100 million people in the US have chronic pain. That’s more than the statistics for cancer, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease combined! So chances are that you, or someone you know – whether a friend, family member, or someone else close to you has dealt with chronic pain, me included. I didn’t realize until this interview that there are SO many connections between chronic pain and nutrition in the way that it is treated by the medical system.
Our guest today is Brendon Lundberg, the Founder of Radiant Pain Relief Centers working to change the way that chronic pain is treated. The scientific understanding of pain has changed significantly…it’s all about the brain, not the tissue! Pain is intended to be a protective function. The nervous system’s primary job is to keep us alive. If pain occurs, it’s a signal from your brain to not do that again because it’s trying to protect you!
The way that most doctors are trained in the treatment of chronic pain is a similar way that they are trained in nutrition: not a lot of hours during school, and they are trained to give a pill solution instead of taking root cause approach to find the real source of the pain or symptoms. Industry is informing the science and guidelines of chronic pain treatment, just like it is with nutrition. In the 80’s and 90’s, the grain, soy, and corn industries helped inform the food pyramid, which made everyone more unhealthy, sick, and now something like 40% of the US population is obese.
In chronic pain, too many people are prescribed NSAIDS (non-steroidal anti-inflammatories, which you guys have probably heard me talk about before as wrecking the gut when taken for too long) or at the stronger end of things, opioid-derived drug prescriptions, which only mask the pain short term but creates more complex issues long-term as sleep is disrupted, digestion is disrupted, nutritional absorption goes down as a result of the medication, and the only solution they have to manage their chronic pain is to continue to take these medications – .
Brendon talks about a therapy that helps shifting pain in a way that retrains the brain and decreases their chronic pain significantly – empowering clients to re-claim their health, which then leads to seek out better nutritional approaches, sleep, stress, mindset, etc.
We discuss:
- Brendon’s story: what led him to be so passionate about researching and treating chronic pain
- The difference between acute and chronic pain
- Doesn’t pain mean something is wrong?
- The neuroscience of pain – our tissues don’t actually have the ability to experience or feel pain. The science has made it clear that all pain comes from the brain (not the tissue!)
- The typical way chronic pain is treated and the way people normally manage their chronic pain; and the complications this can cause long-term for sleep, nutritional deficiencies, and other comorbidities
- The opioid addiction epidemic that stems from chronic pain treatment
- How cortisone injections can actually accelerate degeneration of the tissue and make the chronic pain problem worse
- Icing can inhibit the inflammatory (healing!) process
- What our bodies are trying to tell us with chronic pain – and why masking it with a drug may make the problem worse.
- Scrambler therapy: a new approach to treating chronic pain
Brendon’s book recommendation: Man’s Search for Meaning, Viktor L. Frankl
Find Brendon: www.radiantrelief.com
Brendon Lundberg, a previous chronic pain suffer, co-founded Radiant Pain Relief Centres, along with David Farley, MD, a Harvard-MIT trained physician, with a vision to build the safest, most consistently effective and appealing solution to the epidemic of chronic pain.
Combining a mission to change the way chronic pain is understood treated with deep experience in healthcare management, marketing, business development and sales, Brendon and Dr. David Farley opened Radiant Pain Relief Centres in Portland, Oregon, USA, in February 2014. Following the success of the first center, they are laying out a plan for expansion to open new centers in new markets nationally and internationally.
Their story and vision for the future of pain management can be understood by reading their book, Radiant Relief – A Case For A Better Solution To Chronic Pain.
Previous to founding Radiant, Brendon played key operational and business development roles for two Portland-Area Portland Business Journal and Inc. Magazine Growth Award winning companies, and was the Director of Sales and Marketing for another Portland-based medical device start-up. Brendon holds a BS in business marketing and an MBA.
More information can be found at www.radiantrelief.com
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