REPOST: Chronic Pain Sufferers Find New Relief in 'MELT Method'

Dancer and a fitness guru Marisa Merliss suffered a serious fall that caused her to be physically inactive for nearly four years. She was in pain throughout her recovery and after years of searching for relief, she decided to try the "MELT Method." The article below explains how this pain management discipline helped Marisa return to form.

Marisa Merliss participates in a class for the MELT Method, a new body work system that target's our body's connective tissue. | Image source: abcnews.go.com

For Marisa Merliss, movement is life. A dancer and a fitness model, she has even starred in workout videos like the "Brazil Butt Life."

But like millions of Americans, Merliss is living in chronic pain, and after spending years of coping, she thinks she has finally found relief in a new body work system that targets our body's connective tissue, called the MELT Method.

Only in her 30s, Merliss has already endured seven surgeries for a variety of injuries, including having two vertebrate in her spin fused together and having a hip operation.

After the spinal surgery, she said, "It was heartbreaking to not be able to move, not just dance, but [not] be active for three to four years."

Merliss said the pain first started when her dance partner dropped her during a routine.

"I was dropped during a lift," she said. "I was lifted overhead with a partner; it just went awry. I fell on my tailbone almost 7 feet."

To manage the pain, Merliss said she tried for years with different therapies, from physical therapy to weekly trips to a chiropractor, but found little relief.

"It is just really frustrating that I can't break through that," she said. "I would say most of the time I am in some degree of pain. If I am being really honest, I think about [the pain] throughout the day."

She's not alone. It's estimated that over 100 million Americans suffer from chronic pain, costing almost $600 billion per year in health care expenses, lost wages and productivity, according to the American Academy of Pain Medicine.

Not to mention the psychological toll chronic pain has on sufferers.

"It affects everything," Merliss said. "I just got married four months ago and it's awesome... but there are certain things, like it's 6 p.m., I shouldn't be exhausted, and we are supposed to go to dinner, but because of the pain I just want to be home lying in bed."

Merliss said she doesn't want to be reliant on painkillers, and after years of searching for relief, she decided to try something new called "the MELT Method."

Developed by therapist and bestselling author Sue Hitzmann, the MELT Method is touted as a tantalizing new "pill free" pain relief, which works on the connective tissue, called the fascia, in the body.

"To MELT," Hitzmann said, "means you are empowering yourself to get out of chronic pain," and she says she is on the cusp of revolutionizing pain management.

Hitzmann said MELT works by stimulating the connective tissue in the body, manipulating pressure points in the fascia to loosen it up and reduce inflammation, which can reduce aches, pains and stiffness.

"If you compress or pull on connective tissue for short periods of time in very specific ways, you can re-hydrate it," Hitzmann said. "That is one of the key parts of melt, how to juice back up the tissue, how to stimulate it and organize it."

Hitzmann uses a variety of soft rollers and massage balls to target problem areas. After just one class and a one-on-one session with Hitzmann, Merliss said she had already started to feel a difference.

But some wonder if this method is really a placebo effect, or if it really has tapped into something.

"This is a relatively new area of research... not that many people are looking at the fascia and that needs to be looked at more." said Dr. Helene Langevin, the director of the Osher Center for Integrative Medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston. "[Fascia] literally forms a network in the body and connects everything with everything else. I think that is might play a role in the interface between body systems. We can have a better understanding of the body if we understand connective tissue better."

Dr. Michael Steuer and his team at MidSouth Pain Treatment Center have done extensive research on how individuals can manage chronic pain. Find out how to break free from pain by visiting this website.

For chronic pain sufferers, winter isn't always a wonderland

In the days of yore, winter was all about building snowmen and anticipating the gift giving come Christmas day.  But as one ages, frigid temperatures and bracing winds and enormous heaps of snow brought by this season all take a toll on the body.

Winter can be extremely harsh for chronic pain sufferers, who are sometimes curled up in their beds as the pain goes through the roof.  As a result, they miss out on the moments that could have made the season special.  The following are the most common body pain triggers, and some simple ways to avoid them:

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1.  Shoveling snow.  A lot of men complain of back, shoulder, and chest pains following an afternoon of clearing roofs and pathways from heavy snow with shovels.   Shoveling can be risky for people with cardiovascular problems, as it can put a strain in the heart, Dr. Sandra Fryhofer tells Prevention.com.  Those with heart ailments should ask someone to do the task instead.

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2.  Walking on ice.  Skiing, ice skating, snowshoeing, or simply traipsing to get a breathtaking view of the wintry scenery can put a strain on the muscles more than any other activity in any season.  The reason, doctors say, is that many people automatically stiffen as they try to avoid or break a fall.  Wearing the right footwear and walking with a shuffle step or other safer ways to tread through the snow can help eliminate muscle tension.

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3.  Cold weather.  Both medical researchers and patients have noticed that chronic pain, often as a result of conditions like osteoarthritis or fibromyalgia, or a previous injury, signals a change in the weather.  Hot packs, heat wraps, and heating pads can relieve the pain and heal the aching areas.

MidSouth Pain Treatment Center, headed by Dr. Michael Steuer, offers high quality medications and treatments for a wide range of chronic pain conditions. Visit the center’s website for more information on its services.

REPOST: Scientists Objectively Measure Pain for the First Time Using Brain Scans

How does one measure physical pain? Medical science has long struggled to figure out how to quantify pain. But researchers at the University of Colorado have found an accurate way of gauging it—and brain scans play a significant role in the process. Learn more from this Healthline.com report:

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How much pain do you feel, on a scale of one to 10? We’ve all been asked this question at one time or another, but what do our answers really mean? Is a rating of four the same for an arthritis sufferer and a cancer patient? How about for a child?

Finding an objective way for doctors to measure pain has been an elusive goal until now. R esearchers at the University of Colorado at Boulder have found a unique neurologic signature in patients’ brain scans that allows them to predict how much pain a person is feeling with 90 to 100 percent accuracy.

"Right now, there's no clinically acceptable way to measure pain and other emotions other than to ask a person how they feel," Tor Wager, lead study author and associate professor of psychology and neuroscience at CU-Boulder, said in a press release.

Wager’s study was funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, the National Institute of Mental Health, and the National Science Foundation, and appears in the latest issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.

Feeling the Heat but Not the Heartbreak Researchers used computer analysis to look for patterns in the brain scans of 114 patients who were exposed to heat ranging from pleasantly warm to painfully hot.

They were surprised to find a pattern emerge that was the same across all the study subjects. Researchers had assumed the pain signature would be different for each individual, but since it’s fairly universal, they were able to accurately predict how much heat pain a subject was feeling even with no previous brain scans of that person to use as a reference.

The scientists were also intrigued by a 2011 study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), which Wager co-authored. That study found that the brain activity of people who’ve just been through a break-up and are shown a picture of their ex is similar to activity in the brains of subjects in physical pain.

Wager’s team examined the brain scans from the PNAS study, but did not find their neurologic pain marker. This result indicates that, though it may hurt just as much, heartbreak doesn’t manifest in the same way as, say, a broken arm.

Creating a Universal Pain Test

Scientists haven’t created a Pain-o-Meter—yet—but Wager’s work could provide the basis for not only a pain test, but also a way to measure other “subjective” mental states, such as anger, anxiety, and depression.

"I think there are many ways to extend this study, and we're looking to test the patterns that we've developed for predicting pain across different conditions," Wager said. "Is the predictive signature different if you experience pressure pain or mechanical pain, or pain on different parts of the body?”

More than 100 million American adults experience chronic pain, and it is among the leading causes of disability in the U.S. Though the pain signature Wager identified does not measure chronic pain, he’s hopeful that researchers can use his technique to create a test for that as well.

“Understanding the different contributions of different systems to chronic pain and other forms of suffering is an important step towards understanding and alleviating human suffering," Wager said.  

Dr. Michael Steuer has done extensive research on how individuals can manage chronic pain. Find out how to break free from pain through remedies and treatments offered byDr. Steuer and his team of medical professionals at MidSouth Pain Treatment Center.

Orchestrating new approaches to advance pain management practices

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Pain management centers don’t have uniform approaches to patient care, even though they are all following the same industry protocol. Some can be lightyears from the current standards in terms of technology and clinical practices while others remain pinned to a problematic blueprint and are hardup in attaining any form or degree of advancement.

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Institutions such as Dr. Michael Steuer’s MidSouth Pain Management Center have come a long way to offer the most sophisticated in pain management services. Practices of such caliber develop and provide top-of-the-line care that is crucial in helping the industry evolve for the better. Other centers lag behind in patient satisfaction, not necessarily because of low-technology equipment but to the scarcity of professional rendition.

Improvements in clinical practices should start with the treatments. The use of obsolete technologies and damaging drugs should be halted completely. Patients’ life and welfare should receive utmost consideration. From this care philosophy, the quest for better professional service must find traction. This task covers practices stationed in rural communities where healthcare is reported to be below-par, lackadaisical, and resource-deficient.

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High-quality clinical practices are not entirely the work of hospital directors, doctors, nurses, and other practitioners. Patients, too, play a key role in alleviating their situations. They are obliged to religiously follow their physicians’ prescriptions toward their medication, treatment, and even recovery therapy to help them regain routine. Cooperation between patients and doctors is crucial toward attaining success for practically every condition.  

For more information on pain management, visit this website.

Dispelling common myths about sciatica

Millions of working adults suffer from pain in the lower back due to prolonged sitting or carrying heavy loads. However, if the pain reaches their buttock up to the leg, the sciatic nerve, the longest nerve in the body, could already be inflamed, producing a type of pain called sciatica.

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Because many people don’t really understand what sciatica is even though they are experiencing it, there have been several misconceptions about it. The following are some of the most common:  

Sciatica is an illness.  Many people mistake sciatica as a medical condition, but it is actually a set of symptoms, such as pain from the lower back up to the leg or foot and a tingling sensation in those areas.  
 

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A herniated disc is the cause of sciatica.  Though this can be true, it is not the only cause. According to Mayo Clinic, in rare situations, sciatica can be caused by a damaged nerve or a nerve compressed by a tumor.  

Physical activities should be avoided when one has sciatica.  Bed rest is recommended for the first couple of days, but lack of physical activity for a long time actually worsens the pain. Stretching exercises help strengthen the back muscles and prevent the occurrence of sciatica.  

Localized leg pain isn’t sciatica.   Though this is rare, leg pain without back pain can still be sciatica. It is advisable to get checked if one has leg pain that doesn’t go away, as this could be originating from the lower back instead.

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There are still a lot of myths surrounding sciatica that people need to know about in order to seek the right treatment and take the right steps in preventing the recurrence of this type of pain.  

Dr. Michael Steuer of MidSouth Pain Treatment Center is a board-certified educator and author of several works in pain management. Follow this Twitter account for more information on this field of medicine.

The procedure for bursal injections and how they mitigate pain from bursitis

Bursae are small, fluid-filled sacs located between any two muscles, bones, skin, and tendons, allowing these structures to slide against each other, and cushioning points of contact from the impact of friction. There are over 150 bursae in the human body, each enabling smooth joint operation and the full range of natural physical movement.

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When a joint is overused, sustains prolonged repetitive stress, or experiences sudden but intense injury, a nearby bursa can swell and fill up with excess fluid. This condition is called bursitis, and is marked by tenderness in the area where the bursa is swollen, and a severe, often unbearable pain even at rest.

Bursitis usually occurs at the shoulders, hips, elbows, and knees. When left undiagnosed and untreated, it can cause debilitating pain and discomfort, reduced movement, decreased performance at work, and fitful, erratic sleep.

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Bursal injections of local anesthetic and a corticosteroid into the inflamed bursa reduce the inflammation and pain symptoms. Through ultrasound imaging, the specific coordinates of the offending bursa is located, and a fine needle is passed into the point where tissue is most tender.

Many experience redness or flushing of the face or even the rest of the body as a reaction to the absorption of the injected corticosteroid. This is normal and harmless, and lasts a few days before fading.

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It takes anywhere from 24 hours to three days for a bursal injection to take effect. When the corticosteroid sets in, however, the resulting reduced swelling and pain relief lasts from a few weeks to up to several months.  

Dr. Michael Steuer at MidSouth Pain Treatment Center helps individuals overcome bursitis to lead productive, fulfilling lives. Learn more about Dr. Steuer or his clinic by visting this website.

Making life without chronic pain possible

Be it an ancillary product of a debilitating injury or caused by a chronic illness that can only be treated gradually, pain is often an agonizing aspect of life. For many people, pain is a part of recovery, while for others it is an everyday occurrence emerging from a lifetime of stress or the lingering byproduct of a previous injury that has since been treated.

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A life dominated by chronic or recurring pain seems inevitable, particularly for elderly people who have survived life-threatening injuries or diseases. Chronic pain is not just a very unpleasant part of life. Pain, even from otherwise nonfatal conditions, can limit a person’s range of motion, restrict their activities, and prevent them from enjoying life to the fullest. In extreme cases, the sheer intensity of the pain can disable them altogether.

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Moreover, chronic pain, particularly that which emerges as a complication of previous injuries or conditions, would often linger despite interventions for pain relief such as painkillers. In these cases, specialist help is needed.

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Pain management authorities like Dr. Michael Steuer argue that life without chronic pain is possible. With the right treatment conducted by a specialist doctor, coupled with healthful lifestyle changes, chronic pain can be kept at bay or even eliminated altogether, vastly improving quality of life.  

A trusted authority in pain management, Dr. Michael Steuer believes that nobody should ever have to live with chronic pain. Learn more about his views on pain management and more on the MidSouth Pain Treatment Center website.