{"id":9828,"date":"2018-02-07T06:00:43","date_gmt":"2018-02-07T11:00:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/doinglifetogether\/?p=9828"},"modified":"2018-02-06T05:29:38","modified_gmt":"2018-02-06T10:29:38","slug":"why-we-medicate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/doinglifetogether\/2018\/02\/why-we-medicate.html","title":{"rendered":"Why We Medicate Chronic Pain"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-9924\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/258\/2018\/02\/abdominal-pain-2821941_640-300x200.jpg\" alt=\"abdominal-pain-2821941_640\" width=\"300\" height=\"200\" \/>When Aldous Huxley wrote the novel <em>Brave New World<\/em> in 1932, people thought he was describing a\u00a0totalitarian nightmare. However today, we might align more with the notion\u00a0of wanting an ideal pleasure drug so as not to experience any unpleasant emotion. Modern America likes to medicate away chronic pain, but is this a good idea? And why do we do it?<\/p>\n<p>Pain is unpleasant by definition. It&#8217;s purpose is to alert us to do something such as protect our body. Pain\u00a0is an important survival mechanism. And we now know that pain is created in the brain. No brain, no pain! When a part of your body is injured, nerve endings send signals to the brain. Many parts of the brain are involved in signaling pain. And the severity of the pain feeling is not tied to the severity of injury. Pain is in the brain and there are times the brain thinks the body is in danger and it is not.<\/p>\n<p>And here is the kicker, pain breeds pain. In other words, the more times your\u00a0brain activates a\u00a0neural pathway\u00a0for pain, the\u00a0easier it is to activate that pathway over and over. This is how chronic pain is born. The pain pathway is learned and used over and over. And the triggers around the pain become associated with that pain and remembered in the brain as well. For\u00a0example, you sit at your desk and feel pain. The \u00a0brain remembers the desk as triggering pain. The next time you sit at the desk, the brain remembers and you feel pain. This conditioned association is why we feel pain at certain times and places long after the injury has healed.<\/p>\n<p>Finally, our emotional states can turn the volume of pain up or down. Feelings and thoughts associated with pain can bring on those pain feelings and even amplify them. So the issue is, if your pain continues for a long time, long\u00a0after the tissue damage is healed, there is more maintaining that pain than your\u00a0physical state. \u00a0It is the processing of that pain that needs to be addressed, not the physical issues in the body. \u00a0And medication doesn&#8217;t fix that processing. Thus, the medicating of this type of chronic pain isn&#8217;t effective.<\/p>\n<p>Different approaches to chronic pain are needed such as learning to turn down the dial on pain through regulating emotions and using pain helping behaviors. Taking a pill won&#8217;t stop your pain when the pain is chronic and tissue damaged is healed. So why do we do? It may be all we know what to do to stop the pain. It may be we want an easy fix. Or it may be, we aren&#8217;t aware of the complexities of pain treatment that require a different mindset to dealing with chronic pain.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When Aldous Huxley wrote the novel Brave New World in 1932, people thought he was describing a\u00a0totalitarian nightmare. However today, we might align more with the notion\u00a0of wanting an ideal pleasure drug so as not to experience any unpleasant emotion. Modern America likes to medicate away chronic pain, but is this a good idea? And&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":419,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[925],"tags":[3338,4156,1173,4157],"class_list":["post-9828","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mintle-mentions","tag-chronic-pain","tag-medicating-pain","tag-pain","tag-pain-in-the-brain"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Why We Medicate Chronic Pain<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/doinglifetogether\/2018\/02\/why-we-medicate.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Why We Medicate Chronic Pain\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"When Aldous Huxley wrote the novel Brave New World in 1932, people thought he was describing a\u00a0totalitarian nightmare. However today, we might align more with the notion\u00a0of wanting an ideal pleasure drug so as not to experience any unpleasant emotion. Modern America likes to medicate away chronic pain, but is this a good idea? And&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/doinglifetogether\/2018\/02\/why-we-medicate.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Doing Life Together\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:author\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/drlindamintle\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2018-02-07T11:00:43+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2018-02-06T10:29:38+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/doinglifetogether\/files\/2018\/02\/abdominal-pain-2821941_640-300x200.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Linda Mintle\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@drlindamintle\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Why We Medicate Chronic Pain","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/doinglifetogether\/2018\/02\/why-we-medicate.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Why We Medicate Chronic Pain","og_description":"When Aldous Huxley wrote the novel Brave New World in 1932, people thought he was describing a\u00a0totalitarian nightmare. 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Dr. Linda\u2019s fun personality and expertise comes through whether she\u2019s helping her audience stress less or make peace with their thighs! Dr. Linda has her Ph.D. in Urban Health and Clinical Psychology and is a national expert on mental health. She has specialized in the treatment of eating disorders, anxiety, depression and pain management. With 30 years of clinical experience working with couples, families and individuals, she brings her common-sense approach to people who want to live in positive mental health. Dr. Linda is also a bestselling author with 21 book titles to her credit, a radio host of the Dr. Linda Mintle show, professor, national speaker, winner of the Mom\u2019s Choice Award, a national news consultant, featured writer for Beliefnet and hosts her own website. Her academic appointments keep her abreast of current research in her areas of expertise. Her media experience includes seven years as the resident expert for ABC Family\u2019s Living the Life television show and regular appearances on network television and radio. It is often said that being with Dr. Linda is like having coffee with a friend. She makes the complicated issues of relationships and mental health easy to understand and applicable to everyday living. The ease she has with people, coupled with her clinical training and experience makes her a sought-after speaker on college campuses, conferences and special events. Whether she is doing a TV skit with Tim Conway or discussing teen violence with Queen Latifa, Dr. Linda will entertain, educate and integrate faith and mental health in everyday living. Check out her latest book Hope and Healing for Anxiety, a whole-person approach to eliminate anxiety. .","sameAs":["https:\/\/drlindamintle.com\/","https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/drlindamintle\/","https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/drlindamintle\/","https:\/\/x.com\/drlindamintle"],"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/doinglifetogether\/author\/lmintle"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/doinglifetogether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9828","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/doinglifetogether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/doinglifetogether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/doinglifetogether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/419"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/doinglifetogether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9828"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/doinglifetogether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9828\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9926,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/doinglifetogether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9828\/revisions\/9926"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/doinglifetogether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9828"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/doinglifetogether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9828"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/doinglifetogether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9828"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}