Which treatments and techniques that you’ve been using can offer the most relief for chronic pain?
I think that ultimately what I do that translates into relief from chronic pain is that I take into account as many contributing factors as I can for a particular individual. I then use a wide variety of techniques (some peripheral, some neural and some central) that aim to reduce or eliminate those factors. I think that it’s the overall combination of tailoring a treatment to an individual that gives the best effect. I also maintain a constant dialogue with the patient as to which approaches are helping and which are not. People sometimes say “Oh, I’m sorry…that didn’t help” to which I say, “Don’t be sorry because I need your honest feedback to know that we’re going in the right direction”. If a certain technique is not helping we need to abandon it and try a different strategy. One of the approaches that I use incorporates the autonomic nervous system in the treatment of chronic pain and it is a technique that really focuses on whole body, central mechanism as opposed to peripherals.
