Why I left my tech job to work on chronic pain

>Pain Reprocessing Therapy

I asked chatgpt to explain this to me and it did a poor job.

Generally speaking in my friend group. Chronic pain used to be opiods; though long ago medical cannabis came along. I couldnt tell you how many people i know who arent stoners who got into the cbd thing and fully got off opiods. 1 addiction for another, but at least cannabis has far less negatives.

>If you don’t have chronic pain and you’re just here for vibes and to see some cute brains, I really appreciate you .

The problem, CBD never fixes the pain. ~8 hours later you need more.

There's no business case for solving chronic pain. Here's my take.

1. There can be cases where there's something legitimately physically wrong causing chronic pain. In detroit I had a friend who got shot with birdshot, a tiny pellet was in his spine that surgeons didnt want to go after but there's no getting away from that pain. If this is the case, you're not seeking explanation.

2. There's stress/emotional pain. "The body keeps the score" by Bessel van der Kolk. He's big on EMDR and yoga. Your achilles pain and such absolutely could be, Probably something like 'change or abandonment' one of my favourites for yoga: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2XhJ63OQ7Ww

Do that 23 minute video and see if it helps.

3. Mindfulness meditation. Get into the most comfortable position possible. Dont move; and far more difficult dont think. Your mind will wander. If the pain is in your achilles. The only thing you're doing is monitoring the pain. What's the exact shape of the pain? Is it 4 inches long or is it only 2 inches? Is it sharp like a knife, or is it round in shape? Do you have any taste, smell, or sound from it? You need to wait as long as you have to, maybe it only makes a sound every 2 minutes, you have to wait and your focus is only on waiting for the sound and nothing else.

4. Yoga nidra or progressive muscle relaxation. Start at your toes, you try to flex the muscles to the maximum and hold for 5 seconds, release. then do your feet, ankles, legs, every muscle has to have been flexed and held for 5 seconds. Then when you're done, you simply do nothing at all. dont even focus on anything; maybe your breath at most.

> The problem, CBD never fixes the pain. ~8 hours later you need more.

100%, medication plays a great role in providing comfort and support but it can be ineffective (and often harmful) if relied on solely for recovery from (neuroplastic) chronic pain.

> There's no business case for solving chronic pain

It seems some parties may be incentive aligned (e.g. insurers in Australia) - though I'm still navigating this space to find an approach which makes solving the root cause viable. Keen for your thoughts.

> 1.

Sorry to hear about your friend. This is often referred to as a structural diagnosis - i.e. where a knowledgable/proficient doctor has diagnosed there is legitimate tissue (nociceptive) or nerve (neuropathic) damage.

> 2.

Yep! This is what the series will be targeting, data points to a substantial percentage of chronic pain sufferers solely (or partially in comorbidities) being impacted by psychological disorder (otherwise known as neuroplastic pain / TMS / and a few other names!). There are a lot of causes and factors which have been shown in research to date, but largely it's adverse childhood experience, stress, personality traits, and more.

Will check out that vid!

> 3.

Related to this, there is an exercise called somatic tracking which has helped many people (including myself) - during it people often notice pain shifting throughout your body. This was a big turning point for me seeing how my mind behaves in real time. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lw1D_UvzIDA

>It seems some parties may be incentive aligned (e.g. insurers in Australia) - though I'm still navigating this space to find an approach which makes solving the root cause viable. Keen for your thoughts.

Ive been sort of part of this sort of approach before. I was sysadmin, not a suit. These do tend to work out.

This is also the mechanism for how they squash and hide stuff that would cut into tylenol sales. Dont sell it, license it for periods of time is my recommendation.

Or you seem to agree much with my post. Put it together. The chronic pain fixer upper place that takes in patients and explains these things and trains them. You hire the emdr and yoga folks.

>Will check out that vid! Big fan of the body keeps the score.

It helped me for sure. I really need to try EMDR but never have. Id bet it works great. Adrienne is one of my favourites, but the science actual says slow yoga is more effective; whereas she needs to go quicker for video length.

>Related to this, there is an exercise called somatic tracking which has helped many people (including myself) - during it people often notice pain shifting throughout your body. This was a big turning point for me seeing how my mind behaves in real time. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lw1D_UvzIDA

3000 year old religious ritual :)

Its very interesting to me how science when i was young called this all hoo-haa pseudoscience but is now giving it a new name and saying it works.

You know what's interesting, my post is pretty heavily downvoted. I wonder what people disagreed with.

I find CBD about as useful as a sugar pill for pain treatment.

THC amongst its most minimal side effects increases my pain, not decreases it.

I would suggest everyone try everything that is open to them, but cannabis is not a miracle cure for every ailment.

Are you talking about THC isolate? I found high THC full spectrum oils to be life changing. They don't "cure" pain, but fade it into the background noise. You can still feel it if you focus on it, but pain no longer consumes your attention. I found this to be the most debilitating problem, not being able to do anything because pain just constantly grabs your thoughts and imprisons you. Medical cannabis removes that aspect almost completely. Now, I found oil to be individual thing - I had to go through a half dozen of them before I found one that is actually working for me. It was discouraging at first, but I still had hope and once I found the one... I got my life back! I've been taking it for many years now. I don't have any side effects. I don't feel "high" etc.

I've always found strange all the talk about using cannabis to manage pain. I've smoked alot of weed, well before all those talks promoting THC for this.

It was my experience, and common knowledge in my circles at the time that THC made pain way, way worse, at least in resin form.

Probably simply because you'll tend to isolate things and focus on them very strongly when under the influence, it makes you notice pain more. I remember toking some days after a knee surgery and regretting badly having done it. So much pain I hadn't noticed...

>I find CBD about as useful as a sugar pill for pain treatment.

Same.

>THC amongst its most minimal side effects increases my pain, not decreases it.

I had green card before canada legalized and thc was my main go. Higher potency just meant less smoking needed.

Alcohol was what increased pain for me.

>but cannabis is not a miracle cure for every ailment.

For me, I cant do cannabis at all anymore; but you'd be surprised how effective it is as a medicine for a lot of people.

> 100%, medication plays a great role in providing comfort and support but it can be ineffective (and often harmful) if relied on solely for recovery from (neuroplastic) chronic pain.

Medication can help you get out of a local maxima, sometimes with pain the issue is that your nervous system is hyperactive and just constantly firing which feeds back into itself in a positive feedback loop. If you can take pain meds and/or nerve blockers it can help break that loop and let you do things like go out and walk, exercise, live a life where pain is not always on the forefront of your consciousness. That in turn can let you get into a better state and break the local maxima and then you can wean off the meds.

If however, you do not change your lifestyle/condition when on the meds things will not get better long term as your body will lose responsiveness to the meds.

I am not a doctor.

> but you'd be surprised how effective it is as a medicine for a lot of people.

Nah, I mean even for me, it had some positive impacts, again, allowing me to eat for instance. So i'm not blind to its capacity to be a positive force for many conditions.

The problem is that it's really not a miracle cure without side effects for everyone which a lot of people are not willing to entertain. There are people who simply refuse to accept that cannabis is not always the best, or even a workable choice.

In my case for instance, despite the positive of an increased appetite, it increased my pain, it gave me heart palpitations, it gave me sinus tachyardia, etc. Despite this, cannabis users will argue with me and tell me I "must have been doing it wrong" or various other statements along those lines, rather than accepting that like any drug, the reaction and utility of it is down to the individual.

> I got my life back! I've been taking it for many years now. I don't have any side effects. I don't feel "high" etc.

That's fantastic! It's pretty much the goal for all of us right? Haha, so glad to hear it. I'm still on that road a little myself, but it is what it is.

> Are you talking about THC isolate? I found high THC full spectrum oils to be life changing.

I have tried it in pretty much all its forms. Flower, oil, lozenges, wafers, vape etc. If it has THC in any form, pain goes up. But it's not just pain, it induces within me sinus tachyardia and heart palpitations, no matter the strength or presence of other cannabanoids.

However I have just had surgery again, which should relieve some pressure on my central nervous system, so it's likely ill try again at some point in the future. There has been some suggestion that my nervous system has been misinterpreting the affects of cannabis as a "threat" effectively. But i'm very early in the stages of recovery so probably not going to diddle with it for a while.

> Probably simply because you'll tend to isolate things and focus on them very strongly when under the influence, it makes you notice pain more.

This is a very strong contender for why it increases my pain I think, and possibly why it induces some other side effects. I'm ok with my injury and how its changed my life for the most part, but when using THC i'd laser focus in on the pain, then from the pain to the cause and from there to "how unfair it is etc."

Its hard to explain, but the work i've done to be ok with this disability is undone when I go near THC for some reason, and is when I tend to break down and lose my ability to be "stoic" about it for lack of a better word I suppose.