Episode #22 Mind-Body Approaches to Understanding and Healing Chronic Pain with Howard Schubiner, MD

Living with chronic pain can be both physically and emotionally challenging. Nearly 50 million individuals in the US report experiencing chronic pain. The symptoms may become worse over time, spread to new areas of the body, and result in restricted mobility and limitations in daily activities.

Evolving research has demonstrated that for some sufferers emotions can be the source of chronic pain and may be the key to treating the symptoms. Studies have demonstrated that identifying, expressing, and releasing difficult emotions, like fear, can successfully reduce chronic pain. 

Our guest is Dr. Howard Schubiner, an internist, pediatrician, and director of the Mind Body Medicine Center. Dr. Schubiner and his colleagues have developed psychological treatments for chronic pain and created a series of studies to evaluate these treatments.

In this episode, Dr. Schubiner helps us to see pain with a new lens. He explains how chronic pain can be protective.  He describes how brain-generated pain is different from structural pain.

Dr. Weil and Dr. Schubiner discuss the revolutionary work of the late Dr. John Sarno, a pioneer in treating patients with chronic back pain with mind-body medicine. Dr. Maizes describes how language and common approaches can reinforce a message of disease and perpetuate symptoms. Dr. Schubiner explains how pain reprocessing therapy can help to eliminate and even cure pain and why this therapy offers great hope to people who live with chronic pain.