How to Heal From Chronic Pain: Lessons from my chronic pain journey as a pain-trained physician

Dr. Anna Esparham-Evans, MD

In this episode I am going to share super huge mama jamba chronic health journey again. One of the most PAINFUL and FEARFUL and LIFE-DRAINING experiences I’ve ever gone through.  

As a pain-trained physician, I finally understood how freaking painful PAIN can be.  I mean... when my patients say 11/10, I know exactly what they’re talking about now.

I never really was bothered by the extremes of pain (as witnessed by my 2.5 month experience living with peritonitis), until I started receiving the flu vaccination when it became mandatory for healthcare professionals. 

I did not personally associate the pelvic pain, myofascial pain, and severe myalgia/malaise, immune dysfunction, muscle weakness (some sort of Guillain-Barre variant) and anaphylaxis with the flu vaccination that occurred a couple hours to a couple days afterward until my medical team started asking questions. What we found out was: It was some kind of neuroimmune challenge with my history of polyglandular autoimmune syndrome (we can get into that later of course).

But even though there’s a cause of pain, it doesn’t mean we have to stay in pain forever. We are more powerful than we know, and we can change the way our pain pathways work!! I know this, not only from my personal experience, but it is one of the most researched aspects of pain studies.

So here's some of what I tried. As an integrative/functional doc, acupuncturist, and pain-trained doc, I did all of it.  Okay, well, I felt like I did all of it. Like a full-time job of self-care joojoo.

Nutrition:

Whole foods and healthy eating are the foundation of our health. Every single nutrient, bioflavanoid, and other phytonutrients are what we're made of. Our nutrition runs every single process in our body basically. And that's why it is the foundation of health.

I already was off all the foods that bothered me personally (this is going to be different for everyone by the way). Mine unfortunately is gluten, and what the heck-- freaking awesome kale, greens, roughage, and raw foods (which is also a manifestation of spleen qi deficiency in my Chinese Medicine training). However, our gut can heal with cellular regeneration every 7-10 days, so we get to take advantage of that!

And this is why foods shouldn't be demonized! Sometimes we just take a hit with certain foods and need to back off certain foods (or maybe we're overdoing it on sodas, processed foods, sugar, junk, etc..) for a bit. But most of the time we can get back on amazing wonderful foods while gut and whole body healing takes place.  Also, food cannot affect you in minutes - it can take a couple hours (unless it is indigestion/reflux).  So just make sure you're discussing with a dietitian and healthcare practitioner to guide you through this process.

Acupuncture and Moxa:

I did my own acupuncture and I go to a Licensed Acupuncturist. Cupping, moxa, acupuncture, acupressure- definitely helpful for keeping me afloat and functional! Well-researched to decrease chronic pain syndromes. It works centrally to activate the pain pathways that actually STOP the pain!! Woohoo!

Massage:

Massage is AWESOME to smooth out the contracted muscle spasms and myofascial tension. I also did myofascial release - a totally different “massage” experience but helps release the fascial restrictions. And of course, we use massage in pediatric academic hospitals to help children with pain.

Desensitization:

Densensitization is the lesser known pain therapy. You know when you hit your elbow on the door, and you immediately rub it. Well, that "rubbing" or "Patting" is actually decreasing the activity of the nerve and pain pathway. It's called Diffuse Noxious Inhibitory Control. So go ahead and rub those areas that cause you pain and you'll notice a huge difference. Umm, but here's the kicker, you should do this several times a day for 5 minutes at a time.

Neuromodulation and Electrostimulation devices:

Some helped, some didn’t. We can have a whole podcast episode on this one.

Nerve Blocks:

Awesome for the severe neuralgias that popped up all over the place from my muscles tensing up so much that over time it started irritating the nerve and causing shooting nerve pain.

Exercise, Physical Therapy, and Movement:

I had to completely change the way I exercised...Check out Episode 12: “Exercise: what is too much? What is enough? Where Anne Clark, our RN, BSN, and personal trainer and I discuss our journey with fitness while I’m dealing with chronic illness and pain.

Supplements for Pain:

Most of these supplements are mitochondrial supplements: CoQ10, B-vitamins, magnesium, amino acids. These support our little organelles called mitochondria which are powerhouses of the cell. They provide our nerves energy to work appropriately and has been shown in some pain treatment studies to show benefits.

I also started 5-HTP and N-acetyltyrosine to make serotonin, dopamine and norepinephrine - the main neurotransmitters that can inhibit pain in the spinal cord. I also tried CBD oil, one only prescribed by healthcare professionals with good manufacturing practices, and it was just a little tough on my stomach so I wasn't super consistent but think it helped a little. However, I had to use super high doses which got way too expensive for me.

I tried curcumin, quercetin, and omega-3's! Curcumin was too harsh on my stomach and didn't seem to help-though this is an extremely helpful dietary supplement for certain individuals and many people can handle this. I just think I don't match up with curcumin as one of the very few individuals who don't tolerate it. Quercetin helped my allergies but not so much with the pain. But Omega-3's rocked it out if anyone can handle the crazy fishy burpy indigestion.

Sleep Hygiene:

Sleep and Pain, Pain and Sleep- Both can destroy the other and we're going to have a whole episode on this one as I've researched this thoroughly. But we have to be able to have normal sleep rhythms and cycles and GET ENOUGH SLEEP in order to heal from chronic pain.

I have an Oura ring (no financial relationship with them (yet) I actually really hope to work with them because I think their product is phenomenal and can actually help people. Plus nasa astronauts use them. Sweet!

I use this to test out which aspects of sleep hygiene help me the most! It is the best sleep and activity tracker out there on the market for the consumer.

BUT GET THIS:

The most important healing therapy was working through whatever Emotional Pain I had!!!  And boy, even though I’m one tough chick, I was putting all the emotional junk into my body. Stuffing it somewhere deep inside, and it definitely reached its stuffing threshold where the pain became unbearable that I could not keep going without paying attention to it.  Pain is a message. 

Pain is your lifesaver telling you something is wrong “PULL AWAY” “Pay Attention to Me!!”.  LIke when you accidentally touch the hot stove, and you pull your hand away.  Like when you have IT band syndrome and you need to change up your PT/strength training/running routine or route. 

So what do we mean by Emotional Pain:

When situations, relationships, or behaviors exhibited even by our ownselves or by others that don’t align with our authentic selves can cause dissonance and thus our mind-body-spirit, our whole being, shrieks out through developing PAIN. For example, worrying about what other people think of you - trying to please others at expense of yourself on a day to day basis. Giving more than you can give. Working in a job where there’s that little whisper that you were meant for something more.  Being with a partner who takes and takes and takes and makes you feel empty inside, even though there are moments of caring to reel you back in.  Working with a colleague or colleagues who clearly try to get out of doing their own work leaving a big pile for you to handle, or making it extremely unfair causing resentment in the workplace. 

Or it can be a family situation, where maybe our parents are not quite the idols we’d loved them to be. Maybe they don’t see us for who we are and we never quite feel good enough around them. Maybe we don’t get the love we should receive from an immediate family member like a brother or sister, even.

Ultimately for me, there are so many emotional upheavals, because I’m an empath, a highly-sensitive person, an INFP, a #4 in terms of the enneagram, where I FEEL EVERYTHING!!!!  Yes, it makes me a great doctor but it also can become extremely draining because I’m projecting and giving all kinds of energy to hold my patients/colleagues/friends/family up and if I don’t give back to myself, I become ill.  

But one thing that I’ve learned is that I always develop symptoms that hit me in certain places. When I am in chronic pain, during my meditations, God is sending me a message that a situation is not quite right. That I’m holding on for dear life and the pain is like a ‘whoa whoa whoa we gotta get out of here sort of message’.  So for example, when I started a new career as a headache pain physician, I was overdoing it on all my research projects, clinical innovations, and national board service, in order to help elevate my team and contribute as much as I could. When I realized that I was overgiving, overdoing it, burning myself at both ends, just to show how worthy I am.  

Because deep down inside, I think I’ve always had this emotional pain of not feeling good enough or being worthy enough so I have to show everyone else that I am b/c I couldn’t bring myself to feel worthy enough. And then I started journaling. I started telling myself what I love about myself b/c there are so many wonderful qualities we have.

So yeah, I guess I started celebrating myself. And I started celebrating not necessarily my accomplishments (measuring my productivity is just another unworthiness journey)... Even though I mean come on, I have three board certifications which is crazy with certifications in aromatherapy and clinical hypnosis and probably i should be certified in nutrition with how much training, clinical experience and research I’ve done. I’m also considered a national pediatric integrative medicine leader moving the field forward to elevate its healthcare implementation, Ive published multiple manuscripts and research abstracts, developed novel educational curricula and projects, and built several out of the box clinics from scratch! 

But ultimately, it was about my spirit and how much I truly care about people and truly want to help them heal. Being present for those surrounding me, not only my patients, but my colleagues, my nurses, my staff, my family. Overcoming extremely difficult situations and growing from them. Always wanting to learn and improve (though this can also be a search for more worthiness but it’s also an amazing quality especially for those of us who hunt for real information, and want to help themselves, who is a go getter, takes initiative, and highly motivated). Yeah maybe our strengths can be our greatest weakness. Our kryptonite.  Loving deeply and being incredibly generous when we have the resources to do so. So I mean you get the picture, but it’s important we do that daily in our journaling or meditation practice. 

So this episode touches on some of the emotional pain that can lead to chronic pain, but there’s so much more to come on this and if you’re interested in sharing your story if you know it, and if you don’t that’s fine, but you can start to get in touch with that side of yourself that’s screaming to be heard. You can head over to Instagram @Health_Is_PowHer and comment or DM us on our posts this week on pain. 

And if you’re interested on how to journal and meditate and manifest the life you were meant to live, then comment over on our Instagram @Health_Is_PowHer posts all week as we’ll be discussing the podcast episode every day Monday thru Friday. 

Don't forget to sign up for our email newsletter that goes out each week, as we also have a special goodie that ends Friday September 4th!! Real Body Fuel’s nutrition guide and healthy eating plan (by the way is $90 otherwise) is for FREE for all of HIP’s podcast listeners who sign up for the email. Randy Evans, RD, LD, MS is one of maybe a handful Master's Level Integrative and Functional Dietitians in the country who is published, takes care of top performing athletes including NFL players!! It goes away this Friday September 4th because we're only going to give this to HIP members when our membership site launches within the next month. 

So stay tuned, DM us at instagram @Health_Is_Powher or email us at hello@healthispowher.com if you want to be on the waitlist for Health Is PowHer’s membership club. I’ll be sending out an email to our subscribers with all the nitty gritty details on the first monthly health topic, workbook, challenge, and invite to our private facebook group where my team and I show up throughout the week to help work through the monthly health goal!  The first month is going to be on “removing the mental, emotional, spiritual blocks to your health recovery”. I’ll also be sending some tiny snippets on our Instagram as well. Woohoo!