Don't take your medicine because it is time...
Aug 8, 2024
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One of the biggest mistakes I see people make when trying to manage their pain medication is they take the medication on a schedule. For example if it is written 4 times per day, they try to take it at 6, 11, 4, and 9 because it is "due". While this seems like "best practice", it is actually based on a very ineffective pattern of medicating that I call the "pain blanket".
The pain blanket assumes that if you take the medication, "on time" and if it is always in your system, it will guard against pain. It doesn't. What actually happens is that when you need the pain medication to be the strongest, it is usually occurring right before the next dose is due when it is the weakest.
Instead, Dr Mike recommends strategic dosing. You don't take your medication because it is time; rather, you take it because of what you need to do next. It requires that you plan your day a bit better. You need to cluster your activity, and plan to dose right before each cluster. You also have to plan down time so that you can have less pain when the pain medication is either weak or absent from the body.
We are going to explore this more the longer the site is up. For now, just remember Pain Blankets don't work. The purpose of chronic pain management is to insert life into the middle of pain, not remove the pain from life (a fictional goal).
As usual thank you so much this makes so much sense. I'm being forced tapered as you may remember, and in the last four months, I have not been able to figure out the right dosing. I told my doctor I was trying to basically do what you said cluster my activities and then plan for downtime and he said no you take the same amount at the same time every day And I told him that has effectively destroyed my quality of life. It doesn't allow me to except invitations it doesn't allow me to plan for things, be there for my family etc. because I never know which day it's going to be hurting that much more. Starting tomorrow I'm going to try a different approach. Thank you, Dr. Mike as always!
Yes! Plan around your days activity levels and the idea of how that activity will make you feel after along with recovery time needed after🫶