Photo: Getty Images
Here's today's feel-good story:
A new neurological treatment plan for patients that have chronic pain is attracting interest because it helps with pain management without the use of opioids.
The idea behind the treatment is that it combats a psychological response known as "catastrophizing" in which a patient's brain sends "danger messages" to the body, frightened by future outbreaks of pain, which perpetuates pain response.
One of the most common occurrences is when a person refrains from performing a certain action long after an injury from the action has healed.
“You can have very real, debilitating pain without any biomedical injury in your body because of changes in the pain processing pathways,” says psychologist at Cornell and coauthor of a successful trial on PRT, Dr. Yoni Ashar.