“I had a spinal fusion in my back 2 years ago. I have been in severe pain since and have had to rely upon ever increasing amounts of narcotics that are now not helping my pain at all.” 

Recently, I was asked this question. Unfortunately, so many people fall into ever increasing chronic pain and reliance on pain medications – with and without surgery.

There are many different things that help chronic pain, even when severe.

If you’re experiencing chronic pain, it’s important to identify the cause of the pain in your case. Chronic use of medications might be contributing to pain as your body adapts to the medications. You can talk to your MD or pharmacist about this.

Even if your pain is due to the surgery, the precise cause can significantly vary.

It’s impossible to give you good treatment advice without knowing the exact problem(s) in you.

Changes are often both local and central in the nervous system with chronic pain.

It would be best for you to see someone in person that can properly evaluate you for these changes.

This is not as easy as most people imagine, finding a good practitioner that will have the knowledge and spend sufficient time to identify what is going on.

Even if you had a spinal fusion surgery, you should see someone that also can identify abnormal movement patterns of other, non fused joints.

It critically important.

In general, we’re wired so that movement turns off pain through relationships in the nervous system.

It’s likely that other lifestyle changes can help… including dietary changes, sleep, types of exercise/movement appropriate for you. Possibly some supplementation would be necessary.

Summarizing, seek out an excellent health practitioner that can identify what exactly is wrong then work to improve neuro-musculoskeletal function and give appropriate lifestyle recommendations to help your recovery.

This is something that I do on a daily basis in my office.

There may very well be other things as well.

You would be amazed at how many people suffering from serious chronic pain can be helped with this approach.

It’s not hopeless, even if it may seem that way at times. 

It’s very likely you can improve with the right treatment.