Can You Recover from Chronic Pain?
Is chronic pain a life sentence, or a reversible condition? The opening of a series on research-based treatment for recovering from persistent pain — without medication or invasive procedures.
Hello, and welcome. I'm about to begin a series of articles on an innovative, research-based treatment for chronic pain — one that can lead to a significant reduction in pain, and even to full recovery (without medication, surgery, or invasive procedures). This treatment goes by several different names (Pain Reprocessing Therapy, EAET, Dr. Sarno's method, TMS therapy), but they all share the same core idea — which is what the coming articles are about.
I began adopting and applying this approach in my clinic a few years ago, after extensive study and training. It all starts from one simple insight — one that decades of research have been piling up evidence for: chronic pain is, in most cases, reversible — it can be significantly improved, and even resolved completely (yes, resolved).
If you live with persistent pain, this may sound outrageous. After all, most doctors and health providers still hold the view that chronic pain is for life — that there's no way to change it, and you simply have to learn to live with it. But is that true? Here I'll be honest: my own experience treating people with chronic pain (people who recovered as a result of the treatment) isn't really the point — because there's a large body of research evidence pointing to the fact that recovery is possible.
First, the internet (and the research world too) is full of recovery stories — patients who recovered from chronic back pain, neck pain, headaches, fibromyalgia, various pain syndromes, and even CRPS (here's a site that collects recovery stories by diagnosis).
On top of that, over the past few decades several high-quality studies in leading journals have shown that recovery from chronic pain is possible when the treatment is built on the right therapeutic approach. For example: 66% of people with chronic low back pain recovered after treatment with Pain Reprocessing Therapy. A parallel study by a different research group found similar numbers (64% recovery) (Ashar et al, 2022; Donnino et al, 2021). A documentary about this treatment was recently released, called "Pain Brain" — well worth watching.
In the next article, I'll give some background on what actually causes persistent pain (and what doesn't), so that later on it'll be clearer why one kind of treatment can help reduce pain while others can't.