Chronic Pain; A NY Times Article You Should Read

Chronic Pain; A NY Times Article You Should Read

Anyone who has chronic pain knows how frustrating it is. Over time, the nervous system may rewire itself and make pain an entity of its own. In most cases though, coming from my experience both personally, in in treating patients in pain, there is a mechanical solution that markedly improves the way the person feels and functions. My upcoming book due in August Cheating Mother Nature discusses the body mechanics behind the condition, how to find those who can truly understand the problems and to find real answers.

Medically, as this article discusses, they try to disease classify that which they do not understand. Over time, the nervous system adapts and pain may indeed become the problem itself. Better approaches are needed and medically, they need to step out of their paradigm and understand the function behind pain. The fascial system plays a huge part in this and much has been written about it. Perhaps, by a shift in focus from disease classification to understanding mechanical function, they can wrap their heads around the problem better and you as the patient would get better answers and better care which is more cost effective.

Those who have post surgical pain often suffer years later. A few years ago, a medical study finally admitted that scar tissue affected function and therefore cause chronic back pain as well as other problems. Many women who have had cesarian sections or other open abdominal surgical procedures can attest to this, once they have been properly diagnosed. BTW, I hear Cesarian sections are becoming more common and are at an all time high, a trend that was reported about a new study in the Huffington Post . Are women really becoming incapable of having a baby without the surgery? That is a disturbing trend.

Read the article here…

Giving Chronic Pain a Medical Platform of Its Own

By TARA PARKER-POPE
Stuart Bradford

Most doctors view pain as a symptom of an underlying problem — treat the disease or the injury, and the pain goes away.

But for large numbers of patients, the pain never goes away. In a sweeping review issued last month, the Institute of Medicine — the medical branch of the National Academy of Sciences — estimated that chronic pain afflicts 116 million Americans, far more than previously believed.

The toll documented in the report is staggering. Childbirth, for example, is a common source of chronic pain: The institute found that 18 percent read the complete article here