Many people with chronic pain report negative experiences with their doctors. When we’re not feeling well, our natural tendency is to turn to our doctor for help. However, when it comes to chronic pain, this can often be a misguided approach because, frankly, many doctors don’t know how to help. Some will even turn on their patients as a result, berating them, blaming them, or treating them like drug addicts. Seeking treatment from an alternative pain management provider is highly unlikely to result in this type of mistreatment. These providers are trained to address pain, equipped with tools and skills that can offer effective pain relief.
Why Most Doctors are Not Good at Treating Pain
A survey of medical school curriculums across the U.S. uncovered a startling fact: on average, physicians receive less than two hours of training about pain in medical school. This is shockingly inadequate given that pain is one of the most common reasons patients seek medical attention. The journals doctors read and the continuing education seminars they attend don't fare much better in addressing this critical gap. Even among physicians who practice at academic medical centers, who you'd expect to be at the forefront of medical knowledge, only 34% felt they were competent to treat pain.
How Doctors Accommodate to the Gap in Their Understanding of Pain Treatment
So, what happens on a daily basis? Physicians are faced with patients suffering from chronic pain, and they know they're not fully equipped to help. Forty percent of medical visits involve patients with chronic pain. Into this gaping knowledge void step the pharmaceutical company representatives, who are all too eager to fill it with their products. They oversell the benefits of their drugs while minimizing or completely hiding the dangers.
One alarming case is that of Vioxx, a nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug. Pharmaceutical companies promoted it as safe while being fully aware that it could cause heart problems. Estimates suggest that between 50,000 to 500,000 patients died from Vioxx during the years it remained on the market before it was finally withdrawn. And yet, doctors continue to widely prescribe Celebrex (celecoxib), a medication that works through similar mechanisms.
Another example is Oxycodone and Hydrocodone. These powerful synthetic opioids were aggressively marketed to doctors as nearly addiction-proof. Yet, they are, in fact, highly addictive. Even when taken as directed, about 10% of medical patients become addicted. The fallout has been devastating — millions have become addicted, and hundreds of thousands have died from overdoses. Still, most doctors continue to hold the belief that medical patients do not become addicted when the medications are taken as directed, a belief largely shaped by misleading pharmaceutical propaganda.
Now many physicians are afraid to prescribe opioids because the federal Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) has been prosecuting legitimate doctors as drug dealers for many years for prescribing opioids for pain patients, and continues to do so despite a Supreme Court decision that it is unconstitutional, leaving them with even fewer tools, however flawed, to treat pain patients.
Another class of drugs commonly prescribed for pain treatment is gabapentinoids, including Gabapentin and Lyrica (pregabalin). Patient surveys indicate these drugs only help about 23% of patients and often create terrible side effects. The pharmaceutical company that developed gabapentin has been fined by the FDA multiple times for fraudulent advertising, but the drug remains on the market and is still widely prescribed.
Another Approach: Holistic Treatment for Chronic Pain
If you’re suffering from chronic pain, you might want to consider turning to alternative treatments for pain management. Health care providers who offer holistic treatments for chronic pain are often better trained to deal with this complex issue.
Healthcare providers who use alternative pain treatments for pain management include:
- Acupuncturists: They use very thin needles to stimulate specific points on the body to balance the body’s energy and alleviate pain.
- Biofeedback Practitioners: Using sensitive electronic instruments to measure physiology, they help you learn to control bodily processes that are typically involuntary, like muscle tension, blood flow and chronic brain overarousal, to manage pain.
- Chiropractors: Their focus is on diagnosing and treating mechanical disorders of the musculoskeletal system, especially the spine, which can relieve pain and improve functionality.
- Massage Therapists: Skilled in various massage techniques, they can alleviate muscle tension, improve circulation, and reduce pain.
- Physical Therapists: They use hands on (manual) therapy and tailored exercise programs to help reduce pain, improve mobility, and restore function.
- Psychotherapists: They understand that chronic pain isn't just a physical issue; it has psychological dimensions too, and they can help you develop strategies to cope with and reduce pain.
- Nutritionists: They can guide you towards dietary choices that can help reduce inflammation and pain.
- Naturopaths: These practitioners use natural and holistic approaches to treat pain, often combining various therapies. These can include dietary and lifestyle changes, stress reduction, herbs and other dietary supplements, homeopathy, manipulative therapies, exercise therapy, detoxification and more.
- Functional Medicine and Integrative Doctors: They adopt a systems-oriented approach, looking at the underlying causes of your pain and treating it holistically. The alternative treatments for pain management these doctors use include consideration of the full picture of your physical, mental, emotional, and sometimes even spiritual health. They consider factors like diet, genetics, hormonal changes, prescription and over the counter medications, and other lifestyle components.
There are also many natural pain relief products you can use for self-help, including:
Conclusion
If you're struggling with chronic pain, it might be time to look beyond conventional doctors and conventional medicine. The alternative pain treatments for pain management listed above offer a more holistic and often more effective approach to pain management.
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