Living with chronic pain is very difficult. If a person also has a coexisting addiction or other psychological disorders it becomes even harder. Given the biopsychosocial nature of chronic pain it is imperative to utilize a multidisciplinary treatment plan.  The Addiction-Free Pain Management® (APM) System requires looking at the whole person, which means treatment plans for the biological, psychological, social, and spiritual domains.

The APM™ System consists of three major components: (1) A medication management plan—in consultation with an addiction medicine specialist; (2) A cognitive-behavioral treatment plan addressing pain versus suffering, treating family system issues and changing self-defeating behaviors, using eight Core Clinical Exercises from the Addiction-Free Pain Management® Workbook; and (3) A nonpharmacological pain management plan—developing safer medication-free ways to manage pain. Most pain patients need a strategic combination of all of the above.

One of the nonpharmacological interventions some pain programs have successfully implemented is Tai Chi. Tai chi, which originated in China as a martial art, is a mind-body practice in complementary and alternative medicine (CAM). Tai chi is sometimes referred to as “moving meditation”—practitioners move their bodies slowly, gently, and with awareness, while breathing deeply.

As I was researching this topic I found several proponents of Tai Chi that I believe important to share. MedicineNet.com had an article titled Moving Meditation: Tai Chi for Arthritis Relief, that I’ll post excerpts here and if you want to read the entire article please Click Here.

While many of today’s tai chi movements have roots in martial arts, the goal is indeed therapeutic. Progress is measured in terms of coordination, strength, balance, flexibility, breathing, digestion, emotional balance, and a general sense of well-being.

Tai chi and other types of mindfulness-based practices “are intended to maintain muscle tone, strength, and flexibility, and perhaps even spiritual aspects like mindfulness - focusing in the moment, focusing away from the pain,” says Raymond Gaeta, MD, director of pain management services at Stanford Hospital & Clinics.

Parag Sheth, MD, assistant professor of rehabilitation medicine at Mt. Sinai Medical Center in New York, saw the popularity of tai chi on a visit to China 15 years ago. “We saw it every morning - thousands of people in the park doing tai chi, all of them elderly,” he tells WebMD.

“There’s logic in how tai chi works,” Sheth says. “Tai chi emphasizes rotary movements — turning the body from side to side, working muscles that they don’t use when walking, building muscle groups they are not used to using. If they have some strength in those support muscles - the rotators in the hip — that can help prevent a fall.”

“I’m an absolute huge fan of tai chi,” says Jason Theodoskais, MD, MS, MPH, FACPM, author of The Arthritis Cure and a preventive and sports medicine specialist at the University of Arizona Medical Center.

Any type of motion helps lubricate the joints by moving joint fluid, which is helpful in relieving pain, he says. “Tai chi is not a cure-all, but it’s one piece of the puzzle. What’s good about tai chi is that it’s a gentle motion, so even people who are severely affected with arthritis can do it. Also, tai chi helps strengthen the joints in a functional manner? You strengthen muscles in the way your body normally uses the joints.”

To better understand the importance of working with the whole person please check out my article, The Need for Multidisciplinary Chronic Pain Management, that you can download for free on our Ariticles page.

You can learn more about the Addiction-Free Pain Management® System at our website www.addiction-free.com. If you or a loved one is undergoing chronic pain management, especially if you’re in recovery or believe you may have a medication or other mental health problem and you want to learn more effective chronic pain management tools, please go to our Publications page and check out my book the Addiction-Free Pain Management® Recovery Guide: Managing Pain and Medication in Recovery. To purchase this book please Click Here.

To read the latest issue of Chronic Pain Solutions Newsletter please Click here. If you want to sign up for the newsletter, please Click here and input your name and email address. You will then recieve an autoresponse email that you need to reply to in order to finalize enrollment.

To listen to a radio interview I did conducted by Mary Woods for her program One Hour at a Time please Click Here to go to this interview.

I learned a long time ago that what we expect is usually what we get. Now this can be both beneficial and harmful. When it comes to feeling pain and obtaining effective pain management it is crucial to understand the role of anticipatory pain. It has both biological and psychological components.

On the biological side, the cascade of effects from a pain sensation occurs on many levels and involves a variety of different areas within the nervous system. As a result, a wide variety of nervous system chemicals are produced and dumped into the blood while other brain chemicals are rapidly absorbed or depleted. Pain doesn’t just hurt. It changes the most basic neurophysiological processes.

On the psychological side, anticipation of an expected pain level can influence the degree to which you experience your pain. In some cases, when your anticipatory level of pain expectation is lowered, your brain responds by influencing special neurons. This renders your brain less responsive to an incoming pain signal and your sensation of pain decreases. This is the rationale for utilizing biofeedback and meditation as pain control methods. In any event, both ascending (pain signals coming from the point of injury to the brain) and descending nerve pathways (signals from the brain to the point of injury) will influence or modify the effects on your body.

Unfortunately this phenomenon can also worsen your perception of pain. When you live with chronic pain you hurt. Doing certain things can make you hurt worse. So you come to believe that these things will always cause you to hurt. In other words, you associate those things with pain. You believe that every time you do those things, you will have pain. Because you believe that you are going to hurt, you activate the physiological pain system just by thinking about doing something that you believe will cause you to hurt. This is called anticipatory pain. You expect that something will make you hurt. That in turn activates the physiological pain system. This makes you start hurting even before you begin doing whatever it is that you believe will cause you to hurt. All you have to do is to start thinking about doing that thing.

To learn how to address anticipatory pain in a positive way please check out my article Coping with Anticipatory Pain that you can download for free on our Ariticles page.

To learn about my upcoming trainings you can check out our Calendar page.

I just read an interesting article on RecoveryView.com by Andrew Kessler titled “Prescription Drug Policy in America” that I was impressed by. If you want to read this article please Click Here.

This article got me to thinking of how when the legislature enters into the prescription drug trap issue they can both help and harm some people who need to be taking appropriate prescription chronic pain management medication.  I know there is a serious problem and want to highlight four areas covered in a research report published in 2006 by Pain Physician Journal, (Volume 9: pp 215-226).

1.  In 2004, 11 million used opiates non-medically

2.  Pain management patients with opiate abuse
— 9 percent in this study to 41percent in other research

3.  Pain management patients’ with illicit drug use
— 16 percent in this study to 34 percent in other research

4.  90 percent of pain management patients use opiates in the United States

On the other hand I have seen chronic pain management patients who were unable to get the pain medication they needed because either prescribers or health insurance adjusters thought they were on too much medication.  While in some cases that is definitely true in others the patient really needs that level of pain relief for a better quality of life.

To better understand my take on both sides of this problem please check out two of my articles: War on Drugs — War on Pain Management and Avoiding the Prescription Drug Trap that you can download for free on our Ariticles page.

You can learn more about the Addiction-Free Pain Management® System at our website www.addiction-free.com. If you or a loved one is undergoing chronic pain management, especially if you’re in recovery or believe you may have a medication or other mental health problem and you want to learn more effective chronic pain management tools, please go to our Publications page and check out my book the Addiction-Free Pain Management® Recovery Guide: Managing Pain and Medication in Recovery. To purchase this book please Click Here.

To read the latest issue of Chronic Pain Solutions Newsletter please Click here. If you want to sign up for the newsletter, please Click here and input your name and email address. You will then recieve an autoresponse email that you need to reply to in order to finalize enrollment.

To listen to a radio interview I did conducted by Mary Woods for her program One Hour at a Time please Click Here to go to this interview.