Dr. Thomas Smith, currently at Johns Hopkins University, is conducting research on the effectiveness of Scrambler Therapy. This is a unit that helps block signals being sent out from the brain, saying that a part of the body is in pain. What this unit does is it replaces those signals with ones telling the brain and the nerves that there is no pain. It is a commonly used tool for those with peripheral neuropathy. When Dr. Smith heard about how effective Scrambler Therapy was proving to be, he wanted to try it out on patients struggling with neuropathy following chemotherapy.

What Does Scrambler Therapy Do?

Many people say that Scrambler Therapy is much like TENS therapy. There are leads placed on the body, which send signals to the brain. However, the therapies are much different. TENS therapy uses electrodes to send signals to the brain to relieve pain through touch. The gentle pulses of electricity mimic personal touch, which helps to suppress pain. Scrambler Therapy is very different. It uses leads placed near the pain on the body, never directly on the pain, to send different signals. Instead of telling the brain that the pain should begin to subside from touch, it tells the brain there is no pain. It helps train the brain to realize those parts of the body are not in actual pain. That way, the brain stops sending pain sensations down the nervous system to those nerves, and you get relief.

Who Were the People Dr. Smith Wanted to Test Scrambler Therapy On?

Dr. Smith worked with many different patients when trying out Scrambler Therapy. However, his goal was to see if he could provide relief to those struggling with pain following bouts of chemotherapy. He helped many patients get started with this therapy, and also had other doctors check out his results. Not only were the results positive that people were experiencing relief, but also they were able to mimic the results. They were not one-sided, and other people could duplicate the study and get similar results.

Most of the people who underwent Scrambler Therapy noted that their pain went down significantly after ten sessions with this therapy. When interviewed weekly following their ten days of Scrambler Therapy, their pain was still gone 10 weeks later. This showed incredible promise, not only for the doctors who could offer relief, but also for the patients who needed the help.

How Long Does One Need to Get Scrambler Therapy to See Results?

The number of sessions you need to feel relief is different for every patient. However, the typical number of sessions ranged from 2 to 10. Most people did not notice much of a change after the first session. By the time their second one came, they noticed a bit of relief for a few hours. As each subsequent session came about, they found greater levels of relief. Once a patient got to where they left the session with nearly no pain, and were able to stay that way overnight, the sessions were stopped.

Dr. Smith had his research staff keep up with the patients weekly following their final session. There was only one person who said that they would not recommend Scrambler Therapy to others. Over 80% of the rest of the people studied were happy with their results. The pain did not come back after the sessions stopped. Plus, for most, this meant long-term relief. The different types of pain that went with the tests for Scrambler Therapy included arm and leg pain, back pain, and pain, numbness, and tingling in the hands or feet.

Should You Consider Getting Scrambler Therapy?

Scrambler Therapy is not going to be for everyone. However, more than 80% of people who used it, would recommend it to others. Most of the people who try it get results and relief from chronic pain. If your life is not what it used to be because of pain, what have you got to lose? There are no consistent side effects by using Scrambler Therapy. Some people get minor bruising beneath the leads, but that is really all that researchers found. People are seeing relief in a matter of days, and it is lasting for months on end. Consider what you would do to get relief from pain in the next few days that would last months. Reach out to us today. We can help give you your life back.

If you want to see what options you have for your chronic pain, visit us at the Pain Care Clinic of Idaho. You can contact us by calling (208) 629-2492. Let us help you decide which method of treatment would be best for you, and talk to you about the benefits we have seen with those opting to try Scrambler Therapy.

There are many people who suffer the effects of peripheral neuropathy on a daily basis. However, not everyone is fully aware of what it is or how it comes about. If you care about someone recently diagnosed with peripheral neuropathy, or you heard you may have it, then it is important you learn what it is. The more you know about it, the better managed it can be. Here is an overview of what peripheral neuropathy is and how it can affect your life.

What Is Peripheral Neuropathy?

Being diagnosed with peripheral neuropathy is often unnerving. It is having your doctor tell you that you have damage in your peripheral nerves, and it has lead to pain. The extremities of your body typically struggle the most with this type of diagnosis. It affects your hands and feet first in nearly all cases. However, it can also affect other areas around your body. You may not only have pain, but also numbness. This can make going through the motions of a typical day difficult or even impossible.  There are times where peripheral neuropathy is so intense, it can make it to where you struggle to move. This is definitely not the quality of life you want or should have to live with.

How Does Peripheral Neuropathy Present?

Most of the time, peripheral neuropathy presents itself in the form of numbness and pain. Tingling, stabbing, and burning are the three most used adjectives to describe the pain of peripheral neuropathy. The longer this condition goes untreated, the more pain people often struggle with. The sooner you can come in and see someone about your pain, the sooner you can regain your quality of life. There are a few different treatment options to help control the pain of peripheral neuropathy. However, not all of them work for every case. You may need to go through and try a few different forms of treatment before you find the right one.

The damage that leads to peripheral neuropathy results in nerves that no longer function properly. The type of presentation you have will depend on which of your nerves struggle with the problem. Some nerves will lead to numbness and a loss of complete control over the affected area. Other nerves will leave you feeling as though the area is on fire or being pierced with a hot object. Occasionally, you may also experience freezing sensations as opposed to burning sensations. In the more severe cases, your nerves may begin malfunctioning altogether. This can lead to problems controlling your heartbeat, blood pressure, bladder, and your digestion.

Where Does Peripheral Neuropathy Come From?

In most cases, peripheral neuropathy comes from some type of damage to your body. The most common reason people develop peripheral neuropathy is diabetes. However, that is only one of the many causes. You could develop it following an injury or an infection that damaged your body. Metabolic issues can also lead to peripheral neuropathy. Some people develop this condition because they inherited it from a parent through genetics. Yet others end up struggling with peripheral neuropathy because they were exposed to something toxic.

How Can You Treat Peripheral Neuropathy?

When you have a formal diagnosis of peripheral neuropathy, it is time to find out what options you have for treatment. The type of treatment that will help you best depends on the problem you have in the first place. The more nerves struggling from the damage, the heavier the treatment required. There are many pain medications that can relieve peripheral neuropathy pain. However, not everyone will respond to the same type of narcotic treatment. Some people will notice very little relief from pain medications, but will notice relief from other types of prescription drugs, such as muscle relaxers.

There are also technological treatments for peripheral neuropathy. One of the newer, yet more effective treatment options is called the Scrambler Therapy ®. It provides relief to 9 out of 10 people who get it done. How the Scrambler Therapy ® works is by stimulating near the area of pain through vibration. Your medical professional will put electrodes near your area of pain, and provide your body with a gentle vibration to help realign the nerves to send the proper messages to the brain. Instead of having your body read the messages as painful messages, this therapy provides your body with messages that the area is not in pain. This often provides a significant amount of pain relief.

If you are tired of living with constant pain, come in and meet with one of the experienced professionals here at the Pain Care Clinic of Idaho. You can reach us at (208) 629-2492. Let us help you manage your peripheral neuropathy and start living a good quality of life again.

Taking non-pharmaceutical approaches to pain management is the route many Americans are going. Some are allergic or don’t want to deal with the side effects. Others simply tried everything and nothing’s working. When you feel chronic pain in key areas of your body, the last thing you want to do is allow it to control you. Skip on the medication, and take a natural route to curing your pain.

Massage Therapy

If it’s your muscles that are directly affected most of the tie, especially when you’re dealing with chronic pain. If that’s the case, regular massage therapy could be the perfect option. Not only will you reduce muscle inflammation, but you can also feel a complete relief to pain and the symptoms of whatever you have going on with regular massage therapy.

Alleviating the stress and tension on your muscles can also allow small bouts of healing when under the right circumstances. If you’ve been enduring pain for a long time, you probably don’t even remember what relief feels like. During and after massage therapy, you’ll be in a sense of euphoria, all without having to take a single bit of medication.

TENS Therapy

This refers to a small device that emits electrical pulses that can dig into your muscles, and alleviate pain. It’s becoming an increasingly popular method for those wishing to alleviate pain through non-pharmaceutical means, and is completely safe to use. While some areas in the United States don’t look at TENS therapy to be a valid route, patients who have undergone it would beg to differ.

Applying Heat

You don’t have to apply patches to your body. Those contain medications that get absorbed by your skin, and don’t actually alleviate pain the way that they should. Skip the menthol scent and the discomfort that those patches give you. Your skin also gets all oily, and often feels wet because your pores are being suffocated by medical applications. Use a heating pad or a heated blanket across an area that’s in consistent pain, and feel it all melt away.

Applying Cold

Working in a similar fashion to applying heat, you can apply icepacks or cold towels to any area that is causing you pain. This will reduce swelling. When you reduce swelling, you’re reducing the inflamed skin that’s pressing on your nerves. Most times, applying cold to the site can offer more relief than applying heat. The popular method of this is when you see Icy Hot patches in stores, and their motto tells you that you should numb the pain, and then melt it away. You can apply this same knowledge if you wish by applying a heating pack to your skin and then a cold pack, all without taking a pharmaceutical approach.

Physical Therapy

If you’re endured an injury and the effects are lasting for years (which can sometimes be referred to as phantom pain), then you’ve been putting up with it long enough. Physical therapy can be a long road, but the best road to recovery when you’ve suffered extensive damage to your body. The biggest thing to remember with physical therapy is that you can never skip a day. There’s no off-day. Whatever your physical therapist says, they’re saying for a reason. Follow their instructions, and the pain will reduce over time, allowing you to feel a full sense of relief.

Chiropractic Adjustments

While many have their skepticism on chiropractic adjustments, the results don’t lie. When you have chronic pain, especially in your back, you’re more susceptible to injuring yourself further. If you baby your back (and it’s in pain, who wouldn’t?) you’re slowly allowing those muscles to atrophy, and making it more likely that they’ll suffer pain and injury in the future.

A chiropractic adjustment is the solution to many people’s pain, especially when they feel it in their lower back. Undergoing the careful hands of a chiropractor has helped millions of Americans, and it can help you. The biggest thing that patients say after receiving an adjustment is, “Wow, I didn’t expect the relief to be immediate.” How are you going to get that with medications? Exactly—you’re not.

Your Next Chiropractic Adjustment

With all the negatives to leading medications, you don’t want to take a pharmaceutical path so your pain, and you shouldn’t have to. Call the Pain Care Clinic of Idaho at (208) 629-2492 to get more information on how a chiropractic adjustment or other non-pharmaceutical approach to pain reduction could benefit you immediately.

More commonly referred to simply as “cancer pain,” oncologic pain is the most undertreated side effect of cancer. Those suffering with cancer on any site can, and often do experience high levels of pain, and they can be difficult to manage. What is oncologic pain? It’s a nightmare for those who experience it. We offer pain care management for people suffering from oncologic pain.

Oncologic Pain: Tumors

 When you’re suffering from cancer, your tumors could be pressing on your bones. More than that, they could be pressing directly onto your nerves. That’s going to make for sever discomfort, and it’s also going to persist through all hours of the day.

Your oncologic pain could be due to a tumor growing in a specific direction. When it presses down on your bones, you get the same feeling of growing pains from when you were a child or teenager. It can feel like muscle aches instead of sharp pain. Oncologic pain can start out very mild, and increase over a short amount of time. Your body doesn’t adjust to the different types of pain.

You can also experience oncologic pain in various areas of your body. For example, those tumors can be growing and pressing on specific nerves that mimic different types of pain. You could end up being diagnosed with chronic pain.

What Type of Oncologic Pain Do You Have?

There are virtually endless types of pain that you can endure. The most common is chronic pain, where tumors press down on your nerves, and make everything go haywire. If you’re experiencing acute levels of pain, it could be your body telling you that something isn’t right. It’s not always clear.

Even though tumors and cancer grow inside of our body, the rest of your body can still see it as a foreign object or entity. This means that a bunch of signals are going off, usually in the form of oncologic pain, and they are all trying to tell you that something isn’t right. While it can be frustrating, it’s also a sign to look further into your own health. If you are already suffering from oncologic pain and you know it, getting another evaluation to determine if there are more underlying issues could be in your best interest.

Pain Severity Depends on the Site

If you’re experiencing an increasing level of oncologic pain, it could be due to a number of reasons. More often than not, it’s tumor growth. Your different levels of pain could come in at different stages, especially if you have more than one tumor at a time.

Oncologic pain doesn’t have a scale, but when you go to your general doctors office and see the “1 to 10” pain chart, you always feel like it’s hovering around the top end of the scale. It’s not dramatic to say that—oncologic pain is something that’s very difficult to put into words.

Your bones may be experiencing extreme tension and pressure due to various tumor growth patterns. Every diagnosis of oncologic pain is unique to the patient. There’s no way to determine if nerve pressure or bone pressure is more painful—it’s also about the patients’ pain tolerance threshold.

Tissue Damage 

It’s not just your bones and major nerves—you could be experiencing pain due to damage done to soft tissue. For instance, if you are experiencing pain in your lower back, it could actually be due to the fact that you have incurred soft tissue damage to a vital organ, such as your kidney.

Phantom Pain

The term sounds insensitive to those suffering from oncologic pain, but in reality, it’s just used to describe pain in an area that has been removed. If you suffered from breast cancer, and you’ve since had that breast removed, you may still feel pain in that area. It’s still classified as oncologic pain, and may continue to hurt for some time. It’s also more common than you may think. If you had something removed, such as a limb, you’re among a vast majority of those suffering from phantom pain. It’s constantly affecting those who have had organs or appendages removed as a direct result of cancer.

Managing Your Oncologic Pain the Right Way

It’s not an easy thing to deal with. Contact us, the Pain Care Clinic of Idaho, at (208) 629-2492, to find out what we can do to help you manage your oncologic pain. It’s not an easy road to go down, and you shouldn’t have to go it alone. We can help.