Chronic pain affects approximately one in three people in the United States. This common struggle had led to an alarming increase of pain medications and a mounting epidemic of opioid use and deaths. Is there a way we can ease pain safely and effectively without depending on drugs?
There is –and it is closer to being within our grasp than we think.
We commonly believe – as do our physicians – that emotions can play an important role in dealing with pain. Indeed, psychology plays a big part in managing our pain.
When we treat pain solely with medication, we’re only addressing a small part of the problem. The result is that as patients, we fail to rely on self-management techniques for managing our pain. Scientific research shows that pain relief is most effective when you address the body and the mind.
Awareness of the mind-body connection is not a new concept but it may still be novel in the West, where the mind and body has been traditionally thought of as two separate entities. This view, however, is changing as medical researchers are proving the complex connections between mind and body here in the United States.
Physicians and healthcare teams often treat patients suffering from chronic pain with opioids. This is an important risk factor for opioid addiction, which is a national crisis. However, appropriate use of mind-body therapies has the potential to reduce the epidemic of opioid use in the United States. The goal of the treatment is to alleviate pain, decrease any drug side-effects and get people back to work.
Chronic back and neck pain are the most common reasons why individuals visit physicians. Approximately one in four adults report experiencing lower back pain. The estimated costs of chronic back and neck pain in the U.S. was $88 billion in 2013 – third highest after heart disease and diabetes. The accumulated costs for back pain increased faster than any other group: from $30.4 billion in 1996 to $87.6 billion in 2013.
These figures do not include costs related to disability or time taken away from work. Several organizations have released guidelines for lower back and neck pain including the American College of Physicians (ACP), the American Academy of Pain Medicine, The American Pain Society, and the Academy of Integrative Pain Management, among others. There is general consensus that the first step for chronic back & neck pain should not rely on pharmacological intervention.
What is commonly referred to know as mind-body practices are exercises designed to enhance our mind’s positive impact on the body. Practicing mindfulness meditation has been found to be beneficial in several studies, and include behavioral, psychological, therapeutic, physical, social and spiritual approaches to deter reliance on medicine or pharmaceuticals.
In addition to conventional mind-body therapies like yoga or mindful meditation, there is another kind of treatment modality that focuses on body and mind: Multidisciplinary rehabilitation. Multidisciplinary rehabilitation for back pain is developed by healthcare professionals and sums up several concepts. It consists of three pillars: physiotherapy, psychological therapy and patient education.
Multidisciplinary rehabilitation is also recommended by current guidelines as a non-pharmacologic treatment modality for chronic lower back pain. And studies show it has significant benefits, especially in the long run.
All in all, programs and treatments that address the mind and body are deeply empowering: you can learn to calm your own nervous system, train your brain away from pain, and deliver self-soothing pain care. These tools can be even more effective than medication with none of the severe health risks or side-effects.
Konstantin Mehl is the CEO and Co-Founder of Kaia Health, a digital health company with offices in Boston and Los Angeles.