It depends who you ask. If you ask the internet, or doctors of conventional medicine, the answer is "no." This is why they say so...
What is a cure?
I had to stop writing for a second to actually look up the definition, which was just completely bonkers to me. A cure is "to be relieved of the symptoms of a disease or condition." The symptoms... Forget about the disease or condition and what is causing it, we just need you to be symptom free for a victory. Wow. Forget the fact that something is still causing damage to your body, medicine won.
This is truly the motivation behind conventional medicine; symptom management.
So even with an entire field of medicine that is dedicated to symptom management, they can't even relieve chronic pain sufferers of their symptoms and, therefore, claim there is no cure for chronic pain.
What I was starting to say before getting sidetracked by that outrageous definition...
In the eyes of conventional medicine, in order for a disease or condition to have a cure there must be a single, concrete treatment that works for everyone with that condition. In order for a single treatment to work, there has to be a single cause.
I think you can see why this is not, and never will be, possible for a chronic condition such as pain. Chronic pain has far too many causes. Chronic pain is too broad, so clearly there are multiple causes of it. But even single diagnosable conditions, such as fibromyalgia have many different causes that are different from person to person. Many of those causes aren't even recognized yet. Obviously, modern medicine, even in all of its glory and technological advances, will not be able to develop a treatment, or even a treatment protocol, for all of them.
Therefore, they deem chronic pain incurable.
Why this is a problem
By saying this, they've already set themselves, and you, up for failure. By believing that there is no cure for you, based on their definition, they resort to symptom management for your treatment options. Which, I don't need to explain, is horrible medicine and will never produce a cure. Not only that, I will argue that symptom management is more complicated than trying to cure chronic pain! Symptoms are your body's way of telling you that something is wrong. Your body has an almost endless way of doing this. Especially when it comes to pain. There are dozens, maybe hundreds of ways that your body can produce a pain signal. Just to get your attention that something is wrong. Pain is not the problem, it is just the messenger. The longer you live with pain, and the longer you don't find and treat the actual causes of your pain, the worse pain will get and the more symptoms will develop. Your body will keep utilizing new ways to create pain.
Each one of these methods requires a different treatment. They each require a different drug because that's how pharmaceuticals work. They can only target one receptor and there is no way to know which pain receptors are being activated so it is a guess and check approach that will leave you taking a handful of different medications without relief. If you just take the time and effort to find the root causes of your pain, what is making your body so unhappy that it's resorting to creating pain, then you will have a treatment that does what all these medications never will be able to. Get you out of pain and put an end to all your symptoms.
Playing head games
Hearing that there is no cure for your chronic pain is everything but comforting. It's a head game that likely put you in a downward spiral of despair. The realization that this is what your life will be like for the rest of your life is awfully depressing. Living with the optimism that a cure will someday be created can be just as depressing. Going from doctor to doctor to once again be let down by the newest drug is not a state of mind people typically enjoy.
This mind set that conventional medicine has fabricated in you only leads to worsening pain and outcomes. The chronic pain, depression, and anxiety connection is a vicious cycle that needs to be addressed if you are serious about getting out of chronic pain.
Thank you for all that negativity... I'm convinced chronic pain is incurable
That's because you haven't experienced real medicine yet. Real medicine is patient centered. It focuses on treating the person, not a diagnosis, lab results, images, or symptoms. It's a concept that is just not obtainable by the conventional model of medicine. They are not equipped to deal with chronic conditions because they don't have the time, understanding, or treatment options necessary. With their training and skillset, chronic pain is not curable.
Yet chronic conditions are put into remission all the time! Chronic pain being no exception. It just requires a different approach that most aren't familiar with. Chronic pain can only be treated on an individual basis. You are too unique to provide a blanket treatment and expect results. Treatment requires time and effort to sift out all the underlying causes and contributors of your pain. It requires a mastery of the entire body to make the connections and to provide targeted therapies that go beyond symptom management and actually fix the problems. It requires treating the physical, biochemical, and mental /emotional causes. It requires making nutritional and lifestyle modifications. It requires an active role by the sufferer. Passive care, the hallmark of conventional medicine will not cut it.
It's not the answer people want to hear but it is honest answer. Chronic pain is not incurable.
Commentaires