PTSD and Pain
PTSD and Pain
Dr. Jeffrey Meyer
Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is most often associated with the military service. In combat solders are living twenty-four hours a day in fight or flight mode. That aspect of your brain that keeps you alert and prepared to protect yourself.
Folks who have never been in the military also experience trauma, psychologically and physically. Not as constant or severe as military combat, but trauma never the less.
PTSD is a result of our fight or flight response system or to be a bit more scientific an aspect of our “Limbic System”. From auto accidents to a fall while running to being frightened, all can result in a fight or flight response, all possibly creating a PTS response later in life.
Seven years ago I attended a seminar, which included a video documenting research conducted by a noted Psychologist on the subject of PTSD and pain. It discussed how reoccurring pain could be secondary to a PTS response. Since most of my patient’s conditions include some level of pain I found this gentleman’s research fascinating. As practitioners is it enough to help relieve pain or should there be more. The pain we help relieve most often returns only to be relieved again for a short period of time. Could your patient’s condition be a PTS response secondary to a trauma from years past, seemingly unrelated to their current condition?
Most of the research conducted on this subject is through the Veteran’s Administration. It has been my experience that a PTS response pain condition with a veteran is different, much more complicated than with a non-veteran. Never the less the majority of my patients (veteran and non-veteran) with chronic and some with acute pain have a PTS response connection, a psychological button that triggers a physical pain response.
How can we diagnose a PTS response pain condition… let alone treat it.
Conventional modern medicine looks to specialties such as pain management specialist who introduce the aid of machines to help in the diagnoses process or psychology to determine a possible cause of pain. However, PTS is not visible on conventional diagnostic machines such as X-ray, MRI, Sonograms and so forth.
Non-conventional medicine most often involves a more “energetic” look at symptoms. Oriental medicine, Ayurveda medicine and Tibetan medicine are a few medical modalities that introduce pulse diagnosis, listening, smelling, and palpating diagnosis along with a level of intuition to the diagnosis process. At times they may look at possible past trauma, however, are they looking at PTS as a root cause of the condition. If they are can they recognize it.
I don’t believe that conventional or non-conventional medicine is adequately addressing a PTS response pain condition. As well, I don’t believe that conventional or non-conventional medicine is aware of the vast number of patients suffering from PTS response pain.
Whether you are able to diagnose PTS response pain is not as much of a concern as whether you are aware of the condition and are willing to accept PTS response as a possible root cause of pain.