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“I’ve tried everything, Dr. Andrew!”
Nancy suffered for 15 years with crippling pain from trigeminal neuralgia—sometimes called “the suicide disease”—following a dental procedure. Narcotics and the usual seizure medicines didn’t touch it. Cannabis helped a little.
Tyson, a trucker, was involved in a near-fatal semi-truck crash. Eight surgeries and six years later, he continued to have constant neck and low back pain that kept him from sleeping.
Amelia suffered with endometriosis pain for decades. After multiple surgeries, her gynecologist informed her he would never open her abdomen again because each surgery only created more scar tissue.
Shayne, an avid hiker, could hardly walk as a result of Morton’s neuroma.
Sherry had chronic migraines. She didn’t like having to take drugs and lie in a dark room every time she could feel a migraine coming on. The drugs she was prescribed to prevent headaches either didn’t work or had intolerable side effects.
Allen had arthritis in his shoulders, knees, and hands. He couldn’t tolerate the amount of ibuprofen required to keep his pain manageable, and he didn’t want to rely indefinitely on pain relievers. So he kept suffering like an old man—in his forties.
When doctors were unable to find anything wrong with Sue’s internal organs using conventional testing, they diagnosed her with severe irritable bowel syndrome. While medications took the edge off her constipation and painful abdominal cramping, they replaced these with gas, bloating, abdominal pressure, and headaches.
Different people. Different kinds of pain. Different causes. And that last point matters.
Pain Is a Signal
Pain can be triggered by injury, degeneration, inflammation, nutritional deficiencies, toxicity, infection, cancer, impaired circulation, scar tissue, adhesions, nerve dysfunction, metabolic problems, and abnormal nervous system regulation. Often, more than one factor is involved.
Pain can arise from skin, muscles, fascia, joints, bones, nerves, blood vessels, or internal organs. It can be sharp, stabbing, burning, aching, dull, crushing, episodic, triggered by certain movements, waxing and waning, or relentlessly constant.
But pain itself is not the problem.
Pain is a signal that something is wrong.
That distinction becomes important when deciding what to do about it.
The High Price of Chronic Pain
Individuals, families, and society pay an enormous price for chronic pain: disability, lost wages, absenteeism, dependence on medications, addiction, depression, insomnia, loss of self-worth, strained relationships, and sometimes suicide.
Long-term opioid use can significantly suppress the body’s production of sex hormones, including testosterone, contributing to fatigue, loss of muscle mass, sexual dysfunction, depression, and many other problems.
Conventional medicine offers many options for managing pain: rest, heat, ice, nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (e.g., ibuprofen and naproxen), acetaminophen, steroid joint injections, epidural steroid injections, opioids, anti-seizure medications, physical therapy, TENS units, nerve blocks, and surgery. Each of these can be appropriate in the right situation. Some provide remarkable relief. Surgery, in particular, can be miraculous. Many people are able to employ one or more of these treatments and get back to normal within a short period of time.
But each of these approaches also has limitations. For someone with chronic pain, treatment can become a balancing act between controlling symptoms and dealing with medication side effects, dependence, organ damage, repeated procedures, or the risks of surgery. And while surgery can sometimes fix a structural problem beautifully, it can also create new problems. Surgery permanently changes anatomy; it can’t simply be discontinued if the result isn’t what you hoped for.
What If You Treated the Cause Instead?
Amelia, Shayne, Nancy, Tyson, Sherry, and Allen pursued all the conventional treatments recommended to them. Unlike others, however, they did not get better. By the time they came to Prestige Wellness Institute, each was nearing the end of his or her rope.
Fortunately, they were open-minded and pleasantly surprised to learn they had more options than they thought. And each found substantial relief.
But here’s the interesting part:
No two of them needed the same treatment. That’s because pain isn’t a disease. It’s a signal—and that signal can have many different causes. Treating a woman with abdominal adhesions the same way you treat someone with an injured joint, irritated nerve, chronic infection, or dysregulated nervous system doesn’t make much sense.
Rather than asking, “What can I take for this pain?” we should be asking, “Why am I hurting?” Answering that question opens the door to more targeted—and often more effective—treatment.
What Can You Do Yourself?
If you suffer from chronic pain, there are several things you can do on your own to reduce inflammation and give your body a better environment in which to heal.
Start with an anti-inflammatory diet. Build meals primarily around whole, minimally processed foods. Emphasize vegetables, adequate protein, healthy fats, herbs, spices, nuts, seeds, and low-sugar fruits. Minimize if not avoid sugar, refined flour, ultra-processed foods, industrially fried foods, and excessive alcohol. For some people, identifying and temporarily eliminating foods to which they react can make a dramatic difference.
Use anti-inflammatory foods and plants. Turmeric or concentrated curcumin, ginger, omega-3-rich fish, berries, colorful vegetables, olive oil, and many culinary herbs contain compounds that can help regulate inflammatory pathways.
Move—intelligently. Complete inactivity often makes chronic pain worse. Walking, gentle resistance exercise, mobility work, stretching, swimming, or yoga can improve circulation and maintain strength and function. The right amount depends on the injury or condition; more is not always better.
Prioritize sleep. Poor sleep increases pain sensitivity, while pain interferes with sleep, creating a vicious cycle. Improving sleep can sometimes make a surprising difference in how intensely the brain perceives pain. Whenever possible, look for the underlying reasons for poor sleep rather than simply sedating the brain.
Reduce nervous-system overload. Meditation, slow breathing, prayer, time in nature, yoga, and other relaxation practices can shift the autonomic nervous system away from a chronic fight-or-flight state. This doesn’t mean pain is “all in your head.” It means the nervous system helps determine how strongly pain signals are amplified.
Correct the basics. Dehydration and deficiencies of nutrients such as magnesium, vitamin D, B vitamins, amino acids, and essential fatty acids can contribute to pain or interfere with recovery. Rather than blindly supplementing, consider testing to identify what your body actually needs.
These steps won’t solve every pain problem. But they improve the terrain in which healing has to occur.
When That’s Not Enough
When sensible self-care isn’t enough, it may be time to look more deeply for whatever is generating or amplifying the pain. You may want to consider working with a physician experienced in approaches such as:
• medical liver detoxification
cellular detoxification
• treatment of yeast overgrowth
• identification and treatment of parasites and other infections
• evaluation for dental and jaw pathology when indicated
• chiropractic adjustment
• low-intensity extracorporeal shockwave therapy
• autonomic nervous system rebalancing
• pulsed electromagnetic field therapy with biofeedback
• therapeutic injections
• ozone therapy
• platelet-rich plasma (PRP)
• exosomes and stem cells
• alpha-2-macroglobulin (A2M)
• microcurrent neurofeedback
• EVOX perception reframing
This isn’t a menu from which to select a treatment that sounds interesting. The treatment matters only if it addresses something contributing to your pain. What you need may be completely different from what your friend needs.
Don’t Just Silence the Alarm
If the smoke alarm in your house kept going off, you could solve the noise problem by removing the battery. The house would become wonderfully quiet. But if there were actually a fire somewhere behind the wall, you wouldn’t have solved the problem at all. You would simply have silenced the warning.
Pain deserves the same respect. Sometimes controlling pain is necessary and compassionate. Nobody gets extra points for suffering. But when pain becomes chronic, repeatedly silencing the signal without asking why it keeps sounding can leave the underlying problem untouched, and possibly even growing.
Amelia’s problem wasn’t Shayne’s problem. Nancy’s wasn’t Tyson’s. Sherry’s wasn’t Allen’s. That’s why their solutions weren’t the same either.
You don’t have to accept chronic pain simply because you’ve already tried the usual options.
If pain is keeping you from sleeping, working, exercising, traveling, playing with your grandchildren, enjoying the outdoors, or simply feeling like yourself, it may be time to ask a different question—not “What else can I take for the pain?” but “Why am I still hurting?”
At Prestige Wellness Institute, that’s where we start. Schedule a discovery consultation (435-259-4466 in Southeastern Utah or 435-210-0184 in Northern Utah) to explore what may be driving your pain—and what options you may not have tried yet.
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After 25 years in the nursing teaching industry, including nine years at Utah State University Moab, Dianne Wright has announced her retirement.
Wright spent three years teaching part time and six years teaching full time as a professional practice assistant professor in the S.J. & Jessie E. Quinney College of Agriculture & Natural Resources at USU Moab.
During her time at USU Moab, she also spent time as the CNA program coordinator. Wright said the best part of her time at USU Moab was seeing her students.
“I am proud of the accomplishments of the students and being a part of helping them meet their goals,” she said. “I love teaching and have enjoyed watching the students grow in knowledge and seeing their confidence increase.”
Samantha Campbell, associate vice president of USU Moab, described Wright as someone who believed in her students, celebrated their accomplishments, and who helped launch the careers of countless healthcare professionals that now serve in Grand County.
“Dianne has had an incredible impact on USU Moab through her unwavering commitment to her students and to the CNA program,” Campbell said. “She was deeply invested in every student’s success, going out of her way to help them feel prepared and confident as they entered the healthcare profession. Each semester, she eagerly waited to hear how her students performed on their licensure exams because their success truly mattered to her.”
Campbell hopes that Wright is remembered for her genuine kindness, generosity and the sense of community she created at USU Moab. She said that Wright’s caring presence will be missed.
“Diane wasn’t just an outstanding instructor — she made a point of checking in with faculty and staff, sharing produce from her garden during the growing season, and encouraging all of us to collect bottle caps to support a charitable cause that was important to her,” Campbell said. “Whether she was teaching, caring for patients as a nurse, serving her faith community or volunteering through her sorority, Dianne consistently looked for ways to serve others.”
Prior to joining USU Moab as a full-time instructor, Wright spent five years as a registered nurse at Canyonland Care Center in Moab. She also worked in the nursing profession at healthcare facilities in Texas as well as a two-year stint as the school nurse at the American School of Kuwait. In total, Wright spent more than 25 years in the nursing teaching profession and more than 30 years as a nurse.
A native of Monticello, Utah, Wright began her college studies at USU, taking first-year classes. She would later earn an associate degree in applied science in nursing at Victoria College in Texas, then a bachelor’s degree in nursing and a master’s degree in occupational training and development from Texas A&M University-Corpus Christ before serving as a captain in the US Army Nurse Corps Reserves.
Now entering retirement, Wright plans to spend time doing things she has put off.
“I’m looking forward to getting back to my oil painting, sewing, reading, gardening and just spending time with my family,” she said.
Located in the outdoor recreation paradise of Moab and boasting one of the greenest buildings on any USU campus, Utah State University Moab offers students the personalized attention and small class sizes of a small-town college with the resources of a large university. With programs such as Nursing, Elementary Education, Recreation Resource Management and Social Work, technical education in Health Professions, Automotive and Business, and degree options ranging from associate to doctorate degrees, USU Moab offers programs that help fuel local economies and empower individuals and their communities. Learn more at moab.usu.edu
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