Relief with opioid discontinuation

Managing persistent or chronic pain is complex. Frequently there is a lack of objective reason for persistent pain yet it is real, personal and subjective and people with persistent pain are of then desperately seeking effective pain relief. I recently attended an “Explain Pain” course in Cairns (which was lovely and warm), which looks at ways to reconceptualise pain from a modern neuroscience perspective. How does this help? Well knowledge is power. There is a growing body of research showing that we can target our natural analgesic systems with simple but effective education about pain. This is particularly pertinent given the numbers of people suffering with persistent pain and the failure of common pain medications to effectively manage pain.