Are You in Pain?

Persistent pain, pain that last for more than three months or lasts beyond the resolution of the physical issue that caused it, is a massive problem worldwide. Millions of people have received medication, had surgery, tried many other treatments – electronic stimulation, oils etc. – but the pain still persists.

Some might describe this as “treatment-resistant pain”. Some sufferers go from doctor to doctor seeking a solution and looking for a ‘magic bullet’; many undergo unnecessary and costly surgeries with poor outcomes.

Often the focus is on finding the cause of the pain and trying to fix this, block the nerve or unpinch it.

This model of medicine can work if for example, you have the measles – the symptoms are caused by a germ and killing the germ, gets rid of the symptoms.

The model will also work if you have a thorn in your foot – removing the thorn will remove the pain.

Nociceptive (acute and short-lived) pain works this way – if you break your arm, the pain will persist until the bone heals and the pain reduces as the arm heals. In some instances, the pain does not go away and a persistent pain situation develops. Many pain sufferers’ story begins with such a ‘simple’ injury. If the simple injury is fixed but the pain persists we need to shift our focus to treating the pain NOT the injury.

Often the pain from the original injury increases or shifts around the body and we get symptoms that include:

• Allodynia – pain due to a stimulus that normally does not cause pain
• Hyperalgesia – an increased (excessive) response to a stimulus that is painful
• Hyperpathia – an abnormally painful reaction to a (repeated) stimulus

Sometimes the original injury has an ongoing physical consequence that creates daily pain.

Medicines such as painkillers do not treat pain, they temporarily manage it. There is currently no pharmacological treatment for pain. There is in fact, no treatment for persistent pain.

Our method is a revolutionary advance in the treatment of pain because we see pain differently and treat it differently. We treat the neuroplastic mechanism of the pain, we don’t just manage the symptom.We will disrupt the current treatment model for pain and overturn the current market. Your pain is not “treatment-resistant”; the current treatments are inadequate and inapropriate. If you have been experiencing pain for years and medicine has not fixed it yet, why persist with a not useful strategy (more pills more surgery).

Some current beliefs about pain that are not useful include:

• “My doctor does not know what is wrong with me and when the cause is established, it will be fixable.”
• “There is a better specialist out there and they will find and fix the problem”
• “I have no control over my pain”

This category of thought falls under what we call a ‘health belief’ or ‘your personal pain story’ – it is a combination of what you learned about pain growing up and what you have been taught about your specific pain by different ‘specialists’ along the way. Medicine does not always have the answer and sometimes the more you ask the more confusing it gets.

With lower back pain for example, for many years doctors advised people to rest; except in very rare examples this is very poor advice. There is also recent evidence that the use of painkillers can make pain worse, and that using pain medications when pain gets bad can create addictive patterns.

The first step in mastering your pain is overthrowing your current beliefs about your pain and how your body works. It is quite hard. Only then can we begin to embark on your new journey.

If you are interested in going on such a journey of discovery, register your interest with us. We will be opening our first treatment facility in Sydney as soon as COVID allows