Do you suffer from chronic back pain, headaches, irritable bowel syndrome, or fibromyalgia?

Are you sick of treatments and pills that don't give you lasting relief?

Do you feel that pain prevents you from living a normal life?

You are not alone. More than 35 million Americans suffer today from chronic pain, and Dr. Scott Brady was one of them. One of the many doctors he consulted told him, "You have the back of an eighty-year-old. You'll be in pain the rest of your life-so you'd better get used to it."

But instead, Dr. Brady overcame his pain using a mind-body-spirit approach-in an incredible four weeks. He founded the Brady Institute for Health in 1998, where he applies his holistic, noninvasive treatments to cases where surgery and drugs have failed. More than 80 percent of Brady's chronic-pain patients achieve pain relief in weeks!

In Pain free for Life, Dr. Brady shares the recovery plan that changed his life and has helped his patients overcome conditions such as chronic back pain, fibromyalgia pain, nagging neck and shoulder pain, migraine or tension headaches, muscle pain and tenderness, and discomfort from irritable bowel syndrome, insomnia, and many other chronic ailments. You don't have to let chronic pain ruin your life any longer. Start your journey to a pain-free life today.

Chapter 1

Susan was sitting expectantly in front of me, hoping for a miracle. As her story unfolded during our preliminary interview, I could see why she thought a miracle was the only possible answer to her problem.

Having suffered excruciating back and leg pain for more than seven years, she had reached a stage where she felt hopeless about her prospects for finding relief or resuming a normal pain-free life. Although she was once a vibrant nurse who had literally run about the halls of her hospital tending to patients, her pain had reduced her to a shell of what she had been. Now, thoroughly debilitated by chronic back pain, she couldn't go to work. She was bedridden seven days a week; her husband even had to carry her downstairs when she wanted to get out of bed.

The pain interrupted her rest, to the extent that she hadn't had a good night's sleep for years. All the activities she once enjoyed were now out of her reach: going to the movies, playing golf, taking vacations, driving, or even riding in the car. Her persistent pain had taken her life away.

As you might expect, Susan had run the gamut in her search for medical help. She had seen physical therapists, orthopedic surgeons, acupuncturists, chiropractors, and various pain specialists. Five years earlier, an MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) scan showed herniated disks in her back, and as a result she had undergone back surgery. But the pain soon returned. Another MRI showed more degenerated disks, so she had another back operation. After that, the pain again got better for a few months-only to return worse than ever.

Then came the epidurals (shots into the thick outer covering of the spinal cord) and nerve blocks (injections of anesthetics into nerves to numb sensation). Again, she experienced more temporary relief-but the pain returned.

Seven months earlier, Susan had been evaluated and treated by experts at a leading national health clinic, who had performed another surgery to implant a spinal cord stimulator in her back, a procedure that was supposed to relieve the pain.

"That helped for about one month," she told me. "But then I lifted something, and bam, my back has hurt worse ever since."

"How are you feeling today?" I asked. "Describe your pain on a scale of one to ten, with ten being the worst pain you can imagine." She sighed before beginning her litany of complaints: "My lower back pain is eight out of ten-there's burning, aching, and sometimes cramping pain. And I have sharp pain in my buttocks going down the back of my leg. That's the main problem. On occasion I also get migraine headaches, and awhile back I was diagnosed with irritable bowel syndrome."

As Susan sat on the verge of tears in my office, my mind started racing. Her complaints were obviously chronic, and she was at her wit's end. She had seen so many physicians, but no one had been able to cure her. Of course, she had received several diagnoses- including degenerative disk disease, herniated disks, and sciatic neuralgia. But none of these diagnoses had led to a cure for her pain.

In any case, countless experts had tried to help her but had fallen short. She had submitted to more surgical procedures, injections, X-rays, MRIs, and other diagnostic tests than most people can even imagine. But conventional medicine had failed Susan. Her back was still riddled with pain-pain that had taken all the "life" out of her life.

Beyond "Body" Medicine

During fifteen years of traditional medical practice-or what I now call "body" medicine practice-I had seen many patients like Susan. Most physicians don't enjoy seeing chronic pain patients like Susan: They're frustrating to us because it's unclear why they continue to suffer, and it's usually impossible to bring them out of pain by conventional treatments.

In my former body-medicine mode, I would have given her the conventional evaluation, diagnosis, and treatment plan. In other words, I would have increased her dosage of pain pills, recommended a fourth round of physical therapy, and talked to her about a newer generation of medications that might help curb her symptoms a bit. Then I would have sent her on her way to yet another specialist-without giving her any real answers or any hope that a cure was possible.

But now I was able to understand Susan's condition differently. Her chronic back pain, headaches, and irritable bowel syndrome finally made sense to me. I myself had once been in almost the exact condition as Susan; I had also listened to the conventional medical wisdom and failed to find relief from the treatment plans given to me by modern body-medicine experts.

My personal path and research had led me out of pain and into a new understanding of the true cause of Susan's problems. Her back pain was not related to her degenerative disks or heavy lifting; the source of her complaints was deeper and broader and involved her mind and body and spirit. Specifically, I determined that Susan was suffering from symptoms related to Autonomic Overload Syndrome (AOS)-a term I've formulated to describe the physiological process that results in different types of chronic pain. Furthermore, the great news about AOS is that, in most cases, patients like Susan who suffer from this syndrome can become pain-free.

So I spent about forty-five minutes with Susan, probing her physical symptoms, her psychological makeup, her personality traits, and her stresses and pressures in life. We discussed her past medical problems, her family history, and her spiritual history. I asked her about her personal beliefs and spiritual background, because a person's deepest convictions and worldview can become powerful factors in recovery from physical pain.

Copyright © 2006 by Scott Brady, MD

Tags: Pain Management, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and Fibromyalgia

About the Author

Scott Brady, M.D., has spent the last decade developing his holistic, noninvasive treatments for chronic or recurrent pain. In 1998, he founded the Brady Institute for Health at Florida Hospital, where his powerful techniques have helped hundreds of patients overcome debilitating pain that routine therapies have failed to heal. Dr. Brady and his family live in Orlando, Florida.