The above video, is a short version, 5 minutes, about Pain Management and sound healing. Below is a much longer version with research about pain, pain management, and curated sound healing protocols for managing pain and lessening pain. Learn about the relationship of pain, trauma, and our healing.
Chronic pain can be debilitating, affecting every aspect of life. But what if there was a non-invasive, non-pharmacological way to alleviate pain and enhance your overall well-being? How do curated sound healing systems diminish pain and are a useful pain management method? In this blog learn about what causes pain, the prevalence of pain, how pain is managed in the US, and who gets pain. You will also learn about the powerfully effective use of sound healing that contributes to lessening pain and more.
Pain is the way our body lets us know something is out of synch and needs attention. However, when there is chronic pain it can become an overriding system that influences all aspects of life and also makes activities difficult and ordinary living activities and chores daunting. Besides being challenged by what is ordinary for others who do not have pain, tasks that were previously accomplished without thought and were easy, now take more effort and planning. Chronic pain can also make these activities take more time. And all of these can wear people down.
What specific areas of life are affected by chronic pain.
The following areas create an interference in many different areas of life when there is chronic pain. These areas include
- physical functioning
- professional life
- relationships and family life
- self-care
- getting to appointments
- managing and cleaning a home
- social life
- sleep and
Chronic pain can significantly harm a person’s life quality with emotional distress, physical limitations, and social isolation. In the population of people with chronic pain 20% have suicidal thoughts (ideation) and between 5-14% of people with chronic pain attempt suicide. I had a person tell me their choices for dealing with their pain were either to get a surgery they were terrified of or to commit suicide! The additional areas that are affected can be anxiety and/or depression from managing pain and the difficulties and stress of navigation with pain. And chronic pain leads to other diseases and obesity. To receive the diagnosis of chronic pain syndrome the person has to have experien. pain for 3 months or longer.
The Cost of Pain in Dollars
In the United States the cost of healthcare expenses related to pain management is 100 billion dollars annually! In Europe it is €200 billion dollars. These costs are greater than the healthcare costs of heart disease, cancer and diabetes combined! Other financial costs and costs to the person with the pain are the long-term disability. Because pain has many dimensions related to its occurrence it is difficult for primary care physicians to manage. And as a result of these factors, and alarmingly, nearly two-thirds of chronic pain patients are dissatisfied with their current treatment. This all sets the stage for using an intervention, curated sound healing systems, which address different domains of chronic pain at the same time and is affordable.
Who Gets Chronic Pain that needs Interventions?
Pain occurs in 30.7% of adults and is often caused from surgery, cancer, auto accidents and injury. Other pain arises from immune-compromised illnesses like arthritis and complex regional pain syndrome that occurs in the hands, leg, feet, or arm. Another immune compromised illness like Epstein-Barr and Guillan-Barre effect the nervous system as does Multiple sclerosis. Fibromyalgia is another condition where muscle and skeletal pain occurs throughout the body and also includes fatigue, inability to get good sleep, brain fog, and mood dysregulation.
The Areas Where Pain Occur
Pain occurs in the physical body for different reasons which include accidents and injury, surgery, burns, from different diseases, immune-compromised illnesses like diabetes, and psychogenic pain related to emotional issues (more on this below). The kinds of pain include neuropathic pain and nocioceptive pain related to tissue injury from burns, sprains, and surgeries. Inflammatory pain occurs with immune-compromised illness lie fibromyalgia, rheumatoid arthritis, and gout. Back pain is musculoskeletal pain and psychogenic pain is cause from behavioral, psychosocial, or emotional factors and is considered a contributor from trauma and early childhood trauma that compounds over time. Psychogenic pain results in appearing like a disorder but what is happening is there are changes in how neurological stimulus are received in the brain. The production of cortisol from stress and trauma creates inflammation and creates a syndrome which is a predilection for the manifestation of pain that people have in primary care settings that becomes complicated to manage mentioned above.
Reviewing Common Treatments of Pain and the Issues Related to These Treatments
- Most often people will be given a pharmaceutical as a first approach to managing pain because in the current medical model it is cheaper. From working in primary care I noticed patients are programmed to expect to be given a pill that will solve their problems. It is easier than multiple appointments with other modalities that require co-pays. And the number of treatments needed when a patient is referred out may not be covered by their healthcare insurance provider.
- Another reason people expect a pill, besides the dominant influence of the pharmaceutical industry in primary care, is that a pill is easier than dealing with past traumas. In addition their healthcare insurance often does not allocate enough sessions with a trained professional or allow for a program that will get to the underlying precipitating issues.
- Physical therapy, chiropractic and osteopathic adjustments have a valuable place but do not address core issues of people who have pain. As the statistics show there is a high percentage of chronic pain related to trauma and post traumatic stress. This means the origin is never addressed with a pill or physical therapy, chiropractic, or osteopathic visit in the neurological system. The neurological system stays in a state of producing cortisol and inflammation that continues the pain cycle unless there is a consistent, effective intervention.
- Over the counter products often do not have enough clout to make them useful. People may try topical treatments as well as ingestables that are not effective leading to frustration, mixing different products like CBD’s with alcohol, and other self-medicating behavior that leads to dangerous health situations and compounds any other health issues.
Most Known Options for Dealing with Chronic Pain
Most known options that are usually available for managing pain include
mild and moderately effective over the counter products, non-steroidal anti-inflammatory (NSAIDS), that can cause issues with the gut and heartburn, and cannabinoids also known as CBD’s. The issue with CBD’s is when they have less than 0.3% THC they are federally legal but when they contain more than 0.3% they are federally illegal but legal under some state laws. So accessing and using them is complicated and I have heard of people who travel with their CBD’s for pain who get arrested because of the state they are in does not allow CBD’s for pain. And there are people who use alcohol to medicate pain and/or mix alcohol with their pain medications which is another dangerous combination.
And there is treatment of pain with opioids. Many people don’t want to even go down the route of an opioid because of its addictive nature because they are a recovering addict, or they don’t want to even begin because of knowing people who have gotten addicted or worse died from their addiction. And sadly I have known several people who have died from using opioids.
Opioids for Pain Relief
Patients that require opioids for pain relief usually have exhausted more conservative analgesics such as non-steroidal anti-inflammatories and acetaminophen. Opioids, despite being highly addictive, are still one of the most prescribed pharmaceuticals for this particular issue. There are five opioid medications in the top 200 most prescribed drugs in the US and one within the top 10.
Issues with Opioids
The United States is still in the midst of an epidemic of opioid abuse and deaths that has continued for over three decades! The opioid crisis is considered to have occurred in waves starting in 1991. The latest wave is with the synthetic opioid fentanyl that started in 2013. Doctors in outpatient and emergency departments and places where patients are looking for relief from their pain that has gotten out of control are also having difficulties with their options of leaning into prescribing medications as their primary ‘go-to’ to help their patients. These professionals know the issues with opioids for addiction, adverse side effects that lead to death, the risk of patient suicide, and the role of law enforcement. As a result they do not prescribe opioids or very sparingly leaving people desperate to find the relief they need with illegal substances on the streets. Clinicians that prescribe opioids face challenges that involve medical negligence in either failure to provide adequate pain control or risk of licensure or even criminal charges if it is perceived they are involved in drug diversion or misuse. And pain specialists want to provide alternatives that are effective for treating pain to help their patients. Painfully, I personally know people who have died from opioid use due to medical prescriptions that should never have been given.
Additional Pain Management Issues
People who have pain go to their primary care provider who faces multiple issues to providing what is necessary for a person who has pain. The primary care provider has little time, needs to let the person know there are complex issues with pain management as well as setting expectations for pain management. Knowing the research that links childhood psychological and physical trauma to adult pain and mental health issues as found in the Adverse Childhood Experience test, doesn’t benefit the primary care provider because of their situation. Whether they know or not know about this relationship their patients may be resistant or unwilling to get a referral for something that seems unrelated when they are seeing their primary care physician to get relief from their pain.
Another Layer of Managing Pain
Primary care physicians are put into the position of having to care for the presenting condition of pain, but they don’t have the time to deal with trauma and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Yet Research shows 15% to 35% of people with chronic pain also have PTSD. And Only 2% of people who do not have chronic pain have PTSD. An example is a study that found 51% of patients with chronic low back pain had PTSD symptoms. This means when we look at trauma, especially since birth to the age of 18, (as does the Adult Childhood Experience test) there is exposure to specific circumstances from childhoods that creates vulnerability to adult mental and physical health issues. Research shows the developing nervous system in children is more vulnerable resulting in psychological/emotional and physical injuries when they experience trauma resulting in the likelihood of adult mental health issues. And there is more below on the relationship of Post Traumatic Stress and the relationship with pain which may be considered an origin of trauma.
When we don’t know or have methods that allow the neurological system to restore itself from stress and trauma they compound within our overall system and neurological system and can effect health today and in the future. While the Adverse Childhood Experience test shows our risk over our life, it does not address what is called generational trauma, that is trauma that is passed through families by silence and secrets, emotional changes and what is spoken and not spoken and the feelings and tones around these experiences. Research also shows we inherit the traumas through our system as well as wisdom, however the traumas stay unless we unravel the storing of these traumas within. While it is certain not everyone will get the common illness or disease of our day they are very prevalent. Gaining methods that change our responses to these traumas are not only useful but also like a huge evolutionary leap in changing our predilection for mental and physical illness and pain.
Reliable Effective Pain Management
Given these group of challenges, seeking outside of this seemingly closed matrix for options that are verified by research is challenging. However, there is also research that shows the curated sound listening system for managing pain lessens pain, reduces depression and anxiety, and also gives the person control over the pain in their life, instead of the pain having control. Unlike traditional methods this approach has the benefits as non-invasive, and non-pharmacological intervention that is safe, easily accessible, and available. I did research in internal medicine with pain patients using curated sound and music systems that made these amazing positive changes in people’s lives.
About the Research with Curated Sound Healing as a System
When we hear about sound healing it is often one particular kind of sounds that the person can listen to which are not supported by research. There are reliable and powerful differentiating elements of researched sound healing. The five significant components of the curated sound healing system are the following.
- The first component is within the curated sound healing system is there are several different selections that are based on the repetitions that transform us simply by listening. Human beings are hard wired for specific patterns and repetitions that we harmonize with. Repetition and patterns are key to sustaining the listener in the restorative state where all the transforming elements mentioned above occur. These specific patterns are reliable rhythms that hold the listener through entrainment and harmonization with the sounds until the end of the selection. Entrainment is the synchronization of an external stimulus with others, in the case of sound patterns and humans it is our synchronization through our heart rate, respiration, and brain waves with the specially selected sound patterns.
- The curated sound healing programs are based on research with people with chronic pain patients in Internal Medicine. These people had different chronic pain issues. Over the research time the people used specific measurements to determine where they were at for each day starting at the first day through the last day. Measurable differences were seen that determined the benefits of the curated sound listening programs.
- A System. In the curated sound healing of the 3Melete Managing Pain program there is a system to follow that give tools and methods that benefit the listener. This system supports the process and is a significant intervention that is useful on a daily basis. Unlike a temporary measure using the system of curated sound healing protocols sustains long-term benefits.
- Best Practices Video. You get a best practices video guide to learn how to create what is needed for success. The best practices video also includes what to avoid that undermines success. Using the best practices video gives people an advantage for following the steps, using the system, and gaining all the benefits.
Inside the Managing Pain 3Melete Sound Healing Program there are measurement scales to use from the first day of starting and continuing through the practice. People are encouraged to use these measurements to be able to notice changes, progress, and to see patterns and insight. These measurements help to notice external influences as well.
5. A Guide. Inside the Managing Pain program is a step-by-step easy-to-follow guide. Using the guide assists in following the process for success. And it makes the experience easy.
The participants used surveys to identify the changes over the course of the weeks they used the curated sound program during the research. Noticing where they started and the changes that occurred through till the end of the research revealed the positive influence and benefits, so their experience was recorded to visibly see the changes.
Other Benefits of Curated Sound Healing
As a self-management strategy there is empowerment from the curated sound that includes gaining a sense of calm and also aiding in getting better sleep. Regular and consistent use of curated sound listening methods bring about other benefits including mood regulation and there is a diminishing of cortisol the stress hormone that creates inflammation which contributes to pain and illness. There is a release of dopamine and serotonin that also elevate mood and there is a boosting of the immune system. Another area of benefits are development of more resilience and problem-solving abilities and connection to inner wisdom.
This simple yet powerful approach helps with managing pain, improves mood, and enhances the overall quality of life. By taking control of your pain management strategy with curated sound listening, you’re not only addressing the physical aspects of pain but also its emotional and psychological impacts.
If you or someone you know is struggling with chronic pain, consider exploring the benefits of curated sound listening systems that are developed for managing pain with research that supports the benefits. It’s an empowering method that can transform your approach to pain management and lead to a healthier, more balanced life.
Research
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