ATLANTA — Americans dealing with chronic pain after past traumas sometimes go years without a diagnosis, or effective treatment.
Channel 2′s Wendy Corona spoke with a doctor who says when a physical ailment isn’t the explanation for ongoing, undiagnosed, pain and treatments aren’t working, patients should consider new therapies and a psychological approach to help resolve the pain.
Dr. David Clarke, a gastroenterologist and internal medicine doctor, told Corona that newer research shows healing is still happening after patients face past traumas.
He said one in five adults deal with some type of chronic and unexplained pain.
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“People go to the doctor and they’ve got pain or illness in their bodies that’s perfectly real,” Clarke said. “The diagnostic tests are done and either the answer doesn’t show up in terms of what’s explaining it, or the treatment that’s tried isn’t working as expected. In people like this, it’s the brain that is producing real physical symptoms in the body, and the brain is doing this because of stress, trauma, emotions or other challenges in life.”
Clarke told Channel 2 Action News that this can happen even when there’s nothing physically wrong with your body, and it happens because you don’t recognize one or more types of stress you’re under.
Research conducted by several medical centers across North America shows that by paying attention to trauma, stress, emotions and other life challenges, you can make a difference in treating chronic, unexplained pain, according to Clarke.
Clarke recommends taking a screening quiz to see if the pain you feel is from a physical ailment or may be psychological.
“We’ve got a wonderful 12 question screening quiz on symptomatic.me that can help people figure out if any of this applies to them,” Clarke said.
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