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Comment by velniukas | Hacker News Reader

I've struggled with chronic pain for almost 20 years after military and ultramarathons in my 20's. Many knee operations, 100's of doctors around the world without any success. Crawl up the wall in pain at night times.

Very recently however, I've found a doctor who prescribed extremely low doses of medicines normally related to depression; and the effect has been almost instantaneous in turning off the 24hr pain. I followed up the medical literature and this seems to be a niche but evolving area - worth checking out with your physician. I'm hoping that I'll be able to drop taking these daily in the near future and get back to what normal people feel like. My productivity has gone through the roof as well as being able to concentrate better on work and not on the constant pain.

Now to start making the journey back to fit again :)

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I had chronic pain from a slipped disc - nothing compared to the author or you but I remember sleepless nights of pain, thinking every night of my life was going to be like this. It's hard to think past the moment when the moment is all you have.

After a slew of non-working pain meds, my doctor prescribed an anti-seizure drug, gabapetin, and in days the pain was gone. With the pain gone, I started swimming and strengthening my back and the disc moved back into place, and got off the gabapetin. Every few years or so, something goes wrong and I do the same thing -- gabapentin, swimming, back to ok. I hope you both find something that works.

My doctor did something similar for me.

I have constant pain due to a small lesion in my CNS. The doctor tried some anti-depressants and even a couple of very old anti-psychotics. The idea was that, even though I would still mentally register the pain, it would become more like background noise.

It worked, to a certain degree. I'd still love to find an ultimate solution, and I still need to limit myself for some activities (long walks). But I'm able to get through a regular day without pain medication - which I've so far refused to take.

It is becoming more common place in practice and I hope that more research is funnelled in that direction as we currently do not fully understand the reason that it helps.

Pain is an incredibly subjective area though. Some people gain great relief from simple measures such as heat treatment while others with similar injuries/problems will need strong opiods.

I'm not in the military, but I've done a number of ultramarathons and hope to continue to do so for a little while at least before really settling down and starting a family(I'll be 31 in May). Any advice?

(Edit: I'm glad that you've found a way to overcome the pain!)

Best advice I got too late: Never run with a backpack. However walking with weight is great exercise. I spent years habitually carrying a weighted pack or divers weight-belt to 'acclimatize' my body, never took the escalator or lift and ran every moment I could - in boots mostly. Sports medicine and knowledge has improved enough now that these common mistakes can be avoided.

Interesting thoughts... typically I don't, but the last couple races I did required it. I'm doing Marathon des Sables in a few weeks, which requires me to carry a ~20lb bag for the 6 days I'll be out there, and I ran a 50mi race this past October with a 5lb bag(water, light snacks). Of course, there was the time spent training for it that required me to get ready to do these races. My preference is without the bag, of course :) and I always do my runs with running shoes, never in boots.

I'll try to do more of my runs after this one without the extra weight though - thank you for your input! What ultras have you done?

here is an interesting bit of advice on rucking that I found today. http://www.itstactical.com/centcom/interviews/still-rucking-... for myself - never did anything formal - one of my mentors trained me according to a real life combat situation he was in: run/walk 3 days/nights carrying 60kg (his team was chased by vehicles). That was what I always trained for, so definitely outside the norm. Good luck with MdS - would love to do that one day.

I feel happy for you :)

I think the rheumatologist I saw for my chronic pain told me Cymbalta might help - which is an anti-depressant.

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