1 The Invisible Driver of Chronic Pain This guide is for people who ve tried many different treatments for chronic pain - and are still in pain. www.lifeafterpain.com
2 How would you like to get to the real underlying cause of your chronic pain and then use that knowledge to turn down or even eliminate your pain long-term? I call this the volume effect. Treatments that really make a difference to chronic pain should be like turning down the volume on a stereo system. You turn the right knob and the amount of sound coming out of the stereo goes down. For pain treatments that really work it should be the same. You do the treatment and the amount of pain goes down. This seems obvious but for many people in chronic pain this is not what happens or at least not consistently or long term. The truth is that many people in chronic pain have tried surgery, have been to chiropractors (sometimes for months,) they may have tried massage, manipulations, acupuncture, different pain medications, anti-inflammatory medicine, injections and more. And this is the reality they face when they wake up in the morning they still have no idea if it s going to be a good day, or a bad day for their pain. And even when they do get pain relief for some time they never know when a flare will set them back for days or weeks.
3 Some people with chronic pain may have difficulty sitting without pain. This makes it very hard to drive for a long time, work at a desk, travel or even just sit in the cinema and enjoy a movie. Others may have pain that stops them sleeping well, or walking for long distances Whatever your pain problem is, it s costing you a lot in your daily quality of living, peace of mind, work and relationships. Some people have pain which is unpredictable - it comes and goes and they don t know what will set it off. They ve spent a long time looking for a pattern - but they re still none the wiser. Others may know exactly which activities cause their pain. What both these groups of people have in common is that they ve tried many different treatments and none of them have made a significant difference to their pain. Only people who understand what is actually causing their pain are able to say with confidence: When I do this technique my pain level goes down.
4 Hi, my name s Dr Jonathan Kuttner and I m a pain specialist. Every day in my clinic I see people who have chronic pain. Usually these people have already been to see half a dozen other experts and tried many physical treatments - but they still have pain. In this guide I m going to share with you: The cause of chronic pain that most medical experts miss Techniques you can use treat this underlying cause and get pain relief when nothing else seems to make a difference My system for turning down pain which you can use any situation - while driving, walking, sitting at work or relaxing at home. These are the exact techniques that I used to get rid of my chronic pain. I had seven years of severe lower back pain and sciatica after a hang gliding crash that nearly killed me. And after discovering the real cause of my chronic pain I went from pain everyday to no pain in 12 weeks. The transformation I experienced was what led me down the path to become a pain specialist and help other people get out of chronic pain. And over the years I have taught these techniques to many of the patients in my pain clinic. However, these techniques are not things that I share with everyone. I only share them with people who are ready to be open minded and try something different.
5 The techniques I m going to share with you worked for me (even though I had a traumatic hangliding crash, dislocated joints and a herniated disc.) And they have worked for people in many different circumstances, including people with: Past surgeries Fibromyalgia Arthritis Scans of their back, neck and shoulders which show wear and tear Damaged discs Spondylosis & scoliosis One of the people I recently worked with was Lisa Murphy, whose shoulder surgery after years of continual pain did nothing to relieve her pain. All in all she had 15 years of shoulder pain before we worked together. This was her latest statement on how she was feeling Lisa Murphy, Alberta Canada The pain is now at level 1 - hardly there at all - and I ve have even started dancing again. - Lisa Murphy
6 Here are some other people who ve used these techniques: "The Life After Pain 6 Week Program' has greatly helped me to deal with the chronic pain condition that I've had, for over six years, over much of my upper body. Inge Hange, Melbourne Australia I'm grateful to now feel empowered to deal with further improving my chronic condition. Thanks guys for your continued mentoring, even after the course has finished. - Inge Hanke, Melbourne Australia My mornings have gone from maybe a level 4 or 5 of pain, to a 1, if that. Katie Cotter Washington USA I ve practiced some of these methods or similar methods over the years, but I have to say, your practices that you suggest are so much more significant and effective than anything I ve practiced in the past. - Katie Cotter
7 The great thing about treating this underlying cause of chronic pain is that there are no side-effects (like most pain medications) you can do this techniques yourself at any time of the day or night, and it s worked for people when nothing else has made much difference. The best way I can explain this method is by telling the story of my house alarm. For several weeks, for some reason, the security alarm of my house was malfunctioning. I would be at work and the security company would call me up to say that my alarm had gone off and they called my house to check up on it and no one had answered. I would race home to check things out, and there would be nothing wrong no burglars, nothing. After this happened a few times I got the security company to come and fix the alarm system. As soon as they d done this - the problems stopped happening. In the same way, in our bodies, pain is our alarm system. Its function is to keep us safe. If you put your hand on a hot stove, you immediately feel pain and jerk your hand away. Pain acts as an alarm triggered by physical damage and you are able to react in time to prevent yourself from being hurt.
8 What 95% of medical practitioners do not know is that when people have chronic pain (pain that has continued for more than three months) a process may start to happen inside your pain system. What can happen is that your pain system - like my alarm system - can start to malfunction. This means your nerves can send pain messages up to your brain, and you feel that as real physical pain but there s no damage taking place in your body. Just think about it logically for a moment. Most people with chronic pain will have good days and bad days. And on the good days - they re often doing the same activities as on the bad days. The reason they feel pain on the bad days is not that there s some physical damage happening in their body. It s that their pain system is playing up and sending amplified pain messages. In my case I had back pain for seven years after a hang gliding crash. I told myself the pain was because I injured my back, but the truth was that the original injury had healed. I felt severe pain every day, but when I used the techniques I m going to share with you - the pain went. It was significantly better in six weeks, and by 12 weeks it was gone.
9 Every day in my clinic I see people with pain that s been with them for years. Sometimes it was from a car accident or whiplash injury, other times it was something very minor like lifting a heavy suitcase. Once I m able to coach them through treating the real cause of their pain I have seen many people go from pain every day to little or no pain. So how do you go about fixing a malfunction in your pain system? It starts with understanding how this can happen. All the sensations you feel - pain as well as normal sensations like heat, cold and comfort - are simply messages that travel from your nerves up to your brain. It s only when they reach your brain that these messages are interpreted and you feel them.
10 When a message travels from your painful area up to your brain, there is a synapse where this message has to transfer from the original nerve carrier into your spinal cord. At this synapse (or connection between nerves) the message can be amplified. Here s an example. Suppose you injured your shoulder years ago and your pain system started to malfunction. Now during the day messages come your shoulder up to your brain. In a normally functioning pain system these message would travel unchanged up to your brain and you would feel no pain. But if your pain system is malfunctioning, the messages get amplified and dialled up so instead of comfort you feel pain in your shoulder. You could then do all sorts of treatments to try and fix this pain - and they would make no difference.
11 The first step to treating this pain amplification is understanding that the original area of pain is healed. This removes a lot of anxiety and tension related to the pain. The second step is learning how to turn down the amplified pain messages. When you learn to react to an inaccurate pain message in the correct way you can start training your pain system to behave correctly. Over time, you return it to normal function and it starts working the way it used to before your pain started. This process involves training your body and your mind - just as you do when you learn a new skill. When you learn a new skill, you are creating a neural pathway. When you learn to throw a ball you practice it again and again until it becomes easy. When it is so easy you can do it without thinking, it is because you ve laid down a neural pathway (or created a program in your brain) which runs every time you throw a ball. The process of learning is therefore the process of creating new pathways in your brain.
12 Now, when your pain system is amplifying messages from the painful area, over time this has created a new neural pathway. And all the messages running along this pathway are turned up to the level of pain. Unconsciously you ve been using this neural pathway until it has become the default setting for your pain system. To undo this programming of your brain and your pain system you need to practice new ways of attention, emotion, and movement in order to create in your brain a new pathway that is pain-free. When you create this new pathway you can start to experience hours when you don t have pain. You can learn to do movements that don t cause you pain (even though in the past they were always painful.) However, to fully engage in creating these new pain free pathways you need to go very deep inside your brain and your unconscious. You need to untangle the complex links between your pain, your thoughts, emotions, beliefs and the way in which your body reacts when you feel your familiar pain.
13 After practicing our techniques here s what one person experienced: "Already after 10 days, I feel a significant reduction in the pain in my back and knee, but more importantly, I experience big chunks of time during the day when I feel no pain, just overall ease. Hadn't felt that way for over 20 years. "I now know (have accepted and experienced) that my pain is not permanent. While I have been doing a lot of 'hard work' to heal after my knee surgery, there was a part of me that didn't believe in the healing. "Your course has definitely contributed to making me change my 'mind' about that, and my body is so grateful. yeah!" France Girard And another lady: "Thank you that was helpful there is definitely body mind connection and personally,when I have accepted the cause and effect of pain in my mind, I am able to look positively at ways to get rid of it and it has WORKED!" - Dolly Mani Helping people just like you is what I do I ve done every day in my clinic for the last 14 years. Now - if this sounds interesting to you, then there s a next step to take. Join the Club to Treat Chronic Pain Wishing you all the best, Dr Jonathan Kuttner