According to the CDC in 2016, an estimated 1 in 5 Americans is suffering from chronic pain. Nearly 1 in 10 Americans have pain that is severe enough to interfere with their daily lives.  In an effort to curb the opioid epidemic, the government has placed restrictions on the prescribing of pain medications.  Yet patients still have pain that is very real.  What more can be done to ease their discomfort?

A New Approach to Chronic Pain

For many years, the approach in conventional medicine to chronic pain was to treat it with anti-inflammatory medications or opioids.  More recently, antidepressant and anticonvulsant medications have become commonly used.  None of these medications are curative, however, and they come with significant side effect profiles.

Contemporary research in pain neuroscience reveals that pain is not a signal that is transmitted to the brain, but rather the result of a complex relationship between the brain, the body, and the network of hormones and organs throughout.  Many seemingly unrelated factors can affect how your brain and body talk to each other and lead to an increase in pain when there are few to no nerve impulses even being sent to the brain from the painful area at all.  This is where contemporary science and ancient knowledge converge. If we look back to the wisdom of traditional medical systems, it is clear there are many medication alternatives for treating pain that apply to this newer understanding of pain.  In fact, these tools have always been treating pain successfully, they have just fallen out of the mainstream.  Within different schools of herbalism and in the practice of acupuncture, there is great attention paid toward what exactly a person’s pain feels like.  Not all pain is the same. It can be sharp and stabbing, or it can be dull and throbbing. Sometimes it only happens at certain times of day, or is worse with certain types of weather.  All of these nuances provide important clues as to why the pain is there and how it should treated. 

My approach first identifies any underlying conditions that may be causing your pain.  If they are present, we work together to try and put them into remission to the extent possible. Then, I focus on improving your circulation and metabolism, as well as removing any stressors upon your nervous system. The end goal is a rejuvenated body with newly mapped neural pathways.  In some cases, a few non-addictive medications may be helpful.