welcome to this YouTube channel here we are going to talk about pain and you may leave
your questions comments or suggestions for future topics remember that this YouTube channel is not
to offer individual patients advice rather it's more for educational and information if you think
you have a condition that is causing you chronic pain talk to your doctor to get a proper diagnosis
in a treatment plan for you today we are going to talk about chronic pain and what is chronic
pain chronic pain is pain that is ongoing every day pain and it lasts at least six months and how
common is chronic pain well unfortunately chronic pain is very common it affects one in five adults
in Canada and one in three seniors in Canada chronic pain is very costly to society mainly
because it may lead to disability it may lead to mental health issues and it also because of loss
of productivity and because of the healthcare utilization kind of pain may lead to disability
not everybody who has chronic pain will have a disability but those who have I call this the
invisible disability because nobody can see what they have chronic pains and invisible disease
usually people don't have anything to show it doesn't show in any tests like MRIs or x-rays
and people usually say well it must be in your head or you must be normal because they can't find
anything wrong but the person is suffering and what's worse the person may be very disabled so
unfortunately chronic pain is a cause of invisible disability so what are some of the common causes
of chronic pain well chronic pain can be caused by a variety of things wonder is very common is
chronic inflammation such as inflammation with the joints we call this arthritis and
an example of this is Austria try this another common type of disease that causes chronic pain
is muscle strings like my facial pain syndrome when we have tension in our muscles because of
bad posture or because of the way we work and we call this economics or because we're not resting
properly and you're going to sleeping well so it carries some tension in your muscles and that can
be ongoing for at least six months another type of disease that causes chronic pain is
what we call neuropathic pain this means there is a lesion in the nerve system could be the central
nervous system of the peripheral nervous system and neuropathic pain is a type of thing that is
different because it's electrical shocks burning sometimes it's numbness sometimes it's like a
stabbing pain and one example of new Pathak pain is shingles or herpes zoster or even people who
had a stroke and they have central post stroke pain or people who have for example diabetes and
they have a neuro pat the neuropathy because of the diabetes and that is causing pain so there
are many different types of neuropathic pain other conditions are more rare that also cause
chronic pain may include like a chronic infection or tumors such as cancer or benign tumors but I'd
like to talk to you about another type of disease that can cause chronic pain that not a lot of
people know about it it's called not a plastic thing in the example of this is fibromyalgia so
what is not so plastic thing why not see plastic being causes chronic pain well it's because it's
a malfunctioning of the pain system so if you think about the pain system has the alarm system
of a house so the alarm system is there to protect the house people will install sensors like smoke
detectors water for leakage in the basement or burglar detector and those sensors will then
carry the information to a box on the wall and from the box on the wall will sent information
to the office don't downtown somewhere or in another city then this alarm office they will
send the response to the house they will send the police the ambulance or the fire truck well
what happens with our alarm system of our body which is the pain system this being system we
also have receptors we have receptors in your skin or bones it muscles and your organs to detect if
something is wrong like to detect if there is a high temperature or cold temperature or if there
is something wrong this sensors would then send information to the spinal cord then the spinal
cord will send to the brain and then the brain will send a response saying okay I'm taking care
of this you don't need to do anything just take care of yourself and I will send a response well
imagine that this alarm system of the body can also be malfunctioning like their Lyme system of
a house so if you have an alarm system of a house that is malfunctioning there my a short circuit so
you open the cut part of your house and the line goes our or the volume of the lime system is very
loud so instead of just alerting the house people who live in the house it's alerting the whole
neighborhood so in our pain system it can also be malfunctioning this is what we call not a classic
pain so there might be sensations for example that we if we touch our skin with a lipid tissue
and then we feel pain or the alignment system of our body may be super-sensitive and the volume
is turned up and I usually tell my patients this must be horrible because you're feeling pain the
thing is there is real but it's very loud in your body you do anything and it triggers this pain the
volume is very loud and the worst thing is nobody knows what you have and people tell you that it's
in your head or even worse they say that you are imagining this because there's nothing wrong with
your body and know there is something wrong the pain system is deregulated it is malfunctioning so
this is what we called not a plastic pain and it's unfortunately it's a very common cause of chronic
pain and what are the treatments for chronic pain well I don't just say that we have the five M's
the I in the S the first M is for medications or drugs and in this class we have the analgesics
the ng plummet aureus the topicals in the and revenge medications analgesics are drugs that
only treat improving the pain just like a bandage not treating the cause of the pain these are
things like acetaminophen aspirin and opioids the ancient monitor is they remove the inflammation so
if the pain is caused by inflammation giving an interferometer is a good thing but inflammatory
are also energetics examples are the ibuprofen diclofenac celecoxib other things that we can
use are topicals things that we apply to the skin things like a capsizing cream or lidocaine cream
and the ant repellent medications are things that are not usually used for treating pain they are
used for other conditions but we can do prescribe them for people who have chronic pain because they
may help these are things like antidepressants anticonvulsants and the cannabinoids ii M is what
I call mind using the psychological interventions examples of this are cognitive behavior therapy
mindfulness meditation relaxation techniques breathing techniques distraction so we can have
a lot of discussion about those mind therapies the third M is basically movement movement is not just
exercise but it can be just moving the body and this is so helpful so I always tell my patients
that a movement is part of the retraining of the pain system so we need to incorporate that in
the treatment plan if they have a nossa plastic pain that explained before but movement can be
going to the physical therapists occupational therapists chiropractor or just starting a
routine of movement at home or in a community center or with friends or family the other m
is modalities and we use a lot of modalities for treating chronic pain things like applying heat
applying cold acupuncture electrical stimulation electrotherapy like tense those are excellent
modalities that we can take advantage to treat chronic pain and the last M is manual therapy
things like massage mobilization manipulation that can be used for especially muscle pain and
last the I and s the I our interventions that we can do such as injections and there are many types
of injections that can be used for chronic pain like trigger point injections steroid injections
for inflammatory processes or nerve blocks this can also be applied to treat chronic pain in last
surgery is usually the last resource when we do some invasive procedure like doing a surgery to
cut things to improve chronic pain and also in flinch of things like spinal cord stimulator
implant of a deep brain stimulator to treat pain or a pump of morphine inside of the brain those
are very rare situations that we need to do those surgical procedures and invasive procedures but we
have to keep in mind that we also have those available to treat chronic pain so those are
all tools that we need to have in your toolbox if you liked this video don't forget to like it and
leave a comment below if you have any questions about this video please also write your questions
in the box below and I will create a question and answer videos in the future if you have a
suggestion for a future topic that you would like me to talk about it please write it down
and don't forget to subscribe to this YouTube channel and turn on your notifications so then
you can be alerted when I post new videos on this YouTube channel I also tweet I have
a Facebook page in an Instagram account feel free to visit them and leave your comments bye for now