Pain Science Podcast

Suffering from chronic pain can be challenging. It makes you feel powerless either because you're unable to heal your body or can't find a way get the pain to stop. As a result, you feel victimized by the pain. Helping you overcome the effects of victimization is transpersonal psychologist, Dr. Meg Haworth, PhD. Learn how the emotions affect the illness and how to release them through the mind. Fa...

So many factors can cause and modify pain, not only physical but mental and emotional as well. Taking the psychological aspects of it, Dr. Mark Bishop tackles how expectations and biases influence the outcome for patients who have chronic pain. Dr. Bishop is a physical therapist with 30 years of experience in managing musculoskeletal disorders. Learn how patient expectations are related to rehabil...

Self-compassion is a tool that you can use to improve your well-being, your self-confidence, and your resilience. It's one that we need to pay a lot more attention to in the world of pain care. What's interesting about self-compassion is that oftentimes it's easy for us to be compassionate towards others, but applying the same kindness to ourselves can be a real challenge. Moral development specia...

Tackling about an interesting topic that does not often receive enough attention in the world of chronic pain management, Roshi Joan Halifax talks about the intersection of compassion and empathy in chronic pain care. She is the founder and head teacher of the Upaya Institute and Zen Center, and a pioneer in the field of end-of-life care. Growing up as a sick kid, her journey began by being surrou...

Pain goes beyond what we physically feel in our bodies. It reaches back into other aspects—from the mental to emotional. Take a deeper dive and explore the neuroscience of nociception and the perception of a painful stimulus with Dr. Tor Wager, director of the Cognitive and Affective Control Laboratory and Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at the University of Colorado, Boulder. He talks ab...

Traveling around Asia and in Tibet for a little bit, meditation expert Sean Fargo became fascinated by the simplicity of the life of Buddhist monks. Sean found a Dallas master who took him under his wing and taught him a lot of mindfulness exercises like mindfulness of walking, mindfulness of standing, and mindfulness of breathing. The combination of simplicity and difficulty and the Dallas master...

Nothing rounds up our understanding better about chronic pain than listening from a patient's perspective. To have undergone through that pain with all the struggles and medications that come with it, a person could give the best account of dealing and overcoming all of it. Carol Kugler Ellis was diagnosed with fibromyalgia. As she shares her story, she imparts great wisdom and insight about chron...

Nutrition is often one of the first interventions that I recommend for pain relief, especially if you have pain from an inflammatory disease such as fibromyalgia, CRPS, rheumatoid arthritis, osteoarthritis, or even headaches. Anti-inflammatory nutrition has a sound evidence base to support it, but it's often ignored when it comes to chronic pain care management. When it comes to implementing it in...

The treatment of chronic pain has been placed under a microscope because of the fallout from the widespread opioid epidemic. As we turn away from using opioids as a treatment for long-term pain, what many of you want to know is what are the alternatives? What are the non-drug alternatives or the non-pharmacological treatment and pain management for conditions so common such as lower back pain? Thr...

Pain is a feeling we're conditioned to heal without fully understanding it first. This leads us to taking the wrong medication that we suffer more from in the end. Pain master David Butler explains not only what pain is but dives deeper into the psychosocial model of pain care. He wrote a book called  Explain Pain  where he went beyond the traditional way of explaining pain by tapping into the emo...

The chronic pain epidemic has opened up many doors as to the way practitioners approach pain and how the multiple systems of our body are intimately connected. It has also made us realize that this metaphor of the mind-body connection is no longer just a metaphor. Nowhere is this more exquisitely expressed than in the connection between our gut and our brain, or what is called the gut-brain axis (...

According to a report by the American Joint Replacement Registry, there were 860,000 hip and knee replacement surgeries in 2017. That means by the end of 2018, we will be over the 1 million mark in the United States. Thousands of these orthopedic surgeries are performed yearly within the Veterans Affairs. Patients are offered surgery as an option for pain relief and improved function. Chronic post...

Each day, millions of yoga enthusiasts flock to yoga studios for their daily or the weekly practice, celebrating an ancient wellness tradition as well as a form of exercise and therapy that's been validated in many studies by modern pain science. If done under the guidance of a skilled instructor or therapist, it can bring several health benefits that help people cope with conditions including anx...

If you're someone who lives with pain and is trying to figure out the best therapies to utilize, you may be interested with Dr. Kathleen Sluka's mechanism-based approach to pain management. Dr. Sluka is a neuroscientist and physical therapist who studies in neurobiology of chronic pain at the University of Iowa. She says the mechanism-based approach is also equally important if you're a practition...

Many researchers have devoted their entire career to exploring and learning more about what happens inside the brain when chronic pain develops and persists. Even though there is no one area for pain in the brain, neuroscientists have been able to recognize some key brain structures involved in the various components of the pain process. This is what is known as the neuromatrix theory of pain. Dr....

When we think of pelvic pain, we easily associate that with women disorders which they even call women's health therapy or women's health section. There aren't enough specialized care provided for men who are experiencing pelvic pain, even more so for the LGBT community. Dr. Sandy Hilton is a Doctor of Physical Therapy and one of the world's leading pelvic health experts and the founder of Entropy...

If the red pill were real, would you take it? If you've seen the movie The Matrix, then you know what Robbe Richman is talking about. Robbe is the creator of the Xpill. The Xpill is not a prescription drug or a supplement. All it is is brown rice protein with no active ingredients. On its own, it has no healing properties, and yet the moment people take it, their whole perception and approach to l...

Many people have questions about the role of spirituality in pain management and pain relief. Dr. Amy Wacholtz, a licensed clinical psychologist, pain researcher and assistant professor of Psychology at the University of Colorado, explores the role of spirituality as part of an integrative pain management program. Spirituality can be defined as the experience of transcendence, connectedness, meani...

PTSD can happen to anyone. It's not a sign of weakness. In many ways, it's a normal part of the traumatic healing process. Post-traumatic stress disorder can occur after you've experienced any type of trauma. A trauma is defined by a shocking or a dangerous event that you see or experience. Depending on which study you read, approximately 15% to 35% of patients with PTSD also suffer from chronic p...

For a lot of practitioners, medical and psychiatric patients are difficult to treat, approach, or figure out. Dr. Les Aria is a rehabilitation and pain psychologist with over a decade of experience in working with patients with chronic pain and other types of chronic diseases. He specializes in treating complex medical-psychiatric chronic pain patients, when others suggest nothing can be done. His...

If you have chronic pain, you've been told for years, decades, and even still today, to take it easy, to rest, and to not do any type of activity that may cause pain oftentimes by people who are well-intentioned and are trying to help you feel better. With the latest research and data coming out in the new world of pain science, exercise in its many forms and varieties actually have very specific...

The overall state of cancer care has improved over the past two decades through the widespread use of traditional therapies such as surgery, medications, and chemotherapy. Improved cancer therapy has led to an increased life expectancy and cure rates. The good news is that in most types of cancers, the survival rate has increased dramatically. The not so good news for the more than 10 million surv...

To increase lifespan and longevity, practitioners as well as patients need to identify what they are doing incorrectly with their health practices and lifestyles. Jason Prall believes that the biggest component to the destruction of our health is the error in our ways of using technology, our bodies taking in toxins from food production, and even emotional traumas. He teaches people the mental fra...

Physical Therapy and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy are two of the most important therapies for pain relief. To live an active life beyond pain, Jennifer Battles believes that combining ACT with PT is the best method. Your time and focus shifts from finding a way to reduce the pain to living your life knowing that your battling the pain and winning it. She shares her research about ACT, values,...

Dr. Beth Darnall's most recent paper, Patient Centered Prescription Opioid Tapering in Community Outpatients With Chronic Pain, raised some concern on opioid addiction and the reduction of opioid prescribing. Dr. Darnall highly believes opioids have a place as part of an integrative pain care program for certain types of chronic pain syndromes. If you're somebody who has chronic pain, conservative...