Daily meditation helps patients with arthritis suffering from chronic pain

The day she was fired by an 18-wheeler in 2017, Raquel Masco finally received a diagnosis for her pain, after more than 10 years of suffering.

"I do not know why he took his foot off the break at a red light," she said. But after an MRI at the hospital after the accident, Masco was diagnosed with inflammatory polyarthritis.

The previous decade had been difficult. She first noticed bald spots on her head at the age of 33, she said, and "I had this weird pattern on her face." However, "x-rays and blood tests are back well". Over the years, suffering from fatigue, difficulty getting up and pain, she knew something was wrong.

In 2016, she was diagnosed with osteoarthritis but no explanation for her other symptoms and prescribed her with indomethacin and ibuprofen for pain relief. As a single mother, "keep it up," she said. Medscape Medical News. You "just suck."

But "I knew I did not invent anything," she said. There were days when she was so devoid of energy that she had to climb the stairs.

Toothache a path to meditation

Right after her diagnosis, Masco, executive director and co-founder of the SingleMoms Created4Change Advocacy and Empowerment Center, was found with a very bad toothache.

Through her suffering, she says to herself: "I need to center myself and breathe." It helped me. After trying the meditation with her friend, a yoga instructor, she thought it would be good to further explore the practice of her chronic pain.

"I've always had a sharp mind.In the beginning, when I started to meditate, I was a control freak." It took time to learn how to get to the process "she said. Today, Masco takes a daily meditative walk in the morning, "even in the rain," and in the afternoon, she closes the door of her office and does a sitting mediation.

"It helps me better control my mental health and live with chronic pain," she said. Medscape Medical News. Meditation helps to "accept" what is going on in his body and give him more control over the pain.

Masco described how meditation helped her during the presentation of her patient poster at the 2018 Annual Meeting of the American College of Rheumatology in Chicago.

Another component of the disease

As a patient, it's important for you to wonder what life with this disease is doing to you, she said. "You feel lost or you feel that it's a punishment when the drug is not a panacea."

Of course, an evidence-based approach is important, she acknowledged, "but there is another component, I'm more than just science, there's a part of me that drugs can not help . "

Masco started taking duloxetine (Cymbalta) earlier this year, with ibuprofen, but still uses meditation to help it through chronic pain.

"The meditation distracts the attention from the pain and everything that happens and brings me to a more centered place as a person and as a woman," she explained. This helps to understand that it is not just a chronic illness and pain. "I am a person beyond this pain.By focusing on the breath, on the breath of life inside me, I can be at a higher place, at the opposite of pain."

In addition to meditation, Masco participates in online patient and animated support groups. "I regularly discuss lupus," she said. She is also a volunteer at the Arthritis Foundation.

More education needed

More education on meditation would be helpful for patients with chronic pain. "Everyone does not understand what it is," Masco said. "We must eliminate this sort of perception of mythical worship." This could help if it was suggested by a doctor; there might be brochures in doctors' offices.

It is important for doctors to encourage patients who want to experiment with different approaches to managing the disease, as long as they are not physically harmful, she added.

"From one skeptic to the other, I can tell you that it has real benefits," she said.

You have to do it because you really want to try it, not because you think it's a fad, she said. "You have to do it at your own pace and find out what really works for you – give yourself space and compassion to grow and learn – to submit to the process."

Masco still has disease outbreaks. Chronic pain can be daunting and it's important to find things that make life better, she said. "Find a support group, talking to people who understand what you're going through is a vital part of healing."

Scientific approach to mindfulness and meditation

It is notoriously difficult to find scientific evidence to support the benefits of meditation, but providers need alternatives to offer patients with chronic pain, particularly in light of the current crisis of opioids.

In a study presented earlier this year at the meeting of the American Pain Society, the response to treatment improved when patients with chronic low back pain and predisposed to catastrophization began to meditate in full consciousness, as indicated by Medscape Medical News.

And a study of 2017, also reported by Medscape Medical News, showed that short-term physical functioning was significantly better with mindfulness stress reduction treatment than with usual care, although the improvements were not sustained in the long-term.

Masco has not disclosed any relevant financial relationship.

2018 Annual Meeting of the American College of Rheumatology (ACR): Presented October 21, 2018.

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