What is Pain Therapy?
Pain is the number one reason for physician consultations and the most common reason for missed work, social events, and more. If you are tired of waking up each day feeling limited in what your body can do, pain therapy can drastically improve your standard of living.
There are two types of pain:
- Acute pain: Begins suddenly and is typically a result of surgery or a broken bone
- Chronic pain: Pain that lasts for more than three months and is often caused by a health condition
There are several approaches to help minimize and treat acute and chronic pain. Pain therapy is utilized to ease suffering and improve the quality of life of those who suffer from chronic or acute pain.
Addressing Ongoing Pain
Pain can negatively impact a patient’s life, and how each individual undergoes pain is always a personal experience. Pain can be mild and require no or minimal treatment. More severe pain may be chronic and debilitating. Whether intermittent or recurring, our goal is to relieve your pain. Aside from opioids to manage pain, which may come with severe side effects, there are several other options.
Pain Therapy and Treatment
We take several approaches to minimizing and treating acute and chronic pain. To offer you optimal treatment, it’s important to know where your pain is coming from. We ask ourselves why there is pain to begin with. This may require ordering imaging or requesting those records if they have already been done. If you have imaging reports, please bring those with you to the appointment.
Compounded Topical Medications in addition to Low-Dose Naltrexone (LDN)
Compounded Topical Medications: May include one or more prescriptions or other anesthetic, analgesic, sedative, antidepressant, anti-seizure, or muscle relaxant drugs that are used to treat pain. It can be a helpful adjunct to Low-Dose Naltrexone. LDN has a long history of helping autoimmune conditions and pain. We use this medication frequently in our office. Various nutraceutical options—formulations using specific nutrients—are also available. We also use third-party tested, high-quality treatments, including peptide therapies, which utilize natural, effective, and non-invasive supplements to decrease inflammation, help with healing, promote weight loss hair growth, and assist in anti-aging.
- Used to reduce symptom severity in conditions such as fibromyalgia, Crohn’s disease, multiple sclerosis, and complex regional pain syndrome
Local Treatments
We offer injection treatments that have been found to heal organs, tissues, and muscles to restore lost function from aging, disease, damage, or defects.
Prolozone: Ozone administered with or without PRP to a joint or area of soft tissue to reduce pain and heal injury:
- Repairs back pain, carpal tunnel syndrome, neck pain, degenerative discs in the spine, hip and knee arthritis
- Can speed healing with frozen shoulder
- Treat plantar fasciitis
- Reduce pain with arthritis
- Improve knee pain post-injury and speed healing.
- Address scar tissue often improving range of motion and the look of scars
Neural therapy: Developed in Germany in the 1920’s, neural therapy can quickly decrease pain and improve recovery. In addition, we can use neural therapy to treat scars and the autonomic nervous system. Dr. McMonagle has been trained in neural therapy since 2003 and uses this treatment daily.
Platelet-Rich Plasma (PRP) and Prolotheray: Regenerative injection techniques that we will use in conjunction with Prolozone or as stand alone therapies. We use a specialized centrifuge to access the healing power of your own platelets.
- Treats degenerative conditions such as osteoarthritis and tendon, ligament, and muscle injuries
We have found that medical ozone, UV light therapy, and IV magnesium can be helpful for the treatment of pain.
UV/Ozone IV: Used to activate your immune system and boost immunity. It improves blood circulation as more oxygen travels to your cells, tissues, and organs.
IV magnesium: Treats low magnesium levels in the body, which contributes negatively to pain levels.
Healing Therapies
We use several practices to speed healing, improve circulation, and improve recovery times. These include:
BEMER (bioelectric magnetics energy regulation) therapy: Medical grade muscle stimulator that increases circulation and reduces recovery time. It is used to optimize physical performance, enhance muscle conditioning, improve relaxation, and reduce stress.
Red Light Laser Therapy: Low-wavelength red light improves healing, decreases inflammation, and eases pain in joints and muscles.
Hyperbaric Oxygen Chamber: Administration of highly oxygenated air in a pressurized environment speeds up healing of wounds that won’t heal and infections in which tissues are starved for oxygen and neurological disorders. Hyperbaric Oxygen Chambers are also used to enhance performance and speed recovery by increasing oxygen to soft tissues as well as helping:
- Anti-aging benefits
- Improve sleep
- Reduce blood sugar averages in diabetes
- Speed wound healing
- Recover from head injuries
- Improve stem cell production
- Sports recovery and better athletic performance
Exercise with Oxygen Therapy (EWOT): Involves breathing higher oxygen levels during exercise to increase O2 levels in your blood plasma. With EWOT, recovery effects can be felt in as few as 15 minutes.
Trigger Point Injections: These help relieve myofascial (inflammation in your muscle and fascia) pain, usually caused by a “knot” in your muscle. They may also include using ozone therapy and traditional neural therapy techniques, which can quickly improve range of motion and reduce pain.
In certain cases, we’ll recommend therapies in conjunction with other providers, so we may refer you to a trusted physical therapist, chiropractor, acupuncturist, or massage therapist. If our therapies don’t offer the pain relief you need, we can help guide you in referral for surgical evaluations.
Let Us Help Relieve Your Pain
You don’t have to live with pain. Reach out to the clinicians at Lake Oswego Health Center to learn more about how our diverse treatments can help or to make an appointment.