by Manon Bolliger, facilitator & retired naturopath with 30+ years of practice | About Your Health, Advancing Your Practice
As we have seen, therapeutic effect is increased if the patient is aligned with the treatment and has positive reinforcement for the outcomes. Research confirms the beneficial effects of patients’ increased control over their health and body. Approaches to treatment...
by Manon Bolliger, facilitator & retired naturopath with 30+ years of practice | Advancing Your Practice
Over the course of these blog posts, I hope we’ve learned the importance of congruence, context, and expectation in treatment. These are all factors established in relationship and cannot be “objectively” measured. Further, it is not what we do that matters; it is the...
by Manon Bolliger, facilitator & retired naturopath with 30+ years of practice | Advancing Your Practice
This blog’s discussions of the limits of SOAP remind us that the “plan” is a journey. The destination is a doctor-patient relationship built on congruence of perception, aim and method: key to aligning for success. When discussing placebo, M.J. Simmonds (2000) states:...
by Manon Bolliger, facilitator & retired naturopath with 30+ years of practice | Advancing Your Practice
Over this series of blog post, I hope I’ve convinced you the SOAP form is fraught with the assumptions that lie at the base of conventional medicine. In fact, it has spawned a “relationship” between the doctor and the patient that is neither conducive to the...
by Manon Bolliger, facilitator & retired naturopath with 30+ years of practice | About Your Health
“The science of medicine must be deployed to elucidate the art of medicine; otherwise, medicine falls short, both as science and art.” (Miller & Colloca, 2011) I set a mission for myself when I began this blog. It has been a long journey, lasting several years....
by Manon Bolliger, facilitator & retired naturopath with 30+ years of practice | About Your Health, Addressing Your Pain
We left off the last post pointing out the ethical quandary around using the placebo effect for therapeutic purposes. Consider the fact that as NDs, “Do no Harm” is a fundamental tenet of our practice. Everything else aside, if the results are similar whether or not...
by Manon Bolliger, facilitator & retired naturopath with 30+ years of practice | About Your Health, Addressing Your Pain
In the last post we saw the powerful affects of priming individuals as a means to reduce the experience of pain. This confirms our conviction that mindfulness is an essential component in the effective treatment of pain and trauma. The flip side of the matter can be...
by Manon Bolliger, facilitator & retired naturopath with 30+ years of practice | About Your Health, Addressing Your Pain
In contrast to the more empowered approach, discussed over the last several posts, of viewing a patient’s pain as “one of their symptoms,” a pathophysiological approach to pain focuses on pain relief as the primary objective. The choice of intervention is usually...
by Manon Bolliger, facilitator & retired naturopath with 30+ years of practice | About Your Health, Addressing Your Pain
This is a bit of a longer post, but I’ll ask you to hang in there with me. We’re covering complex, but really important stuff, here. What we learned last post, about pain and perception, suggests that our therapeutic treatments, lacking research, may be onto something...
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 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 | Addressing Your Pain, Advancing Your Practice
Our discussions in this blog have continually circled us back to the same set of questions. As a doctor, what is our responsibility for assessing the situation and exploring possible “prescriptions”? To how much of the patient’s story will you relate, and through...
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 a study funded by The National Institute on Aging and the National Cancer Institute, researchers interviewed 94 women whose breast cancer had spread (metastatic) or returned (recurrent) about the stress in their lives. David Spiegel, M.D., one of the study’s...
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...
