According to the National Stem Cell Foundation, nearly 4% of the world's population is affected by one of more than 80 different autoimmune diseases, the most common of which include type 1 diabetes, multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, Crohn's disease, psoriasis and scleroderma. ​​According to the National Institutes of Health, up to 23.5 million Americans (more than seven percent of the population) suffer from an autoimmune disease—and the prevalence is rising. I, too, have an autoimmune disease which has become more widely known called Celiac Disease. There are a lot of misconceptions about these diseases- many of them sound like a lifetime sentence of misery and it is true that it’s not comfortable to have to live with any of these diseases, however, with proper management of most cases of autoimmune disease, you can live with less pain.

For those who don’t have an autoimmune disease or don’t have a friend or loved one with one, you may not know what an autoimmune response is. The response in an autoimmune reaction is the body attacking its own immune system because it does not recognize a foreign protein as a friend but rather a foe. In someone without the autoimmunity, these proteins would be recognized as a friendly neighbor passing through that no real mind is paid attention to rather than recognizing this substance as an danger stranger that we wager an attack against, throwing bombs at the invader, causing ourselves pain, often in the form of inflammation.

Autoimmune diseases often result in inflammatory response and inflammation is painful. What we will discuss in this episode isn’t limited to those with autoimmune disease. Inflammation is also an ever-increasing symptom of people across the world too as sugar, hormones, and artificial ingredients plague us in our Western Diets. Elizabeth Yarnell speaks with us about how we can shift our diets and the way we live to manage autoimmune diseases and reduce inflammation by managing what we eat and how we live. This is so so important in driving longevity as inflammation is a recipe for so many long-term ailments, diseases, and especially cancer.

Elizabeth Yarnell is a natural health expert (Certified by the American Naturopathic Medical Certification Board on September 25, 2014) with a nationwide clinical practice in holistic nutrition. Additionally, she is a Certified Nutritional Consultant (CNC), a Certified LEAP Therapist (CLT, Oxford Biochemical Laboratories MRT food sensitivity testing), and a Certified Natural Health Professional (CNHP). Elizabeth is a member of the American Association of Nutritional Consultants (AANC). She earned her Bachelor of Arts at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, and a Masters in Liberal Studies (MLS) from the University of Denver.

You may find Elizabeth and book a free consultation at her website: https://elizabethyarnell.com/. 

Check out Elizabeth's TEDx Talk: We are What we Eat-- Poisons in our Everyday Foods https://youtu.be/vlQIJNd4wA8 

Also, check out her delicious digital cookbook: https://www.gloriousonepotmeals.com/easy-quick-healthy-cooking 

In this episode, I interview Edward Foresman, DPT about some of the methods and systems he incorporates into the unique treatment plans he uses with his clients. Ed Foresman is a Doctor of Physical Therapy (DPT) and Board Certified Orthopedic Clinical Specialist (OCS) with more than 13 years of clinical experience in outpatient orthopedics in the Denver area.

‍With an extensive clinical background and education, Ed is uniquely qualified to handle more complex pain conditions that other practitioners cannot resolve. He attended both college and physical therapy school at the University of Colorado, ranked among the top 20 PT schools in the country. He is also a graduate from Temple University's Orthopedic Residency program.

Ed finds the root cause of your symptoms and looks at the whole body to help you recover from pain and injury, and safely return you to the life you want. He is among less than 10% of all physical therapists holding the prestigious OCS designation as an orthopedic clinical specialist, making him uniquely equipped to treat your pain. Having close friends and family deal with chronic pain and opioid addiction has allowed him to empathise with all those suffering from pain.  This is apparent in his personal approach and understanding to your needs.  You will notice the attention and detail he gives and the close contact he maintains while you are under his care.  If you ask his patients, they will tell you: this is different from any other physical therapy you’ve experienced before.

Mentored by exemplary practitioners across the United States, Ed has a strong ethical commitment to provide quality care and exceptional solutions to clinical problems. He is a “research junkie” and even a published research author — see his research articles listed below. He enjoys working with committed individuals to achieve results others believed were impossible.

Outside the clinic, Ed is a proud family man with an amazing wife and four wonderful kids who are most content when soaking up the beautiful outdoors of Colorado. As an avid rock climber and runner, he understands how important it is to be physically active.  He’s also had his fair share of injuries: from a torn meniscus to herniated discs, he’s been able to rehabilitate himself using his own programs and techniques. Ed can show you how to conquer your injuries and get back to the life you want.

Until you've had to use physical therapy regularly for your own recovery or have been assisting a friend or loved one with their physical therapy regime, you may not have spent much time thinking about what physical therapy really is. I had one experience with physical therapy when I was in high school. They gave me 4-5 exercises to do at home and I never saw them again. So, I always thought that was similar to most people's experiences. Sometimes it is especially with minor, regular injuries. It wasn't until I had consistent, persistent pain from an injury that I needed a much more hands-on protocol. Ed is great with that and with adding research, tools, and unique methodologies to a rehab/recovery program. 

On this episode of the Painless Pain Management Podcast, I interview Wyatt Scott, muscle activation technique specialist, certified strength and conditioning specialist, and corrective exercise specialist and has a degree in Kinesiology from James Madison University. According to Muscle Activation Techniques, Inc, MAT goes through 77 Range of Motion Exams and 214 Muscle Tests to help practitioners identify which muscles are not “firing” (receiving and/or acting on the brain’s signal). Once the cause for the pain and impaired mobility is identified, practitioners begin a series of muscle tests in an established process and work to “reactivate” the affected muscles.

Other methods attempt to relax the muscle to lengthen or change it by stretching, heating, kneading, or foam rolling. In contrast, MAT activates your muscle so that it will become better prepared to handle the force applied to it through everyday movements and exercise.

Listen to hear who MAT benefits, what is it, where to find it, and when to incorporate it in your training or recovery program. 

To find an MAT near you, check out https://muscleactivation.com. To connect with Wyatt Scott, email him at [email protected]. 

In this episode, we explore how emotional pain, past experiences and traumas, and our belief systems can surface as physical pain or disable us from relieving our physical pain. I interview Suzanne Simpson, M.ED., LPC, BCC, Emotional Liberation Therapist, Psychotherapist, and author on how we can come to understand when these feelings and experiences may be preventing us from getting better. We also discuss how motivation may inhibit us from taking the necessary steps to get better and from investing in self-care to manage our pain appropriately. Suzanne discusses techniques for overcoming emotional hurt and for enabling a belief system that allows one to be painless. 

You may learn more about Suzanne, find out how to reach her, and check out her book at her website, https://renewedlifecounseling.com/. 

I don’t know about you, but I am so sick of misleading information EVERYWHERE. It is so hard to decipher what is true or false or somewhere in the middle like something that lacks qualified evidence. The Netflix documentary, “The Social Dilemma”, has opened its viewers' eyes to how this information overload is impacting our decisions, which can be bad when information is not validated, when it is biased, or the algorithms that determine what we see is inherently biased.

Now, about a year into putting my idea for Painless into action, I have seen how difficult it is to navigate all of the different means for treating pain that people are selling you. It is overwhelming how many people sell you on the promise that their solution will alleviate your pain. And, we pain sufferers will pay nearly anything to find the solution that will finally allow us a good night of sleep uninterrupted by pain. Plus, when you "Google" ways to relieve pain, all of the blog posts and devices that come up in response can be extremely hard to navigate specifically for your own issues. I set out on a journey to see how I could create a technology to help people find alternative and integrative ways to treat their pain, but have realized that equally important to surfacing services, products, and providers THAT may help treat individuals' pain is helping pain sufferers by vetting which of those things are actually legit. So, instead of pain sufferers paying endless money out of pocket to treat their ailments, they can spend more wisely.

The crazy thing about pain is that it is so subjective and what works for one person may not work for another. Much of this has to do with why you have the pain you have. Is the pain radiating from an unknown source? Is it a psychological issue stemming from an injury that healed for which the pain never went away resulting in chronic pain? Could it be that your joints are not in proper alignment causing your body mechanics to create compensations and unnecessary stress on other joints?

When you explain the type of pain that you are experiencing to a friend that does not have pain, do you wonder if they could even understand what you mean when you say that it feels like someone is stabbing you with a knife from your back to your leg? Even when I say it out loud, it sounds like it must be an exaggeration. It is anything but.

Today’s guest, Jamie Bovay, DPT, best selling author, Movement Jedi, and strength coach, helps to sort through some of the misconceptions that we are fed about pain and how to recover from it. His practice is known for playing detective to find the root cause rather than just treating the problem at face value. In his book, “Adding Insight to Injury”, he helps to debunk common misconceptions about injury treatment and recovery and provides guidance on the appropriate steps to take in a tailored recovery journey. Jamie is one of Colorado’s leading physical therapists and founder of KinetikChain Denver, a rehabilitation center specializing in helping active adults quickly recover from pain or injury so they can stay focused on their favorite sport/hobby, exercising, and get back to what they love to do.

Listen to this podcast to get a sneak peek into what is covered in his book like how to set up your home office to reduce or prevent pain and how to find a PT that is appropriate for you. 

On this episode, I speak with Julie Olson, Functional Nutritionist and Health Coach about how much sugar people today consume compared to what we need, what the consequences are of eating too much sugar is, and how to better manage your sugar intake and cut cravings. 

Julie became a Functional Nutritionist/Health Coach in functional medicine practices, working side-by-side with Medical Doctors. The goal with her patients is to find underlying root causes, often digging deeper with cutting-edge lab testing, to create solutions. By employing a system to document each client’s actions, events, and environmental influences that had accumulated during their life, she analyzes patterns, correlations and triggers that range from specific foods, environmental exposures, and habits. She coaches each client tailored to their specific needs and goals. She often includes customized food plans, targeted nutrients, herbs, and supplementation, plus personalized lifestyle recommendations for each person.

Julie's passion is to provide inspirational tools, guidance, and education to empower all of her clients for long-term success.  Her website is https://fortitudefunctionalnutrition.com/. 

Julie's EDUCATION, DEGREES and CREDENTIALS

Board Certified in Holistic Nutrition® (BCHN) by the Holistic Nutrition Credentialing Board and the National Association of Nutrition Professionals (NANP) Certification Board

Certified Nutritionist (CN) by American Health Science University and the National Institute of Nutrition Education

Certified Gluten-Free Practitioner (CGP) by Thomas O’Bryan DC, CCN, DACBN

Gluten Free Society Practitioner Tier 1 Certified by the Gluten Free Society Glutenology; Peter Osborne PScD, DC

Diploma of Comprehensive Nutrition (Dip.C.N.) from Huntington University of Health Sciences

Bachelor of Science (B.Sc.) from University of Colorado, Boulder

Julie' s CONTINUING EDUCATION

Institute of Functional Medicine (IFM) Advanced Practice Modules: Gastrointestinal; Cardiometabolic; Immune; Hormones; Energy; Applying Functional Medicine in Clinical Practice; Intro to Functional Nutrition: Clinical Solutions for Addressing the Underlying Causes of Disease.

Julie’s listing as a Functional Medicine Practitioner: https://www.ifm.org/practitioners/julie-olson/

Functional Medicine University currently completing a certification program

Functional Medicine 1-Year Mentorship with Diane Mueller ND, DAOM, LAc, and Miles Nichols DAOM, MS, LAc; included coursework on Adrenal Glands, HPA Axis and Stress; Detoxification and the Liver; Cardiometabolic; Hormones; Mindfulness for Clinical Applications.

Food Allergies & Sensitivities in the New Millennium and Neuroendocrine Immunology of Small Intestinal Bacterial Overgrowth (SIBO) with Datis Kharrazian DHSc, DC, DACBN, DACNB, FACN, CNS

High Cholesterol Action Plan with Chris Kresser MS, LAc

Balancing Moods for the Better with Julia Ross MA, NNTS

Dr. Mark DeBrincat, DC, "The Good News Doctor", is a natural health doctor specializing in holistic health solutions to optimize performance, health, and well-being. Having survived a near-fatal, head-on collision that left him in a wheelchair, and enduring seven back surgeries, Dr. DeBrincat learned to overcome all odds and knows what is possible when we provide the body with the tools it needs to heal itself naturally.

Voxx Life started in Canada four years ago, followed shortly by the US, and launched in the UK this year. 

The Voxx Life Human Performance Technology (HPT) is the first product that came to market and the technology is delivered through socks, insoles, knee braces, and patches.  It is their foundational technology. This is a genuine, breakthrough, wearable technology in the Neurology field, amazingly simple to use and absolutely unique.

If you look at the News & Stories page https://neurotech4health.voxxlife.com/stories/ you will find a number of interesting items (please click on "Load more Stories" to access all the stories). I would recommend:

Most of the other stories are User Testimonials and will give you a range of problems that it helps with and there are videos about a couple of new products, and an Immune Optimisation patch, and a REM sleep patch.

Testimonials Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/groups/238416963237872

In this episode, I speak with Dr. Jim Weathers, a Chiropractic physician with about 25 years of experience. He is specialized in sports medicine and rehabilitation with many years of continued education including advanced certification in Kinesio taping, certification as a running doctor, and certification as a golf doctor.  He is also an Independent BEMER Distributor. Currently, his patients consist primarily of elite and pro athletes. Doc and I discuss the benefits of boosting one's microcirculation for healing and improved performance. We also discuss the use of PEMF (pulsed-electromagnetic field) devices especially the BEMER device in affecting microcirculation in athletes, pain sufferers, and others. 

Here are a few BEMER video links online you can view to get you started learning more about this amazing medical device.

Research Regard BEMER Treatments

www.pubmed.gov

https://scholar.google.com/

Dr. Rainer Klopp Explains the Importance of Microcirculation in Your Body

CLINCAL-

Medical Panel Q&A Regarding the BEMER Medical Device- Orlando, FL 2018

BEMER PEMF Helping Athletes Recover Faster

Golf:

Dr. Jim Weathers' contact info is:

In this episode, I discuss with Jennifer Pejo how we as athletes and pain sufferers can best leverage massage and all of its benefits for maximum performance and healing. Jennifer has seen it from all sides as a former athletic trainer to elite athletics and Olympians, as a former Olympic weightlifter, as a certified massage therapist who focused on treating pain clients, and as a mother raising little athletes of her own. We dive into how you can do self-massage at home to get the care you need even if you feel uncomfortable or unsafe seeing a therapist during the COVID-19 pandemic, how to vet your therapist to make sure he or she meets your needs, and more. 

Jennifer has also created a CEC approved education program that helps massage therapists, athletic trainers, physical therapists, and others who are seeking deeper knowledge on treating their clients who suffer from pain. You can check that out at http://soarpainmanagement.com/. You can also check out more about Jennifer and her blog at www.jenniferpejo.com.

Jennifer’s Education

B.A. in Kinseology with Emphasis in Athletic Training

B. A. in Physical Education

M.S. in Athletic Training

Certified Massage Therapist from Colorado Springs Academy of Therapeutic Massage

Other Accomplishments

Masters Thesis: “ Certified Athletic Trainers’ Knowledge of Hepatitis A through E”

NATABOC Certified Athletic Trainer from 2000-2014

NCBTMB Certified Massage Therapist from 2006-2014

Assistant Athletic Trainer US Taekwondo Union 1999-2001

Athletic Trainer for Dew Action Sport Tour 2006

Basic Life Support Instructor – 2005-2014

2008 Olympic Trials for Olympic Weightlifting (Top 11-20 category)

2006 Distinguished Graduate Alumna (California University of PA)

2003 Pan American Games US Olympic Committee Sports Medicine Staff

Athletic Trainer/Massage Therapist for Senior National Taekwondo Team to World Championships, Korea

Athletic Trainer/ Massage Therapist for Men and Women’s World Racquetball Team to World Championships, Puerto Rico

One of our listeners, Jordan Novosel, former high school star athlete opened up to share his story about pushing himself to the point of breaking in sports to living through darkness and coming out the other side a more resilient man. 

Links to the care team that has helped Jordan through his recovery: 

Dr. Brett Dongell at Dongell Chiropractic http://www.chiropractorinaltoonapa.com/chiropractor

Marisa Richers, Hands on Massage https://www.massagetherapy.com/get-a-massage/MarisaRichers