by Manon Bolliger, facilitator & retired naturopath with 30+ years of practice | About Your Health, Addressing Your Pain
In the last couple posts we’ve seen how mechanical and structural explanations for persistent whip lash pain don’t stand up as well as does subjective and emotional explanations. It turns out than even muscular explanations are not as compelling as many might assume...
by Manon Bolliger, facilitator & retired naturopath with 30+ years of practice | About Your Health
I will never forget the patient I saw in Stouffville, Ontario, who was told by her chiropractor that the pain and lack of motion in her neck had to do with the osteophytes that had amassed on her cervical spine. After two series of 30 treatments, she came to see me...
by Manon Bolliger, facilitator & retired naturopath with 30+ years of practice | Addressing Your Pain
In my most recent posts I considered the brain science on pain and how it indicates that a patient’s perception and experience of pain cannot necessarily be reduced to assessment of specific lesion events or their presumed effects. Let’s get into this a little more...
by Manon Bolliger, facilitator & retired naturopath with 30+ years of practice | About Your Health, Addressing Your Pain
In my last post we looked at the brain science on pain. Among the facts we observed was that there were two distinct pathways associated with pain. I have a couple more thoughts to add on the brain science front before we turn to a consideration of what this means for...
by Manon Bolliger, facilitator & retired naturopath with 30+ years of practice | Addressing Your Pain
The pathways for pain transmission are complex. Generally, nociceptive information (pain-info) reports external and internal representation of the body’s physiological condition through two different components: The sensory-discriminative component, transmitted...
by Manon Bolliger, facilitator & retired naturopath with 30+ years of practice | Addressing Your Pain
In the current series of posts I’ll be discussing the treatment of pain and how this creates difficulties for effective assessment, using the SOAP method for doctors’ diagnosis. It seems though that before becoming fully immersed in these discussions, it would be...
by Manon Bolliger, facilitator & retired naturopath with 30+ years of practice | About Your Health, Addressing Your Pain
I have successfully treated patients using BowenFirst™ for frozen shoulders, sciatica, migraines, low back pain, whiplash, TMJ and fibromyalgia, as well as for generalized aches and pains with their various reasons and likely “explanation” as in osteoarthritis years...
by Manon Bolliger, facilitator & retired naturopath with 30+ years of practice | Addressing Your Pain
In my last post I discussed the difficulties pain posed for effective assessment, given its subjective character, and how addressing pain first was the prime directive in my practice. Perhaps the most effective way of addressing the multifactorial,...
by Manon Bolliger, facilitator & retired naturopath with 30+ years of practice | About Your Health
Continuing with our discussion of the role of assessment in the doctor’s SOAP interview, I want to return to a topic discussed before: the character of pain. Pain is a good example of the conundrum doctors’ face with regard to “assessment.” The experience of pain is...
by Manon Bolliger, facilitator & retired naturopath with 30+ years of practice | About Your Health
The last month or so I’ve been telling you about my journey with MS. When I compare my results, and those of patients who have done well managing their MS, with those who have had a harder time, I see one important difference. Those who did not do well kept getting...
by Manon Bolliger, facilitator & retired naturopath with 30+ years of practice | About Your Health
I ended my last post commenting on how my treatment for MS helped change my perspective on my marriage. It allowed me to emotionally separate from my husband and to realize that he was likely going through a process that was truly his own and which had nothing to do...
by Manon Bolliger, facilitator & retired naturopath with 30+ years of practice | About Your Health
In previous recent posts I’ve discussed my experience with MS. I’ve reviewed my experience of emotional deprivation in my marriage as a key touchstone in my own journey. Last post I reviewed the symptoms that led to my diagnosis. I chose homeopathic treatment as I had...
by Manon Bolliger, facilitator & retired naturopath with 30+ years of practice | About Your Health
In my last post I shared some of the emotional background to my onset of MS. The history, the symptoms and the neurological exam results (ie. Hyper-excitable reflexes, inability to walk foot to heel in a straight-line, hyper-sensitivity to heat) all led to my...
by Manon Bolliger, facilitator & retired naturopath with 30+ years of practice | About Your Health
I began to wonder whether I had asked too much of life, whether I should just accept my situation: learn to live without love. Of course, in the beginning, I was happily convinced that my marriage met all that was required in a proper match, but now nothing alleviated...
by Manon Bolliger, facilitator & retired naturopath with 30+ years of practice | About Your Health
When I first got MS, I was 21. A sudden bout of optic neuritis sent me to an ophthalmologist, thinking I had cut my eye with my contact lenses. My eye was blinded and the pain did not allow me to easily open it; when I did, I saw double. The ophthalmologist reassured...
by Manon Bolliger, facilitator & retired naturopath with 30+ years of practice | About Your Health
In 1975, scientists Robert Ader and Nicholas Cohen demonstrated classic conditioning of the immune function in their experiments with rats at the University of Rochester. In the process the coined the term “psychoneuroimmunology.” (Ader & Cohen, 1975...
by Manon Bolliger, facilitator & retired naturopath with 30+ years of practice | About Your Health
Bowen “moves” initiate and stimulate energy flow. That energy flow translates into a safe, rapid self-healing process which typically provides long term relief from pain and discomfort, for a wide range of conditions. BowenFirst™, allows the body...
by Manon Bolliger, facilitator & retired naturopath with 30+ years of practice | About Your Health
We started our first steps toward me telling you about my healing journey with MS. As preliminary to that, it was necessary to remind you of a couple important things. Including that each person’s journey will be individual. There are no cookie cutter solutions....
