The Pain Pod

Invisible. Disbelieved. Shunned.

This is the story of their fight.

So, a sociologist with chronic pain walks into a bar...just kidding! But wait—not really! When it comes to dating with chronic pain, we often get the message to accept what we cannot do. But what if people living with chronic pain already know what they need to experience the love, sex, and partnership they desire? Listen to Mary Jessome explain how it surprisingly all played out...

Did you ever put on some Marvin Gaye for a little hanky-panky and end up screwing your back instead? Listen to Professor Stuart McGill talk about the world’s only research he completed with live back-pained couples and Avatar technology to discover how to have sex without triggering back pain!

What science has shown will blow your mind - maybe even enough to have you running for a "sleep coach". YES that's a thing so get in the know! Listen to a sleep expert tell you what you never dreamt you never knew about your own sleep—including how it affects your pain.

How much do you know about the role of physiotherapy for chronic pain? What can recovery mean? Nathan Augeard is on a mission. A physical therapist in Quebec, founder of Physio Connection, and PhD candidate at McGill university, he aims to improve how physiotherapy students learn to help manage pain throughout Canadian universities. WATCH or listen to our first audiovisual podcast!

As you'll hear by all the paper-shuffling Josh does starting a few minutes in, when he's searching for the origins of MME (aka morphine milligram equivalents), he comes up with 'a whole lot of nothing,' just as he says. Really noisy nothing! And those chirping tweety birds you're hearing in the background? Are they those clouds of Looney Tunes 'circling birdies' that twitter above cartoon characters who've been bonked in the head? This stuff IS bonkers, after all.

Dr Nabarun Dasgupta studies drugs and infectious diseases in the Opioid Data Lab at the University of North Carolina's Injury Prevention Research Center. In the last several years, he's published groundbreaking epidemiological analyses that explode the myth that prescribed narcotics are driving the "opioid crisis." Dr Dasgupta says his passion is "to tell true stories about health with numbers" drawn from field research, large database analytics, lab investigations, randomized trials, and community-based interventions. Learn the facts about the causes of drug overdoses from an authentic expert who's passionate about the truth—and compassionate for all of us still devastated by a decade of bad drug policy.

Lately we're hearing a lot about so-called "central sensitization" of the nervous system as an explanation for chronic pain. Is it real? Is it an excuse to keep people in pain away from treatments like opioids, or even to blame us for our pain? Today, Dr Andrea Trescot joins us from Jacksonville, Florida, with the 411. As past president of the American Society of Interventional Pain Physicians, past pain fellowship director at the Universities of Florida and Washington, and now CMO of Stimwave, a wireless stimulation company, Dr Trescot takes pain pretty seriously. While she continues to see patients in Florida and Alaska, she never stops speaking and writing about pain treatment. Dr Trescot has written 150+ articles and edited three textbooks about it, and, for patients, has co-authored PainWise: A Patient’s Guide to Pain Management.

Autoimmune disorders are complex, plentiful, often painful, and not well-understood. Maybe you've heard lately that "the body can't attack itself"? Wrong. Our inflammatory mechanisms—our bodies' built-in protections against disease—can go haywire and hurt us, with the disruption manifesting in at least eighty different disorders so far. Today we talk about the inflammatory process and its remedies with the renowned American pain specialist Lynn Webster. Board-certified in anaesthesiology and pain medicine and noted for his advocacy and compassion, Dr Webster has published widely on pain and its best treatments. We discuss interventions like diet and new drug therapies, and where sufferers can turn for help.

Should Canadians care that the US Centers for Disease Control is revising its 2016 guideline for prescribing opioids for pain? That's the question we put to Barry Ulmer, the long-time head of the Chronic Pain Association of Canada. Listen up! In 2017, we found out the hard way that when it comes to "the war on drugs," what happens in the US doesn't stay in the US. With Canada's patients and doctors in the crosshairs again, the CDC is now taking comments on its final draft. Find out how to make your voice heard.