Please Make My Pain Go Away

As a practicing physician, I am frequently asked by my patients, “How can I get rid of my pain?” Many people have seen multiple doctors, but no one seems to be able to provide relief. I’m talking about pain that’s been around for weeks, months and sometimes even years. It causes suffering, frustration and often stops folks from fully enjoying life. So in this episode, I’m addressing the common cry for help for so many of my patients and that is, please make my pain go away.

Now, pain is very complex and varies from person to person. It can be caused by injuries, surgeries or nerve damage. But sometimes, you have no idea where the pain is coming from or even why it’s happening. So, if you’re like so many of my patients who have tried everything, this show is for you, because I am discussing exciting new techniques and methods to treat your pain. I’ve gathered top-notch experts who are not only excited to share their solutions, but many of them have also experienced chronic, debilitating pain.

DEBORA WAYNE – PAIN, EMOTIONS, AND ENERGY

Debora is the founder and director of the Biofield Healing Institute, but before she became an internationally known energy healer and pain relief specialist, she faced her own health crisis. She experienced physical, mental and emotional pain.

Debora had mysterious pains and when she would seek help from practitioners, nothing would show up on medical tests.  Or they would find something and then the remedies didn’t work, but her hair was falling out, she had ulcers, and couldn’t sleep. She developed depression and anxiety. And then one day, she found herself unable to get up, get dressed and get to work. So she found professional help and began exploring the mind, her beliefs, and energy. She had never approached her pain from that perspective before. And to her surprise, things started to get much better.

Debora explains that most of the foundation of what we believe to be true in the world and about our health starts before the age of eight or nine.  This is before the brain has the ability to discern what is true from what is false. She tells us that emotions are a key to relieving pain. She also shares the most exciting 21st-century tool she knows about. It’s the biofield. It’s a real field classified in physics and what they’ve discovered is that around every living thing, including our body, is a field of energy and information.  And it’s informing the body. The key to health and especially pain relief is it starts in the field first, before it shows up in the body. Debora and I talk about this more deeply in this episode, and she also demonstrates how she works in the biofield.  You’ll hear her patient’s feedback too.

EMILY LARK – YOGA, STRETCHING AND MOBILITY

My second guest, Emily Lark is a yoga teacher.  And she’s very familiar with chronic pain. She survived a severe car accident that dislocated both of her knees. At one point, she spent a whole year lying down with ice packs on her back. Told by doctors she needed surgery, she decided on a different approach and fix herself instead. She’s now been pain-free for an entire decade.

Emily researched everything she could about the human body and discovered that our bodies are really meant to be self-healing. We just need to know the right ways to move in order to help facilitate that. As a yoga teacher, she believes that maintaining mobility, taking care of muscles, and stretching is crucial for health.  Emily says, “It’s wonderful for releasing tense, tight muscles and maintaining the mobility in our spine which is very important.”  I spoke more about this with Emily, including what else you can do if you need long-term back pain relief as she did. She even shows us a  great stretch that will help back pain and stop sciatica without injections or surgeries.  You won’t want to miss it!

DR. TONY RUMP – QUANTUM NEUROLOGY

My third guest, Dr. Tony Rump is a quantum neurologist and certified chiropractor practitioner.  He is passionate about helping people understand that our bodies are capable of healing themselves when the nervous system is connected. Now the nervous system is a complex network of nerve cells and fibers that send signals throughout our bodies. Dr. Tony Rump compares the nervous system to circuitry in our house.  And when you blow a fuse, you have a problem.

Now Quantum Neurology™ is a system that uses muscle testing as a way of assessing various nervous system functions.  It uses your own nervous system to guide rehabilitation.  Dr. Rump says when using Quantum Neurology™, when a weakness is found in the nerves via muscle testing, an instrument called the ArthroStim is used. It beats at 12 to 14 beats a second.  He says when you put the force into specific points on your body, the body creates neurological recognition and it heals from within.  Dr. Rump shares more about this technology and how he used Quantum Neurology™ to heal his daughter’s torn knee – you won’t believe how fast it works!

PHAEDRA ANTIOCO – CAR ACCIDENT AND MYOFASCIAL RELEASE

My next guest, Phaedra Antioco was a pediatric therapist on her way home from work when she had a horrific rollover car accident. A passing truck driver stopped and cut loose the seatbelt that was strangling her. After two weeks in a coma, she woke up in the hospital in a full body brace on a ventilator with multiple injuries, including a serious brain injury. At that point, she was the therapist who suddenly became the patient.

Due to her brain injury, Phaedra couldn’t think straight, she had numbness and pain. She had to wear a full brace too. It was painful and hard physically, emotionally, and mentally. But despite all this, she says, “In some ways, it was a gift that it happened.”  During her neuro rehab, a technique called Myofascial Release really helped her.  So much that she learned it as well.  She explains Myofascial Release as “sustained steady pressure on the body – it helps to organize the nervous system to go to the area and then the muscles start to unravel.”  Also, dialogue is used to guide the person to “feel into their body part”. And this all helps to eliminate pain and restore motion. In addition to being passionate about Myofascial release, she also developed the Breaking Free of Pain program that is so effective, it’s helped thousands of people. Phaedra shares more about her personal journey and pain solutions in this episode.

DR. HOWARD SCHUBINER – PAIN AND EMOTIONS

My next guest is Dr. Howard Schubiner, the director of the Mind, Body, Medicine program at Providence Park Hospital.

You might be surprised when you hear Dr. Schubiner say that most doctors don’t actually understand pain. He tells us that all pain is actually generated by the brain, by what is called the danger alarm mechanism.  Obviously, an injury can trigger that. But what’s very interesting is that the brain can generate pain in the absence of any tissue damage.

For instance, think about the millions of people with migraines and tension headaches. Neurologists all agree a very small percentage of those people have a structural disease in the brain, in their head. Fibromyalgia, experts agree, is a condition where there’s no damage in the body, but a very real pain. Irritable bowels syndrome (IBS) also includes no damage in the gut by definition. 85% of people with chronic neck and back pain don’t have a serious, clearly identifiable structural cause for their pain.

On the other hand, the vast majority of adults have abnormal MRIs of their necks and backs, yet no pain. An MRI is going to show you the cause of your pain and you have mild changes that everybody else has when you think that that’s the cause of the pain; that knowledge generates more fear. So this danger alarm mechanism in the pain is triggered by fear. The more fear, the more pain. The more pain, the more fear. And that’s a vicious cycle.

Dr. Schubiner makes sure to talk to his patients about their history. When the pain is on one side of the back and then the next day it’s on the other side of the back, chances are, that’s not a structural disorder. And so people who have this kind of situation, plus other stresses in their life, or a history of anxiety or other things such as headaches or irritable bowel, etc.; when you put it all together, then you can make an accurate diagnosis. If we have the accurate diagnosis we can turn off the pain. Dr. Schubiner talks more about how to turn off pain and the psychological intervention of chronic pain.