Understanding CRPS, Central Sensitization & Neuromodulation | Q&A with Dan and Justine In this episode of 'It's Not In Your Head,' Dan and Justine answer your questions around various aspects of complex chronic pain management, focusing on Complex Regional Pain Syndrome (CRPS) and central sensitization. They delve into the Budapest criteria for dia…

Understanding Central Sensitization and Chronic Pain Drivers | It's Not In Your Head Podcast In this episode of 'It's Not In Your Head' podcast, Dr. Dan Bates and Justine dive deep into the intricacies of neuroinflammation in chronic pain, focusing on understanding the drivers behind it. They discuss the philosophical challenges in current pain man…

Strategic Empathy: Handling Chronic Pain and Invisible Illnesses In the inaugural Q&A episode of 'It's Not In Your Head,' Dan and Juz discuss strategies for managing chronic pain, addressing both patient and provider perspectives. They tackle how to respond to common misconceptions about chronic pain, offer quick ways to explain one's condition wit…

In this episode of 'It's Not In Your Head' podcast, Dan and Juz explore the myriad of challenges and strategies around traveling with chronic pain. They discuss pre-travel preparation, in-flight strategies, travel management, and post-travel recovery. Justine shares personal anecdotes about her recent trip to Costa Rica, highlighting practical tips…

Managing Complex Chronic Pain: Patient and Provider Strategies In this episode of 'It's Not In Your Head' podcast, Dan and Juz delve into effective strategies for managing complex chronic pain for both patients and providers. The conversation is sparked by Dan's experience at a recent patient-focused conference, where problematic suggestions about …

In this episode of 'It's Not In Your Head' podcast, hosts Dr. Dan Bates and Justine Feitelson discuss nociceptive pain, also known as body part pain. The episode delves into their Nociceptive Pain Algorithm, breaking down the different types of somatic pain, including mechanical, inflammatory, myofascial, bony, and vascular pain. It includes discus…

In this Pt. 2 of sleep episode, Dan and Juz cover the conservative measures around improving your sleep, particularly if you struggle with insomnia, or painsomnia, as many pain patients refer to the challenge of falling asleep. They cover external and environmental factors including circadian rhythm, as well as internal or behavioral variables that…

Dan and Juz dive into the significant relationship between pain and sleep, and how it drives sensitization. They cover sleep basics, how lack of it long-term negatively impacts patients cognitively, and share a helpful analogy you can use as a patient to better explain what chronic pain feels like - especially with regards to increasing buckets of …

In this podcast episode, Dan and Juz explore the concept of pacing and give it a bit of a re-brand, going through their structure and personal examples to learn how to break down managing your timing, tasks and tolerance more effectively so you can reclaim activities and passions pain may have limited. Effective pacing includes careful planning, ta…

In this podcast episode, Dan and Juz explore a step-by-step approach to managing lower back pain. They begin with busting some significant yet persistent myths when it comes to patient recovery, and continue the conversation by identifying key patient concerns, focusing on red flags and understanding their ability to cope. For pain that is manageab…

Dan and Justine dive into the basics of conservative pain management, covering the starting points of her MARSMethod and where you need to begin as a patient no matter what types of chronic pain you have. They go through the importance of and give specific recommendations around improving protein amount, fiber intake, hydration totals, sleep qualit…

In this episode, Justine and Dan go over a number of different assessments tools you can use to define what types of pain you have, what amplifiers may be playing a role, and how symptoms are affecting you functionally. Besides these validated measures, we'll also introduce our sensitization questionnaire so you can look at the information you pull…

Dan and Juz cover the neuropathic pain algorithm, taking you through first through fourth-line treatment options from most to least conservative. They cover trialing and combining various medications including opioids, topicals for focal areas of pain, and various interventional options all the way up to neuromodulation (peripheral or spinal cord s…

In this episode, Dan and Juz focus on the importance of communicating and assessing pain through the use of pain diagrams, which help both clinicians and patients gain insights into the sources and amplification of their presentation. The hosts go through many different types of back, leg, and neck pain, discussing how this information contributes …

Agency is crucial as a chronic pain patient - especially when you feel most helpless and scared with pain at its worst. Flares are always difficult to navigate, but they don't have to make you feel so helpless and reactive. What are the phases of a flare, and how can you manage each one? This episode is a critical resource to learn how to identify …

In this episode, Dan and Justine break down how they each set goals and manage expectations with their patients. We dive into why your 'why' matters, how to connect your purpose to your plan, create discipline, tap into motivation, identify your purpose and cultivate confidence, so patients can better tie their actions to their goals and create lon…

In this episode, Dr. Dan and Justine introduce their 'Central Sensitization Algorithm' designed to help healthcare providers diagnose and treat central sensitization and related neuroinflammatory disorders more effectively. The algorithm categorizes symptoms into distinct buckets of nervous system dysfunction, allowing providers to more quickly and…

In this episode of "It's Not In Your Head," Dan and Justine dive into the nuanced aspects of how to more effectively communicate about pain with patients, focusing on the significance of specific language and its impact on patient outcomes. They caution against phrases that suggest pain is purely psychological and inadvertently blame and shame the …

Trigger warning: This episode deals with the topic of suicide. Dan and I have an interesting and important discussion that bridges the gap between patients’ clear and obvious frustrations with how different versions of “it’s in your head” affect them and providers’ lack of awareness around the issue. How can this be the case? And how does being tol…

From the uterus, to witchcraft, hypnotism and more, we go through the history of what unexplainable symptoms have been blamed on and how they've been explained through history all the way up to more modern day classifications like Briquette's syndrome, somatoform, conversion, or functional disorders. We tease apart risk factors and other patterns t…

In this episode, we expand upon 'Number Needed to Treat', tying that concept into overall therapeutic limitations and some other examples beyond medications, including one you are definitely going to want to hear about - the effect of pain neuroscience education in and of itself. So how much does understanding pain actually decrease pain? It depend…

The hard truth is it's normal for treatments, especially medications, not to work. But how many patients do you actually have to treat to improve things for just one even? This is where the concept 'number needed to treat' is critical to better understand so that expectations don't lead to resentments. Managing expectations as a patient is hard, it…

In this episode, we will bring the different types of pain together in an alternative way to "Pain is a Sound System', introducing 'The Pain Pie' to tease apart the different aspects of pain that contribute to the output of symptoms patients experience. As a provider, you can use this thinking tool to better see the different presentations as you g…

Learn how central sensitization really presents. And yes, it’s a big deal that is currently essentially glossed over due to the lack of identification and treatments The symptom clusters this type of pain creates long term are diseases caused by the central nervous system. The issue is that we currently lack an effective way to investigate and trea…

Nociceptive pain, or body part pain, is the most common type of pain. Dr. Dan will break down the differences between somatic and visceral pain within this main category, and get into its different features including Myofacial Pain Mechanical Pain Vascular Pain Justine and Dan will also talk about the different challenges both patients and provider…

Diagnosing and treating nerve pain, or neuropathic pain, is very challenging. Now that you understand nociceptive pain, we’ll help you see the clear difference between that and neuropathic presentations. Justine and Dan break down how to best treat different types of pathologies, from first line medications and navigating side effect vs benefits, t…

Welcome to the podcast! We are so excited to reveal this project to you. In our initial episode, Dan and I will cover why we called the project "It's Not in Your Head", and what we want to accomplish through it. We get into Justine and Dan’s backgrounds, experience and motivations, how Justine came to develop Resilient Warrior Coaching and her MARS…

Complex pain is, well, complicated. Explaining it effectively can be even more so. In this episode, Dr. Dan shares his metaphor to think about and better explain pain called, ‘Pain is a Sound System.’ We’ll talk about how the amplification process occurs, (Justine will interrupt us with some “wiggle time”), and we’ll introduce the different types o…