My wife and I were at a gathering last night and the topic of pain management came up since that’s what we are passionate about.  As we were talking about our beliefs about pain and what constitutes effective pain management we described the importance of working with the whole person.
 
Unfortunately, most people undergoing traditional pain management usually get symptom management.  Most often the symptoms (pain signals) are “treated” with medication—90 percent of people undergoing pain management in the United States are prescribed opiates.  The opiates will give some relief from the pain but usually it just masks or covers the problem.  The medication was never meant help the person manage the psychological/emotional, social, or spiritual components of chronic pain.

Chronic pain affects you physically, psychologically, socially and spiritually—body, mind, spirit.

1. Physically, chronic pain raises stress and drains physical energy
2. Psychologically, chronic pain affects your ability to think clearly, logically and rationally, to manage feelings and emotions effectively
3. Socially chronic pain affects your ability to use consistently responsible behaviors, thus affecting others
4. Spiritually, chronic pain can keep you separate from your inner self and/or Higher Power.

Holistic health is a term used by alternative medicine advocates to describe medical care that views physical, mental, and spiritual aspects of life as closely interconnected and balanced.  Martha Cleveland (1999) in her book Chronic Illness and the Twelve Steps: A Practical Approach to Spiritual Resilience, maintains that dealing with the emotional and spiritual components of chronic pain is an extremely effective treatment approach. 

Another approach is Kundalini Yoga a system of meditative techniques and movements within the yogic tradition that focuses on psycho-spiritual growth and the body’s potential for maturation.  Human beings have both a physical self (based on the health of our brains and bodies) and a non-physical self (based on the health of our value systems and spiritual lives).  Most people who have learned to effectively manage their chronic pain find that they need to invest regular time in developing themselves spiritually (in other words, exercising the non-physical aspects of who they are).

My new book Managing Pain Before it Manages You: Using the Addiction-Free Pain Management® System covers the importance of using a multiple-disciplinary team approach that includes the Bioplogical, Psychological, Social, and Spiritual components of pain.  If you want to learn more about this treatment systme please check out our website at www.addiction-free.com and go to our publications page to check out my book.

I conducted a one day workshop in San Jose last week and I’m repeating it for the Annual Conference for the California Association of Marriage and Family Therapists (CAMFT) on May 1, 2008 in Los Angeles, California.  The actual title of the training is Are We Managing Pain but Fueling the Addiction OR Are We Treating the Addiction but Sabotaging the Pain Management.

I was noticing as early as 1988 that many people with chronic pain and coexisting addictive disorders weren’t getting appropriate treatment interventions. If they went into a pain clinic the entire focus was on the physical pain symptoms and opiates were the usual intervention.  If a patient ran into trouble with their medication or actually became addicted and started acting out the usual intervention was to discharge them from the clinic. 

Now if that same person went into an addiction treatment program now the entire focus was on the addictive disorder and the pain was not being adequately addressed.  If the patient started complaining they were often accused of “drug-seeking” and if it continued they were discharged from the program.

That is why in 1996 I finally started presenting clinical skills training in the Addiction-Free Pain Management® System.  As I began I also continued to do research and actually go to pain clinics and addiction treatment programs to observe and sometimes consult with the staff.  What I noticed is a phenomenon I coined the Addiction-Pain Syndrome™ that I explain more fully in my article Understanding the Addiction Pain Syndrome.

Today as I conduct trainings, workshops, and seminars I often hear people say “Addiction-Free Pain Management® has sure been a well kept secret.”  That is why late last year I resigned from my job and now my goal is to get the word out—People with chronic pain and coexisting disorders can be helped and we must start implementing effective treatment to make that happen.

If you are interested in learning more about the services we offer please go to our website at www.addiction-free.com and look around.  Go to our Training Services page to learn more about the different trainings I present.  If you would like to go to the training Are We Managing Pain but Fueling the Addiction OR Are We Treating the Addiction but Sabotaging the Pain Management please go to the Calendar page and check out May 1st at the CAMFT Conference.

As I was exploring research and news today I ran across the Science Daily website and saw their report dated April 7, 2008 covering the University of Iowa study that reveals a biological link between pain and fatigue and may help explain why more women than men are diagnosed with chronic pain and fatigue conditions like fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome.

I want to include an excerpt from that report.  If you want to read the entire report, please go to www.sciencedaily.com and use their search engine with the term “biological link between pain and fatigue discovered.”

Chronic pain and fatigue often occur together—as many as three in four people with chronic, widespread musculoskeletal pain report having fatigue; and as many as 94 percent of people with chronic fatigue syndromes report muscle pain. Women make up the majority of patients with these conditions.

The study, which was published in the Feb. 28 [2008] issue of the American Journal of Physiology—Regulatory, Integrative and Comparative Physiology, indicates that muscle pain and fatigue are not independent conditions and may share a common pathway that is disrupted in chronic muscle pain conditions. The team plans to continue their studies and investigate whether pain enhances fatigue more in females than males.

“Our long-term goal is to come up with better treatments for chronic musculoskeletal pain,” Sluka said. “But the fatigue that is typically associated with chronic, widespread pain is also a big clinical problem — it leaves people unable to work or engage in social activities. If we could find a way to reduce fatigue, we could really improve quality of life for these patients.”

There is starting to be more research that there are gender differences when it comes to chronic pain and people’s perception of pain.  On our website www.addiction-free.com on our Research Archive you can find a report titled Gender and Pain.