What Is Pain DeGrowth?

Medication and surgery works for all sorts of different diseases.
But they frequently do not work to cure chronic pain...and I know this very well because I have been living with chronic pain for well over a year and nothing doctors gave me worked.

So I have been on a pretty intense journey to heal myself and I've discovered a number of non-drug non-surgery ways to significantly reduce the amount of pain I feel in a given day.
They work for me. And from what I can tell, they work for hundreds of thousands of other people.
I am not 100% "cured", I still have bad days...but I have SIGNIFICANTLY reduced my reliance on pain medication.  And, most importantly I have discovered how to stay hopeful and happy despite the pain.  This is true for almost everyone who uses these tools.

If you or someone you care about suffers from chronic pain (migraines, back or leg pain, elbow or neck pain...ANY PAIN that's long term and wont go away) I strongly recommend you give these things a try.
 You dont have to believe they work.
You dont have to want to do them.
Just give them a try!

My five ideas to help ease your chronic pain:
1. Go to Curable Health and try it out for a month:  https://www.curablehealth.com/
2. Listen to some doctors explain the pain cycle...and how to break it:  https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/tell-me-about-your-pain/id1503847664
3. Listen to some people who significantly reduced their pain which can give you the inspiration you need to believe you can get better: https://www.curablehealth.com/podcast?gad=1&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIveqXyarhgAMVw4VbCh0pjwUOEAAYASAAEgItQfD_BwE
4. Watch some videos on Cold Plunging with Wim Hof: https://www.facebook.com/reel/6995193690493339
5. Read a book on the science and  history of breathing by James Nestor: https://www.mrjamesnestor.com/

And a bonus: listen to my episode on how to gradually reduce your pain medication.
You can also follow me on instagram @whatsthisplacepodcast.

I would love to hear how the process was for you.  Email me at miranda@theodore1922.com.

Enjoying the podcast? I am fiercely independent, and rely on listeners like you to help me stick around.
Can you share the episode on social media, or write a
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ review in Apple podcasts?! I would be so grateful.

Transcript

[00:00:00] 

Miranda Black:  
Hello, while you D growers out there, I'm Miranda black. And this is what's this place behind the clicks and mortar. And usually I talk about de-growth in terms of retail or shopping, but today. I want to talk about chronic pain and the reason is. Uh, you know, there's a, there's a number of reasons. 

First of all, get this. I recently read that new cases of chronic pain. Have outnumbered diabetes, high blood pressure and depression. And it's now the number one cause of a doctor's visit. And here we go at the truth. 

I've been embarrassed to admit that. I have been struggling. With chronic pain for well over a year. And until I read that it's such an epidemic, I had this guilt and, well, let's be honest. It was a depression that I was the only one suffering or complaining or losing [00:01:00] productivity, but it turns out just like everything else in this world. I am one of millions. 

And we are all looking for ways to cope and then. I was watching that succession finale where Tom is described as pain sponge. And it just resonated with me so strongly because at first I was like jealous because our society rewards panes bunches. There are countless tech talks and. 

Socials where people are celebrating and celebrated for their ability to take pain, no pain, no gain pain. Is deeply woven into the fabric of our modern, productive society. And I should know. I pushed myself. Way too much. I took on a ton of pain all through my early adult years. Very little sleep. Does this sound familiar working two jobs. 

Taxing yoga [00:02:00] routines in order to hit the ground running the next day at 4:30 AM And I remember one yoga instructor warning me. Saying that you can burn out your adrenals. And once that happens, it's really hard to build them back up. And I was like, what are adrenals? I got to go. 

If you're a retailer or you work retail. You totally know about pushing through pain. Working in heels or hard sole shoes because they look good. Waitressing. All those new warehouse jobs, don't even start with me about construction. people are working through their pain. 

You're back and your feet kill by the end of your shift. 

 pain is part of our whole working society. 

but it doesn't really matter where your chronic pain came from or how it developed or how long you've had it, no matter where your chronic pain lives, whether it's in your back, your knees, your hips, you [00:03:00] maybe have migraines. It could be in your eyes. It's all chronic pain and it all shares the same origin story in that it's started. And now it won't stop. 

The injury has healed. They tell me all injuries heal in six months or less. So being in constant pain, that's what chronic pain means. It's something that doesn't go away after the usual six months of healing, let's say you sprain your ankle or you get a bulging disc, the body heals itself. And that healing can take up to six months. 

But after that, The healing is done. But the pain continues. I've read lots of cases of people being in constant chronic pain for 10, 20, 30 years, it makes being social or productive or even happy. A huge challenge. A ton of energy goes into pain management. It's so exhausting. 

So the first line of pain management and the [00:04:00] current health care system, whether you're in Canada, the us or Europe, it seems to be pain meds. They give you Advil or Tylenol, Rebecca said, and then they'll move you up to opioids and then injections and then surgery. 

It is a multi billion dollar industry. And when I say multi I'm in like crazy multi in 2021, the last time I could get statistics on this. The global pain management markets. So all over the world, people using various pain management techniques, it was 70 billion and that's expected to reach 140 billion by 2030. So double. 

In a very short period of time. 

And Canada one in five people live with chronic pain. So chances are more than one of you. Listening has a chronic pain condition. or you definitely know someone who suffers, whether you're aware or not. And that's all the pain that's on the books, right? The pain that's [00:05:00] documented through doctors. Think of all the people without a family doctor, all the stuff that's not on the books, all the illegal drugs people use to numb their pain or alcohol or chocolate or bad choices or whatever people do to try to numb their pain. 

And then on the other side of that, there's the missed work. The missed social engagements. Every single event I've gone to in the past year, no matter how joyous, no matter how much I look like a normal person enjoying themselves. I am in a, quite a bit of pain. And leading up to that event, it's been a huge decision. 

Of whether I go or not. And that sucks. So I did try out. The prescription pain meds and there's a ton of plastic and prescription medication, but if I was going to be healed, Then it was worth all the disposable applicators, the containers, and do dads that were foisted on me. But [00:06:00] the shocking thing was they don't really even work. Which shocked me at first, I genuinely believe that once I decided to take the plunge and to prescription pain meds. 

Once I had exhausted all the anti-inflammatory diet options. The physio. . Uh, pill could stop my pain completely. Even if the price was being spaced out. Or having an upset stomach. At least the pain would go away. But the evidence is pretty conclusive that most of the modalities that doctors prescribed from drugs to surgeries. 

They often don't really even work on chronic pain. The pain peaks through or comes back. Sometimes even worse than before. I just want to say. I'm not a doctor. I'm not researcher. I'm also not a conspiracy theorist medication and surgery does work for all sorts of different diseases. 

But it [00:07:00] frequently doesn't work for chronic pain. So, what are we going to do? Just keep upping our medication until we're spaced out and incapacitated. Stop going to social events. Ugh. Quit working. No. Well, I have been on a pretty intense journey to heal myself and I've discovered a number of non-drug non-surgery ways to significantly reduce the amount of pain I feel in a given day. They work for me. And from what I can tell, they work for hundreds of thousands of other people. 

Now, there's not a lot of money to be made from pushing these tools onto people, and I think that's why a lot of it is word of mouth. So stay with me through the break and when we come back, I'm going to give you my five things to try if you suffer from chronic pain. Which ultimately could lead to de-growth in the pain industry! 

After this short commercial break. 

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Okay. So I have five ideas to float past you just to plant the seed, just put it out there. As things. That helped me reduce and manage my pain when it's at its worst, or even when it's just as naggy as like. Chronic [00:09:00] pain. Isn't acute pain. It just is like a too thick that won't go away. And none of these are as simple as swallowing a pill. I'll just get that out of the way first. There's no silver bullet. 

But all of them have worked for me in varying degrees on varying days. So let's get the cheesiest one out there first. Last summer after a closet clearing. I was at a level nine pain. It was on par with the beginnings of labor I wanted out of my skin. It was bad. And when you start looking for pain relief on Google, 

You might start seeing these ads for curable. It's an app. I avoided. Clicking for a number of weeks. I thought it was going to just be a. I don't know what I thought. I thought they were selling me something. But like any great addict kept coming back and giving me a little tap on the shoulder. 

You're able to sign up for free for a certain amount of time. And I was at a low, I was hating life, so I clicked. And Alyson. And I found out about something they call [00:10:00] neuropathic pain. Which is kind of like this pain record your body plays in order to stay safe. The record starts when you get the injury and like any solid injury, it's going to get worse before it gets better. You know what I mean? Like you injure something and the next day you wake up and you're like "oh my God, it's so much worse than I thought!". So the record grooves, they get really deep because your body is protecting you. The pain signal is saying 

" don't do that. No, no, no, don't do that!" " Do this." And the record keeps playing and playing even after the body has healed. And at first I thought. Oh, they're telling me it's all in my head that I'm just making it up. But it's, it's not that. And it took me a while to understand it. Neuropathic pain is really complicated, even for doctors and researchers to explain. So for me to try and do it on my little podcast here, that's not right, but that's why I'm giving you the tip to go to curable. 

They deep dive this phenomenon. But [00:11:00] I will tell you. That when I listened to the education and followed the meditation's, my pain went from a nine to a four in the first session. Blew my mind. I wasn't on any painkillers at all. So if you have pain from whatever that won't go away, that your doctor has said is unexplainable or incurable than checkout curable. I'm consistently able to get my pain down when I use the curable tools. 

And it doesn't mean that I don't have flare ups. I still have really bad days. But to have curable and my back pocket to be able to take my pain down by even 10% without using medication. That feels like magic. Now I'm going to say one caveat. 

It's never a hundred percent gone. Not yet. I'm still working on it. In fact, I recently got super depressed that I couldn't get it [00:12:00] down to zero. Because I've heard lots of stories of people who used curable for a week and their pain went away after like five, 10 years of constant aggravation. And I wanted to be one of those people. 

But I wasn't. 

And the more I listened, the more I realized I'm kind of the more common curable user who has success. Reducing. 

But not eliminating pain. 

And the most significant gift from doing the work and curable. And this is super important. It is the ability to be happy. Even when I'm in pain. The ability not to be scared or curtail my activities simply because I'm in pain. 

Getting a little emotional. Because it's huge. When you can't go somewhere because you're scared that you're going to flare up or you're going to just be uncomfortable and miserable the whole night. 

But when I decrease the severity by a percentage. Well in de-growth that's what we're talking about, right? [00:13:00] Percentages decreasing our use of drugs or our inability to be productive by small amounts, which over large populations can have a huge effect. So that maybe by 2030, we're not at $170 billion in pain medication and pain management. 

Maybe we're only at 140 billion. 

So that's the curable app. you can start for free and they say, you'll feel less pain in 30 days, or you get your money back. And I did. So I kept it. It's about a hundred dollars a year. You can find it by Googling curable. 

I'll put all the links in my notes for the podcast. And I want to clear up right here that curable has no idea I'm doing this podcast. Curable has no idea. I even exist. There is no financial gain here. I just want to say that for me, it helped a ton. 

And I want to pay it forward to other people. But if you can't afford that app, or maybe you're not ready to commit, there are two really good podcasts that use the curable philosophy for managing chronic pain. And you get a lot of the [00:14:00] education in these podcasts. So. These are free. The first is tell me about your pain. 

It's hosted by two doctors and they give you some techniques. They share some stories, they interview some chronic pain suffers and it gives you a great idea of what you can expect from curable. They do advertise for the curable app within the podcast, but it's not in your face kind of advertising. 

And it's considerably shorter than any Smartlist commercial break, which is way too long and makes me not want to listen. I recommend you start at the first episode and go at it like a limited series because I do build on and refer back to some of their more modern education on the current understanding of what pain is. It's actually super fascinating. And the second podcast is called like mind, like body, which are stories of people like me. Who've used the curable app and how it changed their life. So again, they talk about curable, but the stories themselves are really inspirational. 

And they frequently have [00:15:00] episodes with doctors explaining how and why this method works. And they cite the studies behind the work. It's all based on science, So that's your first option to D grow your pain killers and to actually have a better quality of life. That's a big aspect to the learning, a good quality of life, which we're all looking for. 

Now the next pain de-growth recommendation. It's free. It's in your home. It does take away my pain almost completely for a nice length of time. Like two hours pain free or lets me fall asleep. Pain-free. But it doesn't make any sense to me. It's super popular right now on the tech talks, please give a warm welcome to cold plunges. 

Or cold showers. I'm personally, I'm not much of a cold shower person. I don't really like it. It doesn't go deep enough. It feels like getting stuck in the rain. 

Some people like cold showers. I much prefer the plunge complete [00:16:00] submersion. 

My sister reminded me that I've been plunging and recommending cold plunges since I was in my late teens, early twenties. I think I was doing it then to be more productive, to get through the pain of the double waitressing shift. And now I do it for the chronic pain. I probably got from pushing myself through the pain. 

Irony. 

It's plunging into an April lake and Northern Ontario with ice floating in the water. That might not be your bag. That's okay. You can start small summer is actually a great time to start because our groundwater it's not as cold. Like our tap water. It's just not as cold as it gets in January. And you can start with just your legs or arms. 

There's this guy known on the internet as the ice man, because he holds all sorts of world records for how long he can withstand the cold, which is obscene. His world records. He has a bunch of videos on how you can start introducing your body to cold plunges. He himself is extremely extreme. But he's also the first to admit you [00:17:00] don't have to plunge like he plunges. So his name is VIM Hoff, which is w I M and then last name H O F. 

If you're cold plunge, curious. Now I. Love the cold plunge, 

Not just for getting rid of the pain, but just feeling, uh, this like mental clarity. I have no idea what the science is behind it, but I have read lots of stories of other people getting the same results. 

And even if you don't have pain, there are tons of health benefits to the cold plunge. One study in the Netherlands found that people who switched their shower to cold for the last 30 seconds. So you have your regular shower and your nice warm shower. And then for the last 30 seconds, you switch it to as cold. 

As you can get those people who did it in the study called out sick from work 29% less than people who didn't do the cold showers. Now that's a Googled statistic, but Chris Hemsworth. He did this health [00:18:00] documentary, which I also recommend on, uh, I think it's on Disney. And he cited that same study in his health documentary. So I feel confident spreading the word that. 

Cold plunges work on many levels. But I'm going to go back to recommending start small. I am seeing on Tik TOK and Instagram. All these people in like baths with ice cubes and mum. You do not have to do ice cubes. You don't have to go down to 32 degree, freezing cold water. 

You do what you can do. Just get water out of your tap goes cold. As you feel comfortable with an experiment with that start with 50 and second cold tub, rub your body warm after and just see if you feel like punching it again. The first blench is always the hardest. It's sucks the first one, but after I get out I get the surge of warmth and going in the second time is easier. 

And I can go in longer too. And then after you're all done, when you rubbed your body, then wrap up [00:19:00] really warm. Even if it's warm outside. Don't stay cold. And you can start even smaller than that. Just do your feet. You know, like if your feet ache try a cold plunge for your feet first, before you take the Advil or the Tylenol. 

 Do the hot cold with two buckets side by side, longer for the hot, shorter for the cold, maybe you just want to just do the cold. 

It's all up to you. It's really good to end on the cold. I don't know why it was something I was told years ago. 

So you don't need to buy a $10,000 tub and have ice cubes floating in it and show the socials how cool you are. Just start small and build from there. And if you are a 20 year old bodybuilder who can sit in an ice bath for 10 minutes, power to you, but for the rest of the nation, which is pretty much 99% of us, we need to take baby steps to slowly get into cold plunges because the rewards are huge. 

Next on my pain de-growth list 

is a book called breath by James [00:20:00] nester. Now you're going to get pissed off with me here because. I know, we have been told, we eat wrong, we drink wrong. This thing is bad for you. That thing is bad for you. And then that thing was good for you. Well, it turns out. 

We have been breathing wrong for the past 300 years or so, which has led to all sorts of ailments, but the science behind this book is really pretty solid. It's like an anthropology lesson. Did you know that early humans. 

Had perfect teeth, no crooked teeth. No sinusitis, no snoring. We are the only animals who snore so prolifically, other than dogs that have been interbred like boxers and pucks, you know, like the cute smushed face dogs . Now some animals snore softly on occasion, but it's usually at the beginning of hibernation when they were at their fattest. 

After reading breath or maybe it's breathe. I think it's breath and applying only two of the [00:21:00] breathing techniques that he gives you. I got my resting heart rate down from a 70 to a 62 and less than two weeks. And my sleep is improving and that always makes your pain feel better. 

Now it's taken me a number of weeks to put these thoughts in a podcast that doesn't make me cringe. Because I wanted it to come off as something that's empowering, something that might help someone else out there. I know I sound chipper. And I can gloss over a ton and edit my outward media life to make it look. 

Really easy and Instagram. Wonderful. But I'm telling you, I know from experience with chronic pain, that there are days when you are washed out. And you feel like you're at the end of your rope. I get that. Right before the pandemic, like. Two weeks before lockdown. I was told by a physiotherapist that I [00:22:00] would never be able to do yoga again. 

And then it was locked down for what felt like 17 years trying to cope with this bogus diagnosis being super careful. If if I can't do yoga, then I certainly can't do this. And I can't do that. And there's so many people out there that are told they will never do X, Y, or Z. Again. 

But I now do chigong, which to me is just a more flowy form of yoga and I swim. And I'm still in pain every day, but for the most part, I'm happy. So. 

If you have been told you're never going to do X, Y, or Z again. 

 I just encourage you to try one of the options I've talked about today. Or to share this podcast with someone that you love, who is struggling. These tools can be a lifeline for someone who feels like they can't cope anymore. Okay. So what is the headline here? De-growth in pain [00:23:00] and as a result, Pain meds and surgeries is possible. 

It's possible for you. Like everything else in de-growth it's a journey with ups and downs. Some days are less wasteful than others.

[00:23:15] Caitlin Martella 1: I need to deeply apologize to my next guest, Caitlin Martella from curated Cubs. For not getting her episode out sooner. but I hope this episode on pain D growth. Explains why I just didn't have the energy one of the things I joke about, when people ask me where I started is, I had a boy in 2015, and then I had a girl in 2019 and I had this, you know, quote unquote million dollar family.

[00:23:42] Caitlin Martella 1: And then it wasn't until I started realizing that I was actually spending a million dollars, and that's what the million dollar family meant because you're buying. A pink version or a purple version, or a glitter version of something that you already have. Like why can't, why can't Julia just [00:24:00] wear the shark pajamas?

[00:24:01] Caitlin Martella 1: Why does she have to wear princess pajamas? 

[00:24:03] Caitlin Martella 1: and so really quickly, I started to realize, number one, that my daughter could absolutely wear all of the beautiful little things that I've saved from, from my son. , but number two, that if I kept going, I was gonna bankrupt us buying all these fancy new dresses. 

[00:24:18] Miranda Black 1: Um, 

[00:24:19] Miranda Black: That's on the next episode of what's this place. I am Miranda black share this information with someone you care about, If you have any questions or comments My email is miranda at theodore 1922. I will see you soon