the knees and hips/pelvis, rather than the waist, to lift something from the floor.

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Burying Your Ang...

“Chronic musculoskeletal pain, especially lower back and neck pain, is often related to repressed anger,” says Dr. Gross. The mechanism isn’t understood, but “I see it again and again in my practice, especially with women,” he says. In a recent study at the Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, researchers found that when people with chronic low-back pain were told to suppress their anger during an aggravating task, they experienced greater muscle tension in their lower backs and greater pain behaviors that increased their pain severity than nonsuppressors did.

Solution: Jot down brief statements about what makes you angry or frustrated in your life, suggests Dr. Gross. “The idea is to bring anger to your consciousness, not to necessarily act on it.” Researchers at Pennsylvania State University had chronic pain sufferers express their anger either constructively in writing or by drafting their goals in an unemotional way; over nine weeks, the group that wrote about anger experienced greater improvements in pain control and pain severity than the other group did.

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