Pain relief

Have you tried cocodamol, especially for night time to get sleep

@Lipop balancing inflammatory activity against anti inflammatory drugs is out of my league but there are plenty of people who do it, so I am wondering how they all manage to find their ideal level of treatment.

I would be straight onto 111 or the Arthritis helpline with my latest situation, to at least get myself going along the right lines. No idea if Naproxen is even compatible with Co-Codamol, but you tried it, so its good evidence for the experts to say why its like that.

Sleep is interesting not that Im an expert or anything. I am quite keen on sleeping more than once if I can. I noticed using a smart watch that sleep only comes in cycles of a few hours anyway, and the next session is different to the previous one. In other words your system adjusts your sleep session to get the kind of sleep that your system decides you needed, you just need to trust that, and make sure there is enough cycles.

Hi @Lipop

I've suffered with my hips now for over over a year and tried many things

Max strength prescription codiene with paracetamol in-between doses stronger than over the counter cocodamol worked well for a bit

Tramadol x 8 a day I still take when I need to but not the full dose.

Buprenorphine patches are my current choice. I change them weekly and find they start losing their effectiveness about 36 hours before the change date. Top up with paracetamol and tramadol when I need to.

I use red tiger balm and voltarol when I need to plus my tens machine

Had an awful conversation with one of the GPs at our surgery who told me I should be used to pain as I had osteoarthritis and there was nothing she could do when I phoned up for help after no sleep and chronic pain for a week. Found another GP at the surgery who was more sympathetic and helpful. He put me on the patches.

I have also had two injections into my hip. One did nothing and one was good but hurt like hell.i am lucky I am now retired. Good luck with finding something that works for you.

Trish xx

Hi @Lipop

This may sound a bit left field but it worked for me. Try acknowledging but then ignoring the pain. (Credit to a podcast episode on pain)

It follows this logic pathway.

1.Pain is the way my body sends a message that lets my conscience know there is something wrong, it's automatic and can't normally be switched off (medications usually adjust our sensitivity to the message rather than stop the message).

2. I already know there's something wrong with my hip so the pain message from my body isn't telling me anything new.

3. My doctor/ physio has told me that keeping moving will help so I'm not causing more harm (obviously this bit might vary and it's IMPORTANT to follow medical guidance).

4. I can acknowledge the pain message as an automated signal but do I really need to give it much attention?

5. No, seriously, no. I can choose to move on, move being the operative word (or adjust my position and go back to sleep)

A caveat to this is that we are all different in how we experience pain and are levels of tolerance so this may not work for everyone.

As I say it's a bit left field but it took me from doing as little as possible and popping paracetamol to the maximum about 3 years ago to still cycling, albeit fairly short distances, and walking 20000 steps a day with no pain killers and a hip that was bone on bone right up until my Op 3 weeks ago.