Pain Laser Therapy

PAIN LASER THERAPY
WARNING - DANGER

Always consult with your prescribing medical physician prior to making any changes to the type or dosages of your medication regimen. To make adjustments to your medication protocol without consulting your medical provider can cause significant harm or death.

The use of an opioid pain medication can provide significant temporary relief from the pain. However, year after year, the tolerance and dependency on the pain medication can grow, yet the pain continues. If the effect of the medication only last for five hours, then the body adapts and becomes conditioned to take the pills every five hours. Soon thereafter, the body experiences frequent withdrawals as the medication wears off. The body physically thinks it will die unless more chemicals replace those that wore off ultimately prompting a vicious circle of physical dependency and withdrawals. 
Unfortunately, the consequences do not stop with opioid chemical dependency. After years of regular medication usage and a frequent cycle of withdrawals, more pain can develop. The nervous system often becomes more sensitive to painful stimulation (a phenomenon called opioid-induced hyperalgesia). The nervous system becomes hypersensitive causing more nerve pain, more sensitivity to movement, ultimately necessitating more medications to control the pain. In other words, opioid use begins to have the opposite of its original intended effect by causing pain, instead of relieving pain.
Long-term use of opioids disrupts the entire hormonal system, causing a significant reduction in sex hormone production, thyroid function, and cortisol production - responsible for activating anti-stress and anti-inflammatory pathways - leading to poor immune function, chronic fatigue and depression.
Inflammation is your body's natural response to threats from germs, harmful toxins, environmental pollutants, injury and stress. The process involves immune, vascular, and cellular biochemical reactions that work to remove the offenders and protect tissues from damage. This natural defense mode works to shield your body's systems and initiate the healing process. However, when your body is in a chronic state of inflammation, it can have serious effects on your cellular health, and has been linked to degenerative diseases including cancer, heart disease, diabetes, Alzheimer's and many others.

Pain

  • Nociceptive pain is caused by normal processing of stimuli that damage tissues, such as pain that occurs in response to trauma or surgery.
  • Neuropathic pain, occurs due to the abnormal processing of sensory input by the peripheral or central nervous system.

Phases

  • Transduction – Tissue Damage - cells release substances that lead to the generation of an action potential (e.g. Prostaglandins, bradykinin, serotonin, substance P, and histamine).
  • Transmission - Action potential continues from the site of damage to the spinal cord, where it ascends up the spinal cord to higher centers in the brain.
  • Perception - Conscious awareness of pain.
  • Modulation - Inhibition of painful or nociceptive stimuli. In the modulation phase, neurons descending from the brain release substances that inhibit the transmission of painful impulses. Analgesic drugs work at different steps of these processes to relieve pain. Again, long term use can eventually cause an opposite effect.

Perception

  • Sensory-motor level refers to the "raw feel" of the pain.
  • Affective level refers to the perceptual-emotional reaction to the pain (e.g. there are people who can have sensations of pain, but have no affective reaction to it).
  • Imaginative level (i.e. images what is causing the pain and imagined future sequence of interacting with the pain).
  • Linguistic narrative level (i.e. self-conscious talk about the pain, explicit theory of what is causing it, what it means, and how it will unfold).

Osteoarthritic Pain (most common)

  • Acute Phase - occasional joint pain and stiffness (reversible).
  • Subacute Phase – intermittent to frequent periods of localized joint pain and stiffness (reversible).
  • Chronic Phase - constant significant pain and stiffness in multiple joints requiring prescription drugs to address symptoms (not the cause) (slow progression – pain management).
  • Degenerative Phase – complete loss of cartilage surrounding joints, bone on bone and unbearable pain requiring powerful narcotic pain killers (pain management).

WARNING: Osteoarthritis is a progressive disease, and without taking action to arrest it in the acute stage it is inevitable that the subacute, chronic and degenerative phases will follow.