As Jennifer Raff points out in this article, To form a truly educated opinion on a scientific subject, you need to become familiar with current research in that field. We dont have to be a scientist or a statistics major to understand scientific papers in the medical literature, but we do need a little information to help guide us through. Its important that we have a basic (laymans) understanding of what science now knows about how chronic pain develops and how its maintained within the nervous system. To do this we need to keep ourselves up-to-date with the latest pain and neuro science. The fact of the matter is that over the past 5 to 15 years science has really changed how it views chronic pain... in fact, there has been a true paradigm change in medicines understanding of pain. (this has been brought about in large part by advances in brain imaging techniques) World renowned pain scientists and top pain management specialists are the first to admit that one of the reasons why doctors have been so unsuccessful in treating chronic pain is because as a whole, the field of medicine had been looking at pain all wrong. When pain persists the emphasis is often on finding the source of pain. However, but pain is an extremely complex process, (many body systems are involved in our bodys pain response) and often times what is generating the persist pain is not something going on in the tissues of the body (i.e., muscles, bones, ligaments etc), but rather, the pain is persisting because of pathological changes in the nervous system and in turn the pain system itself. (the nervous system, and particularly the central nervous system which includes the spinal cord and the brain) Moreover, doctors, nurses and other medical professionals have been very slow in reconceptualizing pain according to modern pain science - in other words many doctors persist in holding onto outdated beliefs about pain and obsolete pain theories despite science the proves otherwise...and they have been slow in translating and incorporating the new knowledge and insights about chronic pain into the clinical setting and into practical pain management. Consequently, in order to receive appropriate, comprehensive, expert and compassionate pain care it often takes being referred to a cutting-edge multidisciplinary chronic pain program. Sometimes if we are very lucky we might find a good doctor outside a these types of programs- a doctor who has kept themselves current and who is really an expert of chronic pain, but the fact is there are not enough of these doctors around. But even if we are fortunate to get a referral to a good pain program or find a good doctor, we have to be open to the new insights about chronic pain and be willing to change how we ourselves view our pain and we have to be willing to change how we approach our pain. If we havent kept ourselves current or are unwilling to reconceptualize our pain according to pain science we will not be able to benefit from the advances and insights into pain that have been made so far and that continue to be made. -jana
Posted on: Wed, 25 Jun 2014 04:19:25 +0000
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