‘Learn to live with your pain.’ How many times have you heard this statement? For people with chronic pain, this is common but unhelpful advice. Pain is more than just mechanical damage. Context and the expectations you have around it play a significant role in how you experience pain. Remember, it’s possible to recover from pain. But you must be aware of the proper chronic pain treatment.
Pain expert Dr Kal Fried joins us in this episode to discuss how pain is more complicated than we think. If we want to recover from pain, we must first understand how it works. He also shares the role of medication and lifestyle changes and how chronic pain treatments work differently for each person. What’s important is to become active and involved in your recovery process.
If you want to learn more about chronic pain treatment and how to break free from chronic pain, this episode is for you.
Here are three reasons why you should listen to the full episode:
- Learn how pain works and why it’s more complicated than just a mechanical function of your body.
- Understand how we can deal with and recover from pain through lifestyle changes and other chronic pain treatments.
- Discover the importance of taking charge of your healing and recovery.
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Episode Highlights
[04:10] Dr Kal’s Career
- Dr Kal is trained as a sports and exercise physician. He oversees the medical needs of athletes and regular people.
- Through his work and experience, he observed that the severity of injuries could not predict the outcome. There were cases of minor injuries leading to terrible outcomes and vice versa.
- These experiences led him to learn more about the science of pain and work with the organisation Pain Revolution.
[06:52] Why Pain is Complicated
- We’re taught that pain is mechanical. But, bodies do not produce pain, per se.
- The body only produces electrical signals that our sensory nerves pick up.
- Your pain response is dependent on how much danger your brain thinks you’re in.
- Injuries are not always proportionate to pain. Pain has physical, contextual and sociological contributing factors.
- Listen to the full episode to hear two stories about people who ignored — and created! — pain based on their circumstances!
[13:42] How Pain Works
- Pain is more complicated than we think. Thresholds don't explain pain completely either.
- Your context plays a significant role in how you perceive and experience pain.
- There are other factors that contribute to you experiencing more pain, such as stress, living through a pandemic, your beliefs and expectations.
[14:52] Responding to Pain
- Lisa shares how there are various kinds of pain in her life. These include the changes women undergo at different times in their cycles.
- Learn to accept that there is a lot involved with pain. Understanding and acceptance will help you change your pain response.
- Pain can become a habit. Injuries create a direct channel to the brain, which can remain even after someone's body heals. This is called sensitisation.
- While there are medications designed to stop this direct channel, the best method is to develop habits for desensitising this pain pathway.
[21:09] The Role of Distractions and Neurotransmitters
- We often experience higher levels of pain at night because nothing distracts us from the pain. This then leads to sleep deprivation and fatigue, creating a cycle of pain.
- People naturally develop intuitive strategies like distracting themselves from pain.
- You can transform your pain experience by manipulating your neurotransmitters through a re-adaptive program.
- Through this process, you change people’s thoughts and actions.
[23:51] Medication is Not Always the Answer for Chronic Pain Treatment
- The brain naturally contains morphine-like chemicals.
- Pain medication doesn't work for everyone. Some people are pain-sensitive and medication-resistant.
- Too much medication can also lead to addiction and negatively impact your health.
[28:50] The Hardships of People with Chronic Pain
- People find it easier to empathise with those whose sicknesses are visible.
- People with chronic pain often end up in a vicious cycle of social breakdown because there’s little understanding and compassion for the condition.
- Not only that, pain makes people more irritable.
[31:06] Options for Chronic Pain Treatment
- Meditation as a chronic pain treatment is slowly becoming more mainstream in the medical profession.
- One method will not work for everyone as people relate to different things. It's vital to build an individualised program for chronic pain treatment or management.
- Remember that pain is not harmful. It’s just a protective mechanism.
- It’s common to hear that we need to learn to live with the pain, but this may not be effective for everyone.
- Tune in to the full episode to hear Dr Kal talk about his work with Pain Revolution and the graded exposure program.
[34:56] Find What Works for You
- It's difficult for doctors to understand your situation and condition fully. It would be best for you to take charge of your health by doing your research.
- Question treatments and methods. Don’t blindly accept answers.
- However, when you start to read online resources, you also need to be wary of false information.
- Be careful how you interpret science and research.
[44:01] Seeking Science-Backed Treatments
- Your health is an interconnected system. Pain can be a signal for many things.
- Become more involved in your health; start with lifestyle changes.
- Be careful with placebo treatments. There are cases where sugar pills seem to work because the brain believes that they will.
- Placebo treatments’ effectiveness will wane eventually and lead people to seek more aggressive types of interventions.
- What’s most important is understanding what methods work, their benefits and safety concerns before applying anything.
[47:24] The Pain Revolution Approach
- Learn how pain works. There are a lot of reliable resources available that you can consult.
- Pain Revolution has an annual outreach cycling tour. They also have a two-year course for local pain educators.
- Dr Kal hopes for the community to grow and focus on non-interventional techniques for chronic pain treatment.
- Know that you can adapt to pain. There is a way to recover.
7 Powerful Quotes
‘I like to think of pain in terms of not causes but contributors. The physical side is important… but it’s only one contribution of many.’
‘By just getting people to conceptualise their pain properly, we can make a difference.’
‘The best model exists for understanding pain is that anytime we feel pain, or for that matter, all the sensations we feel, which are essentially produced by our brain, there are a lot of things going on at the same time.’
‘When pain persists, it takes a lot less contribution from the physical component to produce the same pain. Sometimes, no contribution at all and people remain in pain.’
‘I think the key thing is to try and avoid being too passive in your own health because reliance on external fixes can be a problem. A lot can be achieved by lifestyle changes.’
‘The people who do well in things like pain or recovery from injuries are often the people who have elected not to listen to the things they have been told.’
‘If you’ve got a problem, you just need to create that adaptation pathway for yourself, which doesn’t just involve the injury.’
About Dr Kal
Dr Kal Fried is a proud member and Medical Director of Pain Revolution. Before being recruited, he was involved in the group's first Rural Outreach Tour in 2017. Dr Kal is an independent medico-legal examiner who has consulted with the Transport Accident Commission and WorkSafe as a medical advisor. He was admitted as a Fellow of the Australian College of Sports and Exercise Physicians in 1995. Ever since then, he's helped sporting teams at all levels and across disciplines.
From his experience, Dr Kal observed how the context of pain consistently predicted clinical outcomes. He often shares his findings and observations on pain science and chronic pain treatment on his website. He is also part of the Rehabilitation Medicine Group focused on creating re-adaptive programs for people in pain.
Interested to learn more about Dr Kal’s work? Check out his website.
You can also reach him on The Rehabilitation Medicine Group through phone (+613 9555 7769), fax (+613 8738 1504), and email.
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To pushing the limits,
Lisa
The information contained in this show is not medical advice it is for educational purposes only and the opinions of guests are not the views of the show.
Please seed your own medical advice from a registered medical professional
