If you're following the latest in pain science or maybe you've attended certain lectures, you know that pain science education is on the tip of everyone's tongue these days. Whether you come from the explain pain camp, that's my personal favorite, or maybe the pain neuroscience education camp, pain biology and intervention, more and more professionals are using to treat chronic pain. There's a good reason for this. We have a growing body of evidence that states that pain education can improve things like pain, pain catastrophizing, fear avoidance, as well as pain interference, so much so that the experts now agree that every practitioner should be greasing their wheels with pain biology education as an intervention to help people cope. Even though pain education has seeped its way into the foundation of your practice, the one thing we still don't know is which patients with chronic pain are more likely to improve their knowledge following pain biology education.

Joining us to discuss pain science education and how to assess the reconceptualization of pain is Joshua W. Pate. He is an Australian physiotherapist and a PhD candidate with a passion for teaching people about pain so they can develop active sales management strategies. His PhD includes investigating a child's concept of pain as well as the validation of the concept of pain inventory. Joshua has also created two TED Ed videos that can be used as part of a targeted pain science education program. Both of those are cool and super high tech. I recommend you check out the one on phantom limb. On this show, Joshua will explain why someone's concepts of pain matters, which patients are more likely to improve their knowledge after a two-hour pain education session, why the neurophysiology of pain questionnaire may not be appropriate to use with children and finally, what language kids use to describe their concept of pain.

If you want to study along with us, Josh has shared two of his key papers that you can download for free. The first is called A Child's Concept of Pain and the second is Pain Neuroscience Education on YouTube: A Systematic Review. For free access to both of these papers, all you have to do is pick up your cell phone and text the word, 136Download, to the number 44-222. I'll send it right to your inbox. If you're on your computer, you can open up a new window and type in the URL, www.IntegrativePainScienceInstitute.com/136Download. Take a moment to download those two free resources that Josh has provided. He's doing some exciting and inventive work in the area of pain science education as well as pediatric pain management, and I can't wait to introduce his work to you. Let's begin and chat with Joshua.

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If you follow this show for some time, you know that one of the aims of this show is to help reconceptualize pain from a biomedical perspective and increase the awareness of a biopsychosocial approach to pain care. Chronic pain has long been recognized as an experience that can threaten your need for safety, both physically and psychologically, but what about feeling safe from a social context? Social context can be a powerful mediator and influence how pain is experienced. The social context of pain is such an important topic that there's even a movement to change the definition of pain from being an unpleasant sensory and an emotional experience to one that emphasizes pain as an experience associated with sensory, emotional, cognitive and social components.

Joining us to talk about the pain in a social context is Dr. Kai Karos. Kai earned a Bachelor's and a Master's in Psychology at Maastricht University in the Netherlands. He then went on to complete a PhD where he investigated the effects of threatening social environments on the experience and communication of pain. Kai is working as a postdoctoral researcher investigating in the social learning of pain-related fear and avoidance. You will learn all about pain as a threat to the social self, including how pain interferes with the basic human needs such as the need for autonomy, the need to belong and the need for justice and fairness. Kai is a highly sought-after speaker regarding the social context of pain and one of a small handful of researchers globally who is investigating this important topic. This is a topic that does not receive enough media attention, so I'm excited to share this with you.

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I’ve been so excited to put this all together for you and to share with you. You will meet an exceptional physical therapist who is helping women with chronic pain and anxiety by combining physical therapy with functional nutrition. Lauren Bahr is a licensed physical therapist. She’s a health coach and she’s a graduate of the Functional Nutrition for Chronic Pain certification program at the Integrative Pain Science Institute. Lauren combines physical therapy together with functional nutrition in the plan of care for her clients with chronic pain and anxiety in her private practice, which is called Simply Balanced Wellness.

What I love about this interview with Lauren is not only is she passionate about the type of practitioner that she’s become, but clear about sharing her entire journey of learning and discovery to arriving at the place she is, where she’s now able to combine traditional physical therapy, pain education, functional nutrition and even some of the coaching skills with helping her clients with pain and anxiety. We all know these are skills that do not appear in a traditional physical therapy curriculum or quite frankly, in any traditional form of medical education. Lauren has spent years learning these techniques as well as honing her skills to be the practitioner she is now. Lauren is even now dipping her toes into Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, a treatment which I think is going to be critical when she’s working with her clients with anxiety, as well as chronic pain in her private practice.

As you go through this, what stands out to me is Lauren’s journey. It’s her journey as a practitioner and she also weaves in her journey as someone who dealt with her own health challenges of chronic pain and chronic fatigue. To help you out, Lauren includes a free download to accompany her interview. This free gift is called the Breakfast Recipe Book. If you are interested in nutrition or if you’re someone who’s currently using nutrition with your clients, you’ll know that breakfast can be a time that’s challenging for our patients and our clients because many of the convenient breakfast foods out there are highly processed, they’re loaded with sugar and they even include trans-fat. If you want a combination of three things that are bound to cause inflammation in the body, which can lead to chronic pain, processed foods, loaded with sugar and loaded with trans fats. Often many of the processed breakfast foods include that. In this Breakfast Recipe Book, you’re going to find a ton of delicious recipes that you can use for yourself or with your family or you can use it for nutrition education when you’re working with your patients.

To download this free gift, all you have to do is text 134Download to the number 44-222 or you can open up a browser on your computer and you will type in www.IntegrativePainScienceInstitute.com/134download and you can grab that free gift which will be delivered right to your inbox. I want to thank Lauren for being a member of the Functional Nutrition for Chronic Pain Certification. If you’re someone who’s looking for an integrative practitioner like Lauren who has a combination of these important skills that can help you with chronic pain, check out the Integrative Pain Science Institute Practitioner directory. You’ll be able to search there on a map to find a practitioner in your area. Let’s welcome Lauren Bahr.

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We're going to talk about primary spine care providers. If you follow this blog for quite some time, you know that spine problems and spine disorders are among the most common, most costly and most disabling problems that we experienced in Western society with regard to chronic pain. For the purpose of this blog, when we talk about spine-related disorders. We're talking about a group of conditions that include back pain, neck pain, all the various types of headaches and migraines, radiculopathy and other types of symptoms that are related directly to the spine. If you want to know an interesting and perhaps shocking statistic, virtually 100% of the population is affected by this group of disorder s at least once in their life, if not twice.

One proposed solution to treating chronic spinal pain in our healthcare system is to train practitioners who can function as primary care providers for the care of the spine itself. There are already physical therapists and chiropractors who function in a primary care role for the spine, although we don't have enough that are trained adequately. Some may lack the clinical skills and the confidence to function in this primary care provider role. At times, these can be big shoes to fill because a primary spine care provider requires a particular skill set that includes the ability to apply the latest evidence-based procedures, adequately educate and motivate patients and prevent and manage disability. The interesting thing is that much of this has already been tested and it's proved to improve patient satisfaction, reduced pain, reduced disability and reduce medical costs.

Joining us on this episode to discuss this important topic is Dr. Marcia Spoto, who is a professor at Nazareth College in Rochester, New York. What's interesting about Marcia that she holds both a degree in physical therapy as well as in chiropractic medicine. She understands the care of the spine from two very important professions that contribute to the health of spine care throughout our nation and perhaps even globally. She has over 35 years of educating and caring for the spine. She also taught classes at the university level with regards to musculoskeletal management, pain management and differential diagnosis. She's maintained an active private practice called STAR Physical Therapy, which is in Fairport New York. She also serves on the American Physical Therapy Association Orthopedic Practice Committee and is a Co-chair of the New York Physical Therapy Association Public Policy Committee. Dr. Spoto does serve as a consultant for BlueCross BlueShield where she's a member of the Spine Care Pathway Program.

If you want more information about this episode and if you want more information to read along and follow along with us, I recommend you download a paper that's free. It's called The Establishment of a Primary Spine Care Practitioner and its Benefit to the Healthcare Reform System in the United States of America. To download this free resource, all you have to do is text 133 Download to the number 44222. You can go to the website at IntegrativePainScienceInstitute.com/132Download and you can download it directly from there. This is an evidence-based paper from a reliable medical journal that talks about the establishment of a primary spine care practitioner. It’s great information. If you are a practitioner who works with spinal care too, check this out and also if you’re someone who's interested to learn more information about care of the spine. Without further ado, let's begin with Dr. Marcia Spoto.

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