Pain Science Podcast

We're discussing the power of massage and manual therapy, how it can be used to manage pain and discomfort in infants and children. Our expert guest is Christine Robenalt . Christine graduated from Marquette University in 2001 with a Master's degree in Physical Therapy. Although she's worked in many different practice settings, Pediatrics is both her specialty as well as her passion. In addition t...

We're talking about the important topic of compassion and pain care. Our expert guest is my friend and colleague,  Shelly Prosko . Shelly is a Canadian physiotherapist, yoga therapist, author, speaker and educator. She is someone who is empowering individuals to create and sustain meaningful change in their life by teaching and advocating for the integration of yoga into modern healthcare. You may...

We have a brand-new topic and expert guest that I'm excited to share with you. We're discussing the importance of story and narrative medicine and pain care with physiotherapist, Lissanthea Taylor. I love Lissanthea's work and skillset because she is a triple threat of a physiotherapist who is up to date on the latest pain science and online author who creates meaningful content for people with pa...

In this episode, we are discussing how to move effective pain education forward in developing countries. Our expert guest this week is Professor Felipe Reis. He is a Brazilian physiotherapist and professor of physical therapy at the Federal Institute of Rio de Janeiro. His research focuses on pain education, emotion and cognitive neuroscience. He is a visiting researcher at McGill University, an A...

We are discussing the importance of values in pain care and how values are approached through the lens of acceptance and commitment therapy. In acceptance and commitment therapy, the term values refers to activities that give your life meaning. Values can be looked upon as the people, the causes and the activities that are deeply important to you. When you connect to your values, you're able to mo...

We're going to take a deep dive into how the vagus nerve can help reduce pain and control inflammation. Joining us is  Dr. Navaz Habib . He is a functional medicine practitioner, author and speaker who empowers his clients to dig a little bit deeper and find the answers to what's holding back their health. His office,  Health Upgraded , works with entrepreneurs, executives and professional athlete...

We're talking about Integrative Health Programs for mental wellbeing. Joining us is Dr. David Tomasi. He's a psychotherapist, researcher and philosopher, as well the author of the bestselling book called  Medical Philosophy  and the co-author of a paper called  Positive Patient Response to a Structured Exercise Program Delivered in Inpatient Psychiatry , which was published in 2019 in the Journal...

We're going to be talking about the co-occurrence of chronic pain in PTSD. In the general population, chronic pain and PTSD co-occur in about 10% of the cases. When we look at our population of veterans, 50% to 80% of those are PTSD also have chronic pain. This is an important topic with regard to the care of our veterans as well as for the practitioners who treat them. Joining us to discuss ACT c...

We're taking a deep dive into Acceptance and Commitment Therapy with its Founder, Dr. Hayes. He is a Nevada Foundation professor at the Department of Psychology at the University of Nevada and author of 44 books and nearly 600 scientific articles. He developed the Relational Frame Theory, an account of human higher cognition and has guided its extension into Acceptance and Commitment Therapy which...

We're talking about an important topic. It's the effect of bullying on chronic pain in children and adolescents. When I did an interview with Dr. Christine Chambers , a psychologist who treats children and adolescents with chronic pain, I said that I was going to be dedicating more episodes to this important topic because if we can prevent pain in children, it won't carry over to having pain in ad...

On this episode, we're talking about the relation of self-compassion to functioning among adults with chronic pain. Our expert guest is  Karlyn Edwards . She is a clinical psychology graduate student at the University of New Mexico working with Dr. Kevin Vowles and Katie Witkiewitz. She studies important psychological factors that impact chronic pain as well as psychological interventions that can...

We are talking about the controversial topic of whether Manual Therapy for trigger point should be used for the alleviation or the treatment of chronic pain. How is one physiotherapist doing some interesting work to help people taper off of opioid medications using psychologically-informed physical therapy principles? My guest is  Diarmuid Denneny . He is a professional lead physiotherapist at the...

We are talking about how to use mindfulness to treat or alleviate chronic pain. Our expert guest is Dr. Ronald Siegel. He's an Assistant Professor of Psychology at Harvard Medical School where he has taught for over 35 years. He's a longtime student of mindfulness meditation and serves on the board of directors and faculty of The Institute for Meditation and Psychotherapy. He teaches international...

We've got an episode that is full of some good news that I can't wait to share with you. When I first started this podcast over a few years ago, the CDC had released information about the opioid crisis as well as the overprescribing of opioids and its contribution to addiction, abuse and fatalities. Since then, the CDC guidelines have been pushing toward early non-drug or what is known as non-phar...

I'm super honored and grateful that you decided to join me and read this episode where we are talking about the evolution of integrative healthcare and its influence on pain care. As I was putting together the pieces of the podcast, I realized that the word integrative and integrative health is one that's thrown around with not on a very solid definition. Integrative healthcare is simply an indivi...

We're discussing the important topic of how to improve children's pain management. If you're not aware of the lack of pain management that children or adolescents experience, it's because it doesn't receive a lot of attention. I want to share a vital statistic that our guest speaker shared with me. Did you know that more than two-thirds of children in hospitals experienced painful procedures with...

As you have followed along with each episode of this show, you probably got the feeling that I'm a little bit passionate about how nutrition can be used to treat chronic pain and other chronic diseases. I have had physicians on the show discussing nutrition, health coaches, chiropractors, nurses and physical therapists all talking about how nutrition can impact chronic pain. As I reflect back on t...

We have clinical psychologist, Dr. Jill Stoddard. She's going to be talking about the topic of Experiential Practice in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy for Chronic Pain. Jill is the Founder and Director of the Center for Stress and Anxiety Management , an outpatient psychotherapy clinic specializing in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy as well as Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for anxiety. She rec...

I'm super honored that you're spending this time with me. As many of you know, the month of June is Gay Pride or what is known as LGBT Pride Month across the globe. This is a time of celebration as well as one of increased awareness where the LGBT community promotes their equality, builds community and celebrate sexual diversity and gender variance. If you've been following along with the blog, I...

It's a pleasure to be spending this time with you. One of the activities that I do each week is I set aside some time to sit down and brainstorm about all the various topics that are related to chronic pain. The reason why I do that is it helps me find interesting and inspiring people to share with you on this show. If you follow this show for probably for a couple of years I've been doing it, you...

If you're following the latest in pain science or maybe you've attended certain lectures, you know that pain science education is on the tip of everyone's tongue these days. Whether you come from the explain pain camp, that's my personal favorite, or maybe the pain neuroscience education camp, pain biology and intervention, more and more professionals are using to treat chronic pain. There's a goo...

If you follow this show for some time, you know that one of the aims of this show is to help reconceptualize pain from a biomedical perspective and increase the awareness of a biopsychosocial approach to pain care. Chronic pain has long been recognized as an experience that can threaten your need for safety, both physically and psychologically, but what about feeling safe from a social context? So...

I've been so excited to put this all together for you and to share with you. You will meet an exceptional physical therapist who is helping women with chronic pain and anxiety by combining physical therapy with functional nutrition. Lauren Bahr is a licensed physical therapist. She's a health coach and she's a graduate of the Functional Nutrition for Chronic Pain certification program at the  Inte...

We're going to talk about primary spine care providers. If you follow this blog for quite some time, you know that spine problems and spine disorders are among the most common, most costly and most disabling problems that we experienced in Western society with regard to chronic pain. For the purpose of this blog, when we talk about spine-related disorders. We're talking about a group of conditions...

It's great to be with you sharing the latest information on pain science and the care of chronic pain. On this episode, our expert guest is Dr. JP Caneiro . JP holds a PhD in Musculoskeletal Physiotherapy. He's part of an international team of clinicians and researchers that developed a behavioral intervention named Cognitive Functional Therapy. JP holds a research position at Curtin University wh...