INiYH Podcast
INiYH Podcast
with Dan and Juz. Now LIVE on all podcast players!
“The challenge of chronic pain is deciphering how much is due to amplifiers, contributors, identifiable causes and past experiences - and what specific types of pain are contributing to the output of someones symptoms.”
Justine Feitelson, BA, CCP
Justine is a chronic pain patient, pain coach, and movement professional. She lives with Complex Regional Pain Syndrome, hEDS, and other common co-existing conditions, working with complex pain patients, educating and advocating through her coaching and mentorship programs.
Justine felt an immense void in patient education around CRPS, how complex pain manifests, available treatment options, and how to work more collaboratively with physicians in the traditional pain space. She is passionate about bridging the gap in understanding and expectations between patients and providers by empowering patients to be their own advocates and take control of the pieces of their pain management journey they impact through her MARSMethod, as well as helping physicians better understand the very real challenges patients with complex, chronic diseases face and improving empathy and inclusion.
Dr. Dan Bates, MD
Dan is passionate about breaking down barriers between patients and providers and helping patients take back what brings them meaning and purpose in life. He is a Sports and Exercise Medicine Specialist. He is the Managing Director at Metro Pain Group and Monash Clinical Research and is the Chairman of the Board at Monash House Private Hospital. Dr. Bates works full time with people suffering back, neck and joint pain. Prior to this he has worked extensively in Sports Medicine and for multiple professional and national sporting teams. He was the head doctor at Australian Football League teams Melbourne and North Melbourne.
His research career has been broad covering exercise induced asthma, examination techniques, biologics, osteoarthritis, chronic pain and neuromodulation. He lectures nationally and internationally regularly, has 3 kids and the worlds most tolerant wife.
We both work with patients every day who have been told damaging things about pain, how it works and why they feel the way they do. Who have been to every other doctor and tried everything that was asked of them, yet they weren’t empowered to change the things right at their fingertips or given the most appropriate treatments for their diagnosis. This frustrates both of us in different ways and has fueled our why’s in developing our own practices and perspectives on pain we want to share with you.
What chronic pain patients too often feel is hopelessness, desperation, shame, grief, and a lack of accountability from providers for providing better information and guidance. We created this podcast to better bridge the gap between patients and providers, and change the way chronic pain is approached and treated.
By breaking down the mechanisms of pain, causes, contributing factors, amplifiers and more, we can link them to the best treatments based upon diagnosis and how you most effectively implement them, addressing explain central sensitization in an actionable way you can actually do something about.
What most people miss is that pain education can be empowering for patients, but only if explained in a non-offensive way, so patients can make the connections without feeling so blamed for the state they’re in you loose the chance to help them. Blaming others for our health or lack of improvement takes our control away as patients. But how do we do better and get over some of the resentment we’ve rightfully accumulated?
At the heart of the challenge are guilt and blame. A lack of empathy on both sides that leads to no one being happy with the current way things are.
From a blame perspective, doctors are expected to do too much and blamed when pain won’t go away. Patients are blamed and cast as resource wasting malingerers when pain isn’t because of something identifiable. And each party struggles with guilt. The patient feels guilty for being sick, and the doctor feels guilty for not knowing or not being able to help. This is where for the Dr, this disconnect too often leads to, it must be because of the patient. Because that’s easier to say than ‘I don’t know.’
This is not a recipe for healing. It leaves too many patients hopeless and helpless, and clinicians frustrated at the realistic therapeutic, diagnostic, and skill based limitations they come up against. How do we fix this? A few simple rules we challenge you with:
On the physician side:
It’s OK to not know, with caveats.
Don’t blame the patient.
Don’t use explanations that indirectly blame the patient.
On the patient side:
Work on guilt of having the disease. It’s not your fault.
That being said, don’t blame others for the situation. You have to own it to change what you can.
The current environment we treat chronic pain in has made this very difficult. The reality is we have to find ways around this. The way we’re trying clearly is not working for most patients. And we think we can do much better. It's Not in Your Head podcast and The Empower You Foundation are not just about educating patients, but practitioners too, so we can truly improve outcomes on a large scale. THIS is how we create meaningful change together.
At the heart of all change is purpose. Dan and I are on a mission to educate and empower more pain patients to take back control of their lives despite complex, challenging diagnosis. And we can’t wait for you to join us.
Living with a rare, chronic, difficult to treat or poorly understood disease is unfortunately beyond what the medical system is designed to support. It often lacks the communication and individualized attention to detail beyond medical interventions that help patients understand what they can control and what affects the way we experience pain outside of medications and more invasive treatments. Doctors don’t have the time or ability to cover and address the vast majority of variables in patients lives that are dramatically impacting their quality of life with chronic pain. But it’s typically not because they don’t care.
There are diagnostic and therapeutic limitations they encounter, that set everyone up for frustration - especially with less common pathologies. The challenge with chronic pain is teasing out all the inputs resulting in the outputs the patent is experiencing.
Physicians job is to diagnose and manage treatments and interventions. Patients job is to manage everything else about their life that affects pain. Our job on this podcast is to help you identify what those things are and teach you how to change them more effectively so you can shave off more pain as a patient, and improve your communication and awareness towards these issues as a provider so you get better, more fulfilling outcomes.
What will you learn on It's Not In Your Head?
We are not bringing you another run of the mill podcast on pain. We are not industry talking heads sponsored by medical device companies. We’re a pain doctor and pain patient/clinician putting our experience and expertise together so we can solve some of the most challenging aspects of managing chronic pain, and better treat complex patients.
Both of us have ended up specializing in some complex situations. Though Dan primarily treats back, neck and joint pain, his deep interest around more complicated pain related disorders that are often completely ignored like hEDS, or deeply misunderstood like CRPS, have led us down some epic rabbit holes of conversation and research that has resulted in this mutual passion and project that is It’s Not in Your Head.
Our goal with @iniyhpodcast, is to teach you about all the different pieces of pain and help you work through addressing every part of your pain puzzle if you’re a patient, while giving clinicians better ways to investigate and diagnose persistent chronic pain and presentations like central sensitization.
Persistent pain is not in patients head. Give us a listen for more information to fill this crucial gap in understanding so you can create better outcomes - whether a pain patient or clinician.