When Nathan Neufeld, DO, was 17 years old, he watched his mother die after a long battle with breast cancer. His presence during her death with his father and two younger brothers was a major factor in his decision to study medicine and to specialize in pain management.
American Indians and Alaska Natives, bisexual individuals, rural residents, and people living in poverty are significantly more likely to experience chronic pain, according to recent data released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Managing a chronic pain condition can be a full-time job. In addition to living with symptoms on a daily basis, individuals living with pain must find providers, understand health insurance, attend appointments, pick up prescriptions, make phone calls, pay bills, and more. But if managing pain and seeking health care is complicated and time-consuming for someone with a single diagnosis, what is it like for those living with multiple conditions?
Mental health is often inextricably linked to the chronic pain experience. One aspect of chronic pain that is sometimes overlooked is the mental health of caregivers or care partners. Like the patients they care for, care partners are also faced with mental-health challenges: many share their feelings of frustration, hopelessness, and depression at navigating a broken health care system, compounded by limited sleep and, often, difficulty getting time for themselves.
Almost all people with chronic medical conditions or serious long-term injuries have experienced their pain being dismissed or trivialized. “Medical gaslighting” is when medical professionals manipulate patients into questioning their own experiences.
The journey of living with chronic pain – with its roadblocks, pitfalls, and detours—can be next to impossible to understand for those who aren’t walking its path.
With the prevalence of chronic pain in the United States—affecting at least 50 million people, 20 million of whom experience high-impact chronic pain that affects their day-to-day life and ability to work – and the challenges and cost inherent in treating it, a significant key is preventing it in the first place.
While the core tenets of chiropractic treatment involve belief in the efficacy of spinal manipulation, the frequently interdisciplinary aspect of chiropractors’ care may be one of the main reasons people seek them out.
Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance. The five stages of grief were introduced by psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross in 1969 to describe the grieving process when you lose someone. But what about when you lose yourself?
Sean Mackey, MD, PhD, has seen a lot of people with pain. He knows that many of them feel marginalized, ignored, and untreated.
Sharon Field, 63, has managed her debilitating back pain and osteoarthritis for almost two decades with prescribed opioids. But when she had a knee replacement surgery scheduled for the summer of 2022, she knew her pain would increase for a while.
Virtual reality (VR) for pain control dates back to at least the 1990s, when researcher Hunter Hoffman at the University of Washington provided burn victims with a chilled environment and VR headsets that allowed them to move through an “icy” world, throwing virtual snowballs at virtual penguins.