Why Doctors Are Pushing Narcotics that Don’t Work

The opioid crisis that has plagued our country is due to a lot of factors, including a broken patient care system.

As medicine become corporatized, doctors have less time to spend with patients and therefore aren’t able to properly diagnose the root issue causing chronic pain. Physicians are only able to offer treatments covered by insurance and opioids are over-prescribed. 

Dr. David Hanscom, a retired board-certified orthopedic surgeon, notes that medical professionals are throwing random, simplistic procedures and prescriptions at complex problems. In this episode, he explains the neurological phenomena that cause chronic pain and anxiety and why mainstream medicine isn’t providing an appropriate solution. 

Listen as Dr. Hanscom joins Dr. Holly Lucille to discuss how mainstream medicine needs to alter its approach to treating chronic pain.

Why Doctors Are Pushing Narcotics that Don’t Work
Featuring:
David Hanscom, MD
Screen Shot 2019-06-10 at 3.05.11 PMDr. David Hanscom is a retired board-certified orthopedic surgeon specializing in the surgical correction complex spine problems in the cervical, thoracic, and lumbar spine. He has expertise in adult and pediatric spinal deformities such as scoliosis and kyphosis. A significant part of his practice was devoted to performing surgery on patients who had undergone multiple prior spine surgeries.

He is the focusing his efforts on bringing effective medical treatments for chronic mental and physical pain back into mainstream medicine. He is creating a business structure, Vertus, Inc. that also will present these concepts to the public.

Around 2001 he began to share his own stress management tools with his patients that were in pain but had no indications for surgery. He had spent much of his career with rehabilitation physicians learning non-operative care. By 2006 a structured spine treatment protocol evolved from his own experience escaping from chronic pain He published a book, Back in Control: A Surgeon’s Roadmap Out of Chronic Pain that is the basis of the program. His website, www.backincontrol.comis the action plan for DOC project (Direct your Own Care). Even patients with surgical problems often experience resolution of their pain without an operation.