No matter how well you take care of yourself, you can’t always escape chronic pain. Millions of people across the globe are impacted by it on a regular basis. In fact, 10% of the world’s population deals with chronic pain. While it stems from various causes, it can be debilitating and severely reduce your overall quality of life.
As a prepper, you already think about how to keep yourself healthy and sustained through emergency situations. But, if you’re someone who deals with chronic pain, that’s also something to keep in mind as you prepare for the future.
Let’s cover eight tips you can use to manage your pain, stay on track with your prepping efforts, and make sure you can take care of the pain you feel even in less-than-ideal circumstances.
1. Understand the Source
One of the best things you can do to learn how to manage your chronic pain is to determine what’s causing it. Once you understand where your pain is coming from, you can form an effective strategy to deal with it.
Some of the common contributors to chronic pain include:
- Being overweight
- Illnesses like Lyme disease, diabetes, cancer, and shingles
- Poor posture
- A traumatic injury
- Underlying health conditions
Obviously, some of these issues are easier to treat than others. If poor posture or being overweight are contributing to your pain, there are things you can do to remedy those problems quickly. If you have a medical condition or specific illness, it’s important to talk to your doctor about which medications or other forms of treatment might be able to help.
2. Be Realistic With Your Expectations
When you’re struggling with severe pain and trying to stay on track with a prepping schedule, it’s easy to get frustrated. Realistically, you’re not going to be able to do everything you might want to do. You probably won’t even be able to do some of the physical things you did before.
Manage your expectations and be realistic. Fight back against frustration by shifting your focus on the things you can do, rather than dwelling on the things you can’t accomplish on your own. Don’t be afraid to ask for help from family members and friends. Chronic pain may cause you to swallow your pride a bit, but it doesn’t have to completely bring you down. There’s plenty you can still take care of, and you can use this as an opportunity to educate other people in your life about the importance of prepping.
3. Stay On Top of the News
While you might be limited in how you can prepare, physically, there’s no reason you can’t continue to be a sponge when it comes to keeping up with local, national, and global events. You likely already have at least one media source you trust, to stay up-to-date with whatever might be happening that could impact you now or in the future.
By keeping up with…