Pain Science Podcast

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 internationally about the application of mindfulness practice in psychotherapy and maintains a private clinical practice in Lincoln, Massachusetts. Dr. Siegel is co-editor of the critically acclaimed text, Mindfulness and Psychotherapy, author of a comprehensive guide for general audiences called The Mindfulness Solution: Everyday Practices for Everyday Problems, co-editor of Wisdom and Compassion in Psychotherapy, co-author of the professional guide, Sitting Together: Essential Skills for Mindfulness-Based Psychotherapy and co-author of the sub-treatment guide called Back Sense, which integrates Western and Eastern approaches for the treatment of chronic low back pain. Dr. Siegel is also co-director of the annual Harvard Medical School Conference on Meditation and Psychotherapy. We will discuss how mindfulness helps chronic pain, Dr. Siegel's own personal journey of finding mindfulness, as well as overcoming chronic low back pain and how mindfulness fits into clinical practice, whether you are a mental health professional or a physical medicine professional. Dr. Siegel also created a free download to accompany this called How Mindfulness Works, Avoiding Avoidance. This download goes over how mindfulness helps with anxiety, helps with chronic pain, helps with depression as well as how mindfulness is the antidote to avoidance. To access this free gift, all you have to do is text the word, 144Download, to the number 44-222 on your smartphone. If you're on your computer, you can open up a browser and type in the URL, www.IntegrativePainScienceInstitute.com/144download. I know you're going to enjoy this as much as I did. We go through a ton of information on mindfulness and how mindfulness works to alleviate chronic pain and the suffering that's associated with it. Dr. Siegel's a master at mindfulness and psychotherapy. I learned so much from him, so I recommend that you follow his work and take notes. Let's begin and let's meet Dr. Siegel. Sign up for the latest episode at www.integrativepainscienceinstitute.com/podcasts/. Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share! Here's How » Join the Healing Pain Podcast Community today: integrativepainscienceinstitute.com Healing Pain Podcast Facebook Healing Pain Podcast Twitter Healing Pain Podcast YouTube Healing Pain Podcast LinkedIn Healing Pain Podcast Instagram

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-pharmacologic treatment options for patients with pain. We are definitely making some progress. Along with these guidelines, there's a huge opportunity for physical therapists to help people who are struggling with chronic pain. One way we can do this is to intervene quickly and early in the care of people with pain. I spoke about this a bit in Episode 133 with Dr. Marcia Spoto, who discussed physical therapists as primary spine care providers. In this episode, we'll explore how the research is supporting early physical therapy for people with pain. A study conducted by our guest, Dr. Eric Sun, found that patients who receive early physical therapy within the first 90 days use less opioids for pain. Eric is an Assistant Professor of Anesthesiology, Pain Medicine, and Health and Research Policy at Stanford University and Medical Center in California. He spends part of his time working as an anesthesiologist and part of his time as an epidemiologist, crunching numbers and big data on important topics. It was published in 2018 in the Journal of the American Medical Association. I know you're going to enjoy this show. Make sure to hop on over to the IntegrativePainScienceInstitute.com/podcasts. You'll see a box where you can subscribe to the Healing Pain Podcast so I can send you a new podcast to your inbox. Let's begin with Dr. Eric Sun and learn about how early physical therapy can lead to less opioid use. Sign up for the latest episode at www.integrativepainscienceinstitute.com/podcasts/. Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share! Here's How » Join the Healing Pain Podcast Community today: integrativepainscienceinstitute.com Healing Pain Podcast Facebook Healing Pain Podcast Twitter Healing Pain Podcast YouTube Healing Pain Podcast LinkedIn Healing Pain Podcast Instagram

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 individualized holistic and evidence-based approach to healthcare as well as pain care. A true integrative practitioner can help you improve not only your physical health but also your mental as well as your spiritual well-being. True integrative healthcare consists of a comprehensive physical examination, a review of your medical records and laboratory tests, a thorough discussion about education regarding lifestyle management behavioral modification, and if needed a referral or recommendation to services such acupuncture, massage therapy, nutrition, counseling, yoga, mindfulness. There are many types of practitioners and interventions that fall under the umbrella of integrative healthcare. Here to speak to us about the evolution and some of the politics behind integrative healthcare is John Weeks. John has worked in this field for more than 35 years as a writer, speaker, organizer and as a consultant. Since the mid-1990s, John has consulted on the integration with various parties including the NIH, the Washington State Office of the Insurance Commissioner, multiple insurance companies, hospitals and of course, professional associations and academic organization. Four institutions have granted him an honorary doctorate for his groundbreaking work and forward-thinking work in the field of integrative medicine. He's the Editor-in-Chief of The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine which covers the paradigm, practice and policy advances that are happening in integrative healthcare. John has been in this field for a long time. He is a wealth of information. I really enjoyed talking to him about the evolution of integrative healthcare and especially some of the politics with regard to how we insert an integrative health model within the existing biomedical model. I know you're going to enjoy this episode. Make sure you share it with your friends and family. Sit back, relax, and let's meet John Weeks. Sign up for the latest episode at www.integrativepainscienceinstitute.com/podcasts/. Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share! Here's How » Join the Healing Pain Podcast Community today: integrativepainscienceinstitute.com Healing Pain Podcast Facebook Healing Pain Podcast Twitter Healing Pain Podcast YouTube Healing Pain Podcast LinkedIn Healing Pain Podcast Instagram

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 absolutely no pain management? They don't receive any pain management. This includes pain management during routine vaccinations, while undergoing medical procedures, after surgery and in the context of chronic pain and chronic disease. Out of all the countries on our globe, Canada is a leader in pain research and children's pain. Even though we have tons of books and information and research articles, one of the great challenges is that this information is not being placed into practice where practitioners can use it to help people with pain. Joining us to discuss children's pain and how to improve children's pain management is Dr. Christine. Chambers. Christine is a clinical psychologist whose research is aimed at improving the assessment and the management of children's pain. She has published over 150 articles in peer-reviewed scientific journals and was identified as one of the top ten most productive women in clinical psychology in all of Canada. Her Canadian Institute of Health initiative called It Doesn't Have to Hurt, has generated over 150 million views worldwide, has trended on social media, has won multiple international awards and was featured in the New York Times. Dr. Chambers holds leadership roles in the International Association for the Study of Pain, as well as the North American Pain School. We'll talk about Dr. Chambers' project called Solutions for Kids In Pain or what is simply known as the SKIP Project, whose mission is to improve children's pain management by mobilizing evidence-based solutions through knowledge, coordination and collaboration. I enjoyed this interview with Dr. Chambers. I know you will too. We cover a host of topics with regard to child pain. We also touch base on important topics with regards to parenting a child with chronic pain. There are lots of great take homes for everyone, whether you're someone with pain or whether you're a clinician who treats parents or children with pain. I want to thank Christine for being here. She's doing amazing work. Make sure you check out her websites and check out the great infographic that is included. Sign up for the latest episode at www.integrativepainscienceinstitute.com/podcasts/. Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share! Here's How » Join the Healing Pain Podcast Community today: integrativepainscienceinstitute.com Healing Pain Podcast Facebook Healing Pain Podcast Twitter Healing Pain Podcast YouTube Healing Pain Podcast LinkedIn Healing Pain Podcast Instagram

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 these 140 episodes, the one thing we have not discussed is how to treat acute pain using nutrition and physical therapy. We're going to cover that very topic when we talk with my friend, Dr. Carolyn Dolan. Carolyn is a physical therapist who combines traditional physical therapy with nutrition to treat both acute and chronic pain in her physical therapy practice. In 2012, Carolyn was experiencing chronic fatigue, chronic pain, chronic sinus infections and was overweight. Her journey to better health letter led her to the world of nutrition and to designing a simple lifestyle program with the profound potential to transform people's lives. She now shares that in her physical therapy practice. On this episode, you'll learn how to treat acute pain and inflammation with nutrition and natural alternatives to pain medication using nutrition and supplements. You'll learn how Carolyn created an innovative and novel supplement for pain that was missing from the marketplace and her key pillars to her lifestyle program for pain and better health. You can learn all about Carolyn by visiting her website, VitaKinetics.com. If you're a physical therapist and you're interested in the how-to of functional nutrition for chronic pain, if you're curious about which diet is best for pain, whether you're a ketogenic fan or paleo fan or Mediterranean diet fan. If you just want to know how nutrition can be used to modulate the inflammatory response from the gut-brain connection or the gut joint connection, make sure you hop on over to the Integrative Pain Science Institute and check out the functional nutrition for chronic pain certification. This is a fully approved 36-credit CEU course that I designed specifically for physical therapists and other pain professionals so you can learn the evidence behind nutrition for chronic pain as well as the nuts and bolts of how to use functional nutrition in your practice. The course is open. All you have to do is go to the institute website and click on the Courses tab and check it out. Let's begin with Dr. Carolyn Dolan. Sign up for the latest episode at www.integrativepainscienceinstitute.com/podcasts/. Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share! Here's How » Join the Healing Pain Podcast Community today: integrativepainscienceinstitute.com Healing Pain Podcast Facebook Healing Pain Podcast Twitter Healing Pain Podcast YouTube Healing Pain Podcast LinkedIn Healing Pain Podcast Instagram

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 received her PhD in Clinical Psychology from Boston University and completed her postdoctoral fellowship at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine. She's an award-winning teacher as well as an ACT trainer who has co-authored articles on ACT, CBT, anxiety, trauma and pain. She's also co-authored two books, the first being The Big Book of ACT Metaphors as well as her second book which is called Be Mighty: A Woman's Guide to Liberation from Anxiety, Worry, and Stress Using Mindfulness and Acceptance, which will be published in January of 2020. The reason why I want to have Jill come onto the show and especially talk about metaphor is that ACT is one technique that you can use to unhook from unpleasant thoughts. Oftentimes, it's this unhooking from the unpleasant thoughts or other unpleasant sensation in your body that leads to the alleviation of the human suffering that many of us experience with chronic pain. You will learn about the foundational principles of ACT, why patients may prefer ACT over traditional CBT, how language causes suffering, the importance of Experiential Practice in ACT using metaphor, and the importance of values as part of the recovery process. If you're new to how ACT uses metaphors, I've included three metaphors that you can use with your clients or with yourself to help ease and live your life beyond pain. To download them, all you have to do is text the word 139DOWNLOAD to the number 44222 or if you're on your computer, all you have to do is type in the URL www.IntegrativePainScienceInstitute.com/139download. Take a moment to download those three ACT metaphors. They're going to help you as you read this blog post. Let's begin with Dr. Jill Stoddard. Sign up for the latest episode at www.integrativepainscienceinstitute.com/podcasts/. Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share! Here's How » Join the Healing Pain Podcast Community today: integrativepainscienceinstitute.com Healing Pain Podcast Facebook Healing Pain Podcast Twitter Healing Pain Podcast YouTube Healing Pain Podcast LinkedIn Healing Pain Podcast Instagram

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 interviewed clinical psychologist, Lore Dickey, about transgender healthcare. Now, you'll meet Dr. Chris Condran who is a Doctor of Physical Therapy to discuss LGBT inclusion in the physical therapy curricula and profession. Chris is an Orthopedic Physical Therapist and an instructor in the Transitional Doctorate of Physical Therapy Program at Arcadia University where he teaches health and wellness promotion as well as case analysis. His educational background includes a Master's in Exercise Physiology and MBA in business administration, a DPT in physical therapy and he's enrolled in the EdD program at the University of North Carolina. He has personally advocated for curriculum change within physical therapy education and has created training material on the subject of LGBT inclusion in physical therapy practice. His research advocacy interests are centered on providing inclusive clinical environments, transgender health issues, eliminating health disparities in the LGBT population and establishing a curriculum for LGBT cultural competency in the classroom and beyond. He is also a board member of PT Proud, which is the LGBT catalysts committee under the Health and Policy Administration section of the American Physical Therapy Association. On this episode, he will share some of his unique life experiences related to diversity, equity and inclusion of LGBT individuals in the physical therapy profession. If you're a practitioner or potentially an educator and you're interested in the topic of LGBT inclusion in physical therapy or any other medical practice, Chris and his colleagues had created an LGBTQ Competency Handbook for Physical Therapists. This is a free manual and you can download it which includes information about LGBT inclusion in both the clinic and the classroom. To download this handbook, all you have to do is text 138Download to the number 44-222. If you're on your computer, you can open a new browser and you can type in the URL, www.IntegrativePainScienceInstitute.com/138download. Chris and the other members of PT Proud, would love if you can get your hands on that and put it to good use in both the clinic as well as in education. I want to personally thank Chris as well as my other colleagues at PT Proud for being a catalyst and making some bold moves and taking the step forward with this important topic. Without further ado, let's begin with the amazing Chris Condran. Sign up for the latest episode at www.integrativepainscienceinstitute.com/podcasts/. Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share! Here's How » Join the Healing Pain Podcast Community today: integrativepainscienceinstitute.com Healing Pain Podcast Facebook Healing Pain Podcast Twitter Healing Pain Podcast YouTube Healing Pain Podcast LinkedIn Healing Pain Podcast Instagram

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 know that I've spoken about popular topics such as pain education, pain psychology, exercise, physical therapy and nutrition. One topic that interests me and quite frankly is the topic that doesn't receive enough attention in the media or receive grant money for research is the topic of health disparities. A health disparity is a difference in the health status of different groups of people. For example, patients such as racial minorities and women have been identified as not receiving adequate pain care. Another group that faces significant barriers, adequate healthcare are transgender people. Transgender is an umbrella term for a diverse group of people whose gender identity or expression differs from societal expectations of how they should look, act or identify based on the sex they were assigned at birth. There are approximately 1.5 million transgender people living in the United States of America. Although this data is incomplete because many transgender people feel uncomfortable or feel that it's not safe to share their personal information. From a healthcare perspective, transgender people experience higher rates of suffering and disabling conditions including a wide range of mental health problems and chronic pain conditions including chronic pelvic pain. Unfortunately, when transgender people seek treatment, they often encounter providers who do not understand their unique needs, face challenges with health insurance and are often neglected or perhaps even mistreated within the healthcare system. Here to speak with us about improving transgender healthcare is Dr. lore m. dickey. lore was raised as a female but never truly felt at home with the female identity. Several years after his transition, he returned to school to become a licensed clinical psychologist. He learned early in life that the best way to make a change is to be part of the solution. lore is the author of two books, 22 journal articles and seventeen book chapters. He's an advocate for the trans community and a prolific and engaging speaker. lore is also providing you with two free resources that you can download on the show. The first is the American Psychological Association Task Force on Guidelines for Psychology Practice with Transgender and Gender Nonconforming People. lore developed these guidelines along with the APA. The second is a complete list of all the books and book chapters which lore has contributed to. lore did receive the 2014 Presidential Citation by the American Psychological Association for his dedication to the LGBT community. He's got great resources. Take a moment now to download them. To download them, all you have to do is text the word, 137DOWNLOAD, to the number 44-222. You can do that right on your smartphone or if you're on a computer, you can open up a new browser and type in the URL www.IntegrativePainScienceInstitute.com/137download. lore is a leader in transgender healthcare. I want to thank him for joining us on this show and all the work that he's doing for the transgender community. Let's begin and let's meet Dr. lore dickey. Sign up for the latest episode at www.integrativepainscienceinstitute.com/podcasts/. Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share! Here's How » Join the Healing Pain Podcast Community today: integrativepainscienceinstitute.com Healing Pain Podcast Facebook Healing Pain Podcast Twitter Healing Pain Podcast YouTube Healing Pain Podcast LinkedIn Healing Pain Podcast Instagram

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 good reason for this. We have a growing body of evidence that states that pain education can improve things like pain, pain catastrophizing, fear avoidance, as well as pain interference, so much so that the experts now agree that every practitioner should be greasing their wheels with pain biology education as an intervention to help people cope. Even though pain education has seeped its way into the foundation of your practice, the one thing we still don't know is which patients with chronic pain are more likely to improve their knowledge following pain biology education. Joining us to discuss pain science education and how to assess the reconceptualization of pain is Joshua W. Pate. He is an Australian physiotherapist and a PhD candidate with a passion for teaching people about pain so they can develop active sales management strategies. His PhD includes investigating a child's concept of pain as well as the validation of the concept of pain inventory. Joshua has also created two TED Ed videos that can be used as part of a targeted pain science education program. Both of those are cool and super high tech. I recommend you check out the one on phantom limb. On this show, Joshua will explain why someone's concepts of pain matters, which patients are more likely to improve their knowledge after a two-hour pain education session, why the neurophysiology of pain questionnaire may not be appropriate to use with children and finally, what language kids use to describe their concept of pain. If you want to study along with us, Josh has shared two of his key papers that you can download for free. The first is called A Child's Concept of Pain and the second is Pain Neuroscience Education on YouTube: A Systematic Review. For free access to both of these papers, all you have to do is pick up your cell phone and text the word, 136Download, to the number 44-222. I'll send it right to your inbox. If you're on your computer, you can open up a new window and type in the URL, www.IntegrativePainScienceInstitute.com/136Download. Take a moment to download those two free resources that Josh has provided. He's doing some exciting and inventive work in the area of pain science education as well as pediatric pain management, and I can't wait to introduce his work to you. Let's begin and chat with Joshua. Sign up for the latest episode at www.integrativepainscienceinstitute.com/podcasts/. Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share! Here's How » Join the Healing Pain Podcast Community today: integrativepainscienceinstitute.com Healing Pain Podcast Facebook Healing Pain Podcast Twitter Healing Pain Podcast YouTube Healing Pain Podcast LinkedIn Healing Pain Podcast Instagram

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? Social context can be a powerful mediator and influence how pain is experienced. The social context of pain is such an important topic that there's even a movement to change the definition of pain from being an unpleasant sensory and an emotional experience to one that emphasizes pain as an experience associated with sensory, emotional, cognitive and social components. Joining us to talk about the pain in a social context is Dr. Kai Karos. Kai earned a Bachelor's and a Master's in Psychology at Maastricht University in the Netherlands. He then went on to complete a PhD where he investigated the effects of threatening social environments on the experience and communication of pain. Kai is working as a postdoctoral researcher investigating in the social learning of pain-related fear and avoidance. You will learn all about pain as a threat to the social self, including how pain interferes with the basic human needs such as the need for autonomy, the need to belong and the need for justice and fairness. Kai is a highly sought-after speaker regarding the social context of pain and one of a small handful of researchers globally who is investigating this important topic. This is a topic that does not receive enough media attention, so I'm excited to share this with you. Sign up for the latest episode at www.integrativepainscienceinstitute.com/podcasts/. Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share! Here's How » Join the Healing Pain Podcast Community today: integrativepainscienceinstitute.com Healing Pain Podcast Facebook Healing Pain Podcast Twitter Healing Pain Podcast YouTube Healing Pain Podcast LinkedIn Healing Pain Podcast Instagram