We have a lovely guest post from a new contributor, Jackie Waters, of Hyper-Tidy.com! 

Living in constant pain can cause worry, stress, anxiety, and depression. You wonder if you’ll ever feel better or if you’ll keep feeling worse. It is possible to get your life back and get a handle on chronic pain. People who suffer from it can incorporate everyday, holistic changes to improve their quality of life and manage their pain.

Lifestyle and Diet

Mindfulness meditation is a way to effectively train your brain to turn down the volume on pain. According to The Huffington Post, “A typical meditation involves focusing on different parts of the body and simply observing with the mind’s eye what you find.” Doing this makes you aware of the connection between your mind and body; you observe painful sensations as they happen, and then let go of struggling with them.

You may doubt the impact mindfulness meditation can have on chronic pain, but it has been shown to reduce it by 57 percent, and skillful meditators can reduce it by more than 90 percent. Imaging studies show that mindfulness meditation calms the brain patterns underlying pain. Over time, these changes alter the structure of the brain itself, decreasing the intensity of the pain.

In fact, hospital pain clinics often prescribe mindfulness meditation to help patients cope with the suffering caused by many diseases, including cancer, heart disease, multiple sclerosis, migraines, diabetes, irritable bowel syndrome, celiac disease, arthritis, back issues, fibromyalgia, and chronic fatigue syndrome. In treating pain, you also reduce levels of anxiety, stress, and depression associated with suffering.

A diet for chronic pain sufferers typically consists of high protein, vegetable, and fruit intake and an avoidance of carbohydrates. The fundamental principle of the diet is that patients with chronic pain need to avoid high-glycemic foods, which are sugars and starches. Avoiding these foods while eating more protein and vegetables is thought to promote strength, movement, energy, and mental function.

Home Life

By implementing strategies for keeping your house generally tidy and maintained, you won’t spend hours cleaning it all at once, which can lead to a pain flare-up. Habitually performing these small-but-significant daily tasks prevents you from becoming overwhelmed with clutter and cleaning tasks.

Begin your day by making your bed in the morning so you’ll start off on the right foot. Put your clothes where they go. Hang them up, fold them and put them in the dresser, or place them in the hamper. Also, do one load of laundry a day. Otherwise, if you ignore the laundry all week, it will take you hours to get it all done.

Put things back where they belong when you use them. Not only will it keep your house cleaner, but also you won’t have to try to hunt down an item when you need it again. When you check the mail, deal with it immediately. Throw away junk mail and file bills. Lastly, end every day by cleaning your kitchen. Do the dishes, clear the table, sweep crumbs off the floor, and wipe down the counters, table, and stove.

If your house needs a deep cleaning, consider hiring someone else or asking a friend or family member to help. Certain tasks may be harder for you to handle, such as vacuuming or heavy dusting. These would be ideal for your cleaning helper to handle. Chemicals in household cleaning products can cause hormonal disruptions that lead to chronic inflammation (which can lead to chronic pain), so consider switching to all-natural products.

Suffering from pain can make life less enjoyable. Take back your life by implementing holistic changes. Through meditation, diet, and small changes throughout your daily routine, you can lead a life with less pain.

Jackie Waters is a mother of four beautiful and energetic boys. She lives with her family on a three-acre hobby farm in Oregon. Her goals are to feed her family as much fresh and home-grown food as possible, focus on sustainability while doing so, and practice simplicity.

She is here to tell you: you can have it all. With diligence and balance, you can achieve a beautiful, clean home. Her journey has been full of challenges, but she learned so much along the way. She would like to share with you her ideas and tips on how to be hyper-tidy!