Like Mind, Like Body

What does making a free-throw have to do with chronic pain? Quite a bit, actually. Jim Heafner, Doctor of Physical Therapy and co-author of the new ebook “Sticks and Stones: A Collection of Analogies and Stories to Better Understand Pain,” joins us to explain how pain becomes wired into your brain and nervous system, and how you can teach your body to break the habit. Stay tuned for a special discount code that gives you $10 off the book, which you can purchase at http://www.therapteuticalliance.com/.

One morning, Kate woke up with a pain in her neck. She didn't think much of it until the symptoms started to spread to all over her body. Over the course of a year and a half, Kate experienced the sensation that something was stuck in her throat, lost range of motion and sensation in her left arm, lost the ability to grip with her left hand, experienced burning and tingling, suffered an ocular migraine, and was left unable to perform everyday tasks. Doctors hypothesized that it could be a brain tumor, a dental issue, or carpal tunnel syndrome, but tests kept coming back negative. At her wit's end, Kate finally found a doctor who listened to her and an app that supported her needs. That was the beginning of a healing journey she never thought possible.

Is it possible to help people reduce chronic pain just by using an app? The co-founders of Curable were hopeful that the answer would be “yes” - and it was. This episode continues our story as we follow John, Erich, and Laura in their quest to increase access to the tools and techniques that freed them from years of pain. Hear about how Curable got started, how it’s evolved, and how relapses of pain can be transformed into helpful reminders.

In the years before the Curable App was born, its three founding members were plagued by dozens of unexplainable symptoms and chronic ailments. They spent years of wasted time, money, and effort searching for answers before finally being led to an approach that would eventually transform their health, mindset, and careers. On this episode, all three founders share their unique experience with pain and journey to recovery from a wide range of symptoms, including migraine, back pain, degenerative disc disease, repetitive stress injury, hand pain, neck pain, sciatica, knee pain, foot pain, lyme disease, fainting spells, tinnitus, and more.

After fighting her own battle with chronic pain at a young age, Dr. Beth Darnall is on a mission to provide people in pain with the answers and access she wishes she had all those years ago. These answers, she believes, don’t lie in pills, but in the human brain. Dr. Darnall is currently leading a $9M research award to find effective strategies for tapering off opioids and to validate the psychological interventions she believes can help many of those who suffer. Join us as she offers advice for pain sufferers, providers, and payers on how to move forward from the opioid epidemic, and reduce pain safely.

David Hanscom, MD, explains why spine surgery is not the antidote that so many people with chronic back pain seek.

Why do we look at medical imaging to determine the cause of someone’s pain, even when research has proven that there’s no correlation between the two? Why do most clinicians still recommend opioids and injections before trying a few simple breathing exercises? These are the kinds of questions Dr. Tim Flynn has thought about for years, and the kind of practices he’s trying to change. Join us as Dr. Flynn, a widely-published physical therapist and host of the podcast “Pain Reframed,” shares the secret to his success: believing in your patients.

Alan Gordon has spent his entire career helping people to overcome pain they’ve been told is incurable. How? By looking at it from a different perspective: as a neural pathway problem. His approach has been successful enough to build the foundation for the Pain Psychology Center: a Los Angeles-based treatment facility that employs 19 therapists. But before Alan treated these incurable pain conditions, he lived through them. 22 different types of unexplainable symptoms, to be exact. Join us to hear more about Alan’s personal struggles with pain, how he helps his patients through their symptoms, and upcoming research that may change the way the medical system approaches pain.

When a double-boarded physician developed pain conditions so severe she couldn’t lift a dinner plate, she thought her career was over. For a full decade, she was out of a job, living in pain, and searching for answers in every corner of medicine. Join us as Dr. Alicia Bond Batson shares the story of how she found a solution in an unlikely place: her own brain.

San Francisco attorney Susan Brown battled migraines since junior high. After countless rounds of Botox, a weeklong inpatient hospital stay, nerve blocks, triptans, and just about every other migraine treatment on the market, she had given up hope that anything would work for her. Then one day, during an intense Googling session, she found her way to Curable. This is the story of what happened next. Join Susan for an uncompensated, unfiltered review of using the Curable app for migraines.