by Manon Bolliger, facilitator & retired naturopath with 30+ years of practice | Addressing Your Pain
In the last post we started to explore the role of the brain in pain and recovery. An especially powerful aspect of this is the role of perception. A 2011 study established neural evidence for the brain’s role in controlling motor output (Tanaka et al., 2011, p.38)....
by Manon Bolliger, facilitator & retired naturopath with 30+ years of practice | About Your Health, Addressing Your Pain
In the last several posts, from a variety of angles, we’ve examined the mind-body dimensions of treatment for pain, seeing how it is essential to treat the trauma rather than the symptoms. This has involved treating the body as a carrier of meaning, whose history...
by Manon Bolliger, facilitator & retired naturopath with 30+ years of practice | About Your Health, Addressing Your Pain
In my last post I raised the issue of fear as a meaning invested in the body and its symptoms. The correlation of the body part with the fearful memory deeply connects and acknowledges the fear. Making explicit the mind-body connection helps release the traumatic...
by Manon Bolliger, facilitator & retired naturopath with 30+ years of practice | About Your Health, Addressing Your Pain
In recent posts we’ve been discussing the value of a paradigm shift to thinking of the body as a carrier of meaning and the health care opportunities it affords. As one commentator observed: finding ways for patients to shift their perspectives, to achieve “…a shift...
by Manon Bolliger, facilitator & retired naturopath with 30+ years of practice | About Your Health, Addressing Your Pain
In the last post we looked at the research on the human body as a carrier of meaning, with a discernible history with lessons to teach us. Let’s look at this idea more closely. The work of Steen et al., “Generalized chronic musculoskeletal pain as a rational reaction...
by Manon Bolliger, facilitator & retired naturopath with 30+ years of practice | Uncategorized
In the last post we saw the findings on stress from mouse research. These findings were seen as providing optimism for the development of compounds to improve resilience to pain. A couple of thoughts come to mind in response to these ideas. On the one hand, yes, we...
by Manon Bolliger, facilitator & retired naturopath with 30+ years of practice | About Your Health, Addressing Your Pain
In recent posts we’ve been considering the therapeutic benefits to dealing with stress as a strategy for addressing pain and cancer. But what is the story behind these concerns with stress? Researchers have long questioned why some people are resilient to stress while...
by Manon Bolliger, facilitator & retired naturopath with 30+ years of practice | About Your Health, Addressing Your Pain
In previous posts we’ve considered the benefits of stress relief in treatment. Humor can effectively relax patients, allowing them to better handle fear and anxiety. “Nurses find humor to be very beneficial for increasing their patients’ pain threshold, which helps...
by Manon Bolliger, facilitator & retired naturopath with 30+ years of practice | About Your Health, Addressing Your Pain
In the last post we began to look the changing role of the Doctor in a health care approach that treated the patient as a whole and meaningful entity. As a person with a life experience that had a bearing upon their existing state of health. We saw that taking a full...
by Manon Bolliger, facilitator & retired naturopath with 30+ years of practice | Addressing Your Pain
A 2003 systematic review of antidepressant treatment for chronic back pain concluded they produce only moderate symptom reduction (Staiger et al., 2003). Another recent review concluded that many drugs used for back pain are no more, or only slightly more, effective...
by Manon Bolliger, facilitator & retired naturopath with 30+ years of practice | About Your Health, Addressing Your Pain
In the last post we raised the issue of defining chronic pain. One suggestion was to define it in terms of duration. Van Korff & Dunn, in Chronic Pain Reconsidered (2008), argue that “while conceptually appealing, this approach has not produced reliable or valid...
by Manon Bolliger, facilitator & retired naturopath with 30+ years of practice | About Your Health, Addressing Your Pain
Patients seeking care for pain want to know whether it is likely to improve or run a chronic course, not just its cause and how it might be relieved and managed. But it is difficult for the doctor to give a clear and reassuring answer. Korff and Dunn, in their book,...
by Manon Bolliger, facilitator & retired naturopath with 30+ years of practice | About Your Health, Addressing Your Pain
As covered previously, the autonomic nervous system is comprised of both the parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous system. In chronic stress, the sympathetic system, through several hormonal and neural pathways, maintains a state of chronic stress. While...
by Manon Bolliger, facilitator & retired naturopath with 30+ years of practice | About Your Health, Addressing Your Pain
We’ve seen over the last several posts that the standard explanations for pain related to whip last, tending to identify it with lesions and their effects, is increasingly challenged in the research literature. Few insightful studies demonstrate successful...
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
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
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....
