Title: 
Pain Relief & The Pain Pandemic

Word Count:
639

Summary:
Pain is a major symptom, and pain relief should be a paramount professional concern. The schism that produced competitive health care professions, primarily traditional medicine, osteopathy and chiropractic shattered and scattered fundamental principles for the relief of pain. You are ultimately responsible for yourself and you need to understand the issues.


Keywords:
pain, pain relief, musculoskeletal pain, back pain, neck pain, headache, osteopathy, chiropractic, physical therapy, manipulation, hands-on care, understanding pain, release from pain


Article Body:
PAIN RELIEF & THE PAIN PANDEMIC

“The cry of mankind is not for pleasure but release from pain.” Goethe

Pain can be a life saving bodily defense.  To be born with the inability to feel pain assures early death, but in the vast, ordinary middle ground of living - between first perception and life threat - the hope for pain relief is a driving universal need. 
Yet, while pain relief is historically first priority for a host of health-care professions: traditional medicine, osteopathy, chiropractic, physical therapy and others, all associated with related industries that pervade the societies of the world, despite all that alleged effort, there is, in fact, a Pain Pandemic. Because the fundamentals are not universally accepted, for more than a century and a half, countless millions have suffered unnecessarily and continue to suffer– especially wherever Westernized medicine in practiced as the result of medicine’s Fundamental Flaw.
In a single simple statement, parts of the body operate similarly to machines. Each has levers, pulleys, power sources, support systems and the need for balance in performance. When imbalance occurs, performance is impaired. Pain can be equivalent to squeaks in the machinery that may be relieved by skills not dissimilar to those of the machinist, the mechanic, the carpenter – the study of function through knowledgeable examination of the materials they work with.
In the body, the exquisitely complex relationships and interactions between the parts are the substance for the production of a host of pain syndromes whether experienced as headache, back pain, neck pain - musculoskeletal pain in any of its expressions. Many, regardless, are inherently, sometimes uniquely receptive to relief and functional restoration by approaches that include hands-on techniques.

Such concepts emerged from the mists of antiquity. The idea is ancient. Wherever native societies developed healing systems, they incorporated some form of these applications. What is new are advances from increased knowledge and experience – and, at the same time, what was tragic is what transpired during the formation of “professions” when, many generations ago, the basic understandings became the fodder of contention, conflict, greed, lust for power – domination at any cost. Logic died. Because during one of its lowest intellectual ebbs traditionalism rejected the hands-on (manipulative) therapies, instead of reinvestigating, it went to war at any cost as reaction to the subsequent emergence of osteopathy, then chiropractic. “Enemies” have to be despised so how could they do anything worth emulating? And there certainly were always cases of abuse to “justify” such attitudes. The ongoing screams of societal pain eventually became background noise, “just the way things are,” as the essence of the issue became lost in the professional posturing and the onslaught of pill popping advertising as the ‘normal’ way to relieve pain.

Medicine’s technological advances with interposed instrumentation only further obscure and distance the clinician from primary responsibility to understand what the patient’s tissues willingly reveal to the respectful clinical examination. And, the advent of managed care shoveled on another layer of obfuscation. But truth persists: There are invaluable medical therapies that only hands can successfully administer.

As I relate on the cover of Release From Pain: If you want to live with less pain –if you want to help relieve the pain of others - or better represent them; if you are a student in any of the healing professions - or contemplating it - if you want to contribute to resolving what historians may well call this last century - a time of unnecessarily perpetuated pain - then please continue reading…

Eventually I accepted that my life’s work has encompassed the entirety of this issue - that I offer for your understanding - because ultimately only you are responsible for you. The revolution and the resolution to return medicine to its essential foundation must be energized and powered by you! So please go from here .

Paul H. Goodley, M.D.
Orthopaedic Medicine


