Greenleaf Pharmacy
Pain Management
Manage Your Pain
Pain affects us all from time to time, be it an injury from trying to keep up with our children (or grandchildren), a toothache that we haven’t been able to see the dentist about or a headache caused by a stressful week at work. These types of acute pain can still be very well managed by your Greenleaf Pharmacist, even in the absence of codeine, by using anti-inflammatories or supportive measures.
Pain can also be lingering and nagging, this type of pain is called “Chronic Pain” and is characterised by pain that lasts more than three months and is most often lower back or leg pain. It should be treated differently to the acute pain mentioned above.
Greenleaf Pharmacy and Pain Management
Selected Greenleaf Pharmacies are currently involved in a trial coordinated by the Pharmacy Guild and Department of Human Service (Medicare) called the “Chronic Pain MedsCheck”. It involves a discussion with the pharmacist regarding your current pain situation and how you are currently addressing it. Our pharmacist can make recommendations to optimise your treatment and/ or refer you to the appropriate channels if necessary.
- We have found great results with TENS (Transdermal Electronic Nerve Stimulation), which involves wearing a pad, connected to a device that sends small electric charges through the skin to “distract” and “disrupt” the pain signals returning to the brain.
- Simple analgesics are effective, although a combination of paracetamol and ibuprofen (a Pharmacist only product) provides superior pain relief than either combination on its own, often at a lower dose and is equipotent to traditional codeine based analgesics that now require a prescription.
- We also recommend Fisocream, a natural analgesic, anti-inflammatory and muscle relaxing cream that goes on cool and slowly heats up as it starts to work.
