Here is a method to suppress the pain and restore the sleep. Our goal is to increase the sleep period from the time the patient lies down and extend the sleeping over greater time until we've reached a beneficial sleep that allows the patient to rest and recuperate.
Tips:
Each night prior to going to bed take a few minutes to rest and put your feet up. If best then do this in the bed so you do not have to get up to go to bed. Put the Infrex on, high interferential mode, and set for a 30 minute cycle of treatment. We hope to diminish the pain and also relax any tense muscles. Do this for a week and see if this doesn't help.
Couple of extra tips to go with this:
- If 30 minutes isn't enough then you can literally set Infrex to "continuous" and go to sleep with the unit on. That is not a problem and will not cause you any problems.
- Might try a warm, moist heat pack over painful area with the Infrex electrodes underneath the pack in the painful area. The combination of carryover thermal pain relief is extended by the interferential treatment and the increased blood flow into the area allows for better conduction of the electricity throughout the painful region.
- Can place a Lavender Aromatherapy Patch on your chest to wear during night to help relax. If your insurance purchased unit for you these patches may be a covered cost so no out of pocket cost to you.
- This is one of my favorite remedies!! Try sipping a cup of chamomile tea ( one of main ingredients in "Sleepytime" tea) to calm you down and get ready to rest.
Here is a study done, found on WEBMD, on the use of dorsal column stimulators- DCS- (implanted spinal devices) that discusses the sleep/pain cycle and how the DCS may be beneficial. My advice is go with interferential first as the origin of the tens units were from testing for a DCS device and it was found the external device provided similar benefits without surgery, costs, and build up of scar tissue which created it's own set of future problems.
