Chronic Pain

With more than 3 million people suffering from chronic pain, major advances have been made in healthcare to start addressing people with long term chronic pain problems. Most chronic pain patients have ligament instability in the spine, which causes severe irritation of spinal nerves.  Some patients encounter weak muscles or musculature that is uneven in strength causing significant pain.  Some experience the opposite, where a muscle doesn’t inhibit itself and fires all the time causing constant spasm.  There are advanced neurological reflexes that can be checked and rehabilitated in order to restore normal function of these muscles and reduce pain.  For many chronic pain patients, including ones with failed low back surgery, the problem can be of a spinal cord mediated thalamic pain syndrome.  There are so many more strategies now to be able to reduce the pain level naturally of those with chronic pain syndromes.  These are the types of things that need to be evaluated if someone is dealing with pain, and hasn’t found long term answers outside of numbing it over with medications.

Fibromyalgia is a complicated set of symptoms that is difficult because it is what we would consider a neuro-endocrine disorder- meaning it’s cause can be found in both the central nervous system and the hormone system as well.  If a fibromyalgia patient does not have a full and complete thyroid work up (most doctors will not run all of the necessary labs) or if they are not properly evaluated neurologically they will never see real changes in their system. We break fibromyalgia down into eight different types of categories, allowing us to get to the root of the problem, and come up with more comprehensive treatment ideas to get more substantial results.

PERIPHERAL NEUROPATHY (PN) is a term given to a nerve symptom (which can be burning, numbness or pain) where the lesion occurs away from the spinal column.  This is one condition that is potentially the most frustrating as people are told there are no options. Meanwhile if properly diagnosed and treated accordingly they can do incredibly well.While it is true that 35% of neuropathy patients are from type two diabetes, did you know there are patterns on blood work that can cause a person to still suffer from “diabetic neuropathy” even if their blood sugar is completely normal?  Interestingly we typically find high levels of inflammation in neuropathy patients and, while this is a something that is agreed upon through research and practitioners, most blood panels ordered include zero markers of inflammation at all.  Lots of different causes of neuropathy can be present, but once you find the underlying culprit real relief can be experienced.