Many physical therapists (PTs) treat patients with chronic pain. Chronic pain can come in many forms. From autoimmune diseases like rheumatoid arthritis (RA) or fibromyalgia, to centralized pain phenomenons like allodynia and hyperalgesia, chronic pain can cause marked disability, loss of functioning, and lacking participation in life.

Integrative Pain Management

Physical therapy (PT) can offer significant benefits to many patients with chronic pain using traditional PT methods. Exercise, stretching, manual therapy, stress reduction, pain science, mindfulness, and activity modifications are all mainstay PT treatments for people with chronic pain. PTs are now starting to see the evidence for how nutrition can also help patients with chronic pain; and as more physios include nutrition in their practices, their outcomes are improving quite dramatically.

Nutrition can help reduce the chronic pain in patients with fibromyalgia. In well-done Finnish study looking at a raw vegan diet versu...