How to Identify Your Pain Triggers

            Anyone who has suffered from pain understands that pain is a highly personal experience.  The same injury in two different people can result in two different levels and expressions of pain.  But trying to understand what exacerbates your pain, or your triggers, doesn’t have to be as variable as the feeling of pain itself.  Here are some methods I used in trying to determine my triggers:

• Take notes – Try a journal, notebook, or the List app on your phone.  (Try some of the new voice-activated services if you have trouble writing.)  Write down everything you do, eat, and drink for several days, including the times when your pain increases.  After a few days, compare the lists to see what may exacerbate your pain.  For instance, high salt foods may increase pain in people with joint pain, as the salt can increase fluid retention, putting extra pressure on the joints.
• Experiment Slowly and Methodically – Once you have notes from several days, slowly and methodically test various activities and foods to see the results on your pain levels.  Try doing the activities or eating the foods one at a time, so you know what activities or foods are the real culprit.  For me, fine motor activities, like using a fork and knife, or anything requiring me to grip small, thin objects, really increased my pain for the first couple of years.
• Use What You Learn – Use what your notes and journals reveal to you.  If your joint pain increases significantly after eating high-salt foods, cut back on those foods.  If you learn that certain motions cause you pain, adapt your activities around those motions.  For instance, in the first couple of years of my pain, circular scrubbing motions caused intense pain in my shoulder, so I learned to clean using more straight-line motions and to take more breaks while cleaning.

While we don’t need to incorporate overly scientific techniques in our daily life, we can incorporate loosely affiliated versions of those techniques to help ourselves.  After all, the goal is becoming more functional, and what better way to accomplish that goal than by learning what triggers our pain so we can avoid and/or adapt around those triggers?  Good luck finding your triggers, and feel free to post comments about your triggers as they may help others in determining their own triggers.  As always, remember to check with your medical provider prior to beginning anything new in your pain treatment regimen.  Check out How I Identified My Pain Triggers on the Resource Documents page for a downloadable list.