Pain is a complex issue, so there are many treatment options — medications, therapies, regenerative treatments, exercises, and mind-body techniques. How we approach treating your chronic pain depends on several factors, such as your health, goals, the extent of the injury/illness, and any existing conditions that need to be co-managed.
Since pain is such a complex issue, medical professionals who specialize in pain management disagree on how to most effectively treat pain. Safely alleviating pain by naturally treating its source is possible. Unfortunately, the standard answers are pharmaceuticals, steroids and surgery. But these come with risks, and can actually do more harm than good. At the Blatman Health and Wellness Center we often find the root cause of pain is a lifetime of injuries to fascia that can be discovered and healed.
The Dangers of Pharmaceutical & Invasive Pain Treatment
While closely monitored, low-dose opioid use has very low risks and can be a great aid for an especially long or painful treatment route, opioid use should really be avoided when possible. Risks of opioid use for pain management include:
- Addiction
- Tolerance
- Death from overdose and respiratory depression
Unfortunately doctors are taught that non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs are better and safer than opioids. Risks of NSAID use (including aspirin) include:
- Kidney failure
- Ulcer disease and GI bleed
- Poor healing of injuries like ankle sprains and pain after sports
- Reduced ablility to regrow and repair joint cartilage from daily wear and tear
- Heart attacks
Similarly, doctors are taught that gabapentin and pregabalin are good drugs for treating pain. Your doctor is taught to increase your dose until pain levels are more tolerable. In actuality, the drugs work by making your nervous system “not” work. The free nerve endings measuring friction and pressure in your fascia after a lifetime of injuries are the actual source and root cause of most pain in our bodies. These drugs work by making these nerve endings not work as well, so you can’t tell what is going on in your fascia. And as they make these little nerves not work as well, they also make your brain not work as well and you can’t remember why you went downstairs. Potential long-term effects of this forgetfulness are not known.
Opiate medications have risks, but appropriately prescribed it can be argued that they are safer than what is currently being promoted in medical and public education.
Similarly, while surgical interventions are sometimes necessary, they should be treated as a last resort. Not only are they undependable with mixed results at best, they’re dangerous:
- Additional trauma to the tissues in and around the surgical scope
- Anesthesia complications, including lung problems, allergic reactions, and even death
- Hemorrhaging before or after surgery, which can be fatal
- Infection, which can lead to sepsis and death
- Pulmonary embolism, which can lead to stroke
- Surgery failure, pain symptoms are not solved, function is not improved
Another common treatment for painful joints like knees and spines is cortisone injections. And while these don’t carry the same level of risks as surgery and opioids, and are also minimally-invasive, they don’t do much healing. In fact, any cortisone treatments actually lead to a weakening of the treated tissue. While a cortisone injection into your joint may be a quick fix for pain, your cartilage will now wear out more quickly. Your pain might go away for a couple months after your first cortisone shot, but with each subsequent one, the pain relief will last a shorter time. All the while, the source of your pain is getting worse, not better. And there are much better and more helpful choices of things to inject for joint cartilage recovery.
Holistic, Integrative Treatment & Therapy for Chronic Pain
Alternative treatments for chronic pain are as diverse as the causes. From regenerative treatments to mind/body techniques to massage therapy, if one approach doesn’t work, another one might. But when it comes to treating chronic pain, no single technique is guaranteed to produce complete pain relief. Relief may be found by using a combination of treatment options, referred to as integrative medicine.
Our health and wellness clinic specializes in treating chronic pain at the source, so that treatment is focused on healing the cause, not just managing the symptoms. You can have both, and without opioids and invasive treatments. Some of our therapies for healing your pain include:
- Massage therapy
- Medical marijuana recommendations
- Occupational therapy
- Photonic stimulation
- Intravenous therapies
- Prolotherapy
- PRP treatments
- Trigger point injection therapy
- Prolozone therapy
- Nerve hydrodissection
- Stem cell therapy
A Cincinnati Pain Management Center focused in Whole-Body Health
The staff at Blatman Health and Wellness Center are dedicated to providing traditional and holistic pain management solutions. We believe patient education and support are the keys to continued good health, and will teach you techniques to treat and prevent chronic pain long after you have left our office.
To find out more about what we do, visit our Areas of Practice page; feel free to reach out with any questions. And when you’re ready to schedule a consultation, you can visit our Contact page to request an appointment or get in touch with our office.
Contact Blatman Health & Wellness for Cincinnati Pain Relief Information