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When Chronic Pain Has No Clear Diagnosis · Groove with Portia

0:06
Speaker 1: Welcome to Groul Porsche, the podcast that uncovers the hidden
0:09
Speaker 1: treasures within grief. I'm your host, Porsche the Producer, and
0:13
Speaker 1: I'm inviting you to join me on a transformative journey
0:15
Speaker 1: where we were exchange laughter of course, the best medicine
0:18
Speaker 1: of them all, reflect on cherish memories, Remember that time
0:21
Speaker 1: that the little boy grabbed my hand instead of his
0:23
Speaker 1: mother's at the amusement park yikes, And of course, discover
0:26
Speaker 1: gratitude while navigating one of life's hardest challenges lost. So
0:31
Speaker 1: get ready to grow with me, Porsche the Producer, let's
0:35
Speaker 1: dive in. Hello everybody, and welcome back to Groul Porsche.
0:46
Speaker 1: I am your host, Porsche Booker, and as always, don't
0:49
Speaker 1: forget to like to share and subscribe to keep it
0:51
Speaker 1: with the latest and greatest of all Withdrew with Porsche.
0:54
Speaker 1: So some of you may know a few years ago,
0:58
Speaker 1: my skin broke out in this crazy like rash. I
1:01
Speaker 1: mean just it was horrible. It looked like agne. Well,
1:04
Speaker 1: I went to the doctor to get it looked at.
1:06
Speaker 1: Of course that's what you do, right, you go look
1:08
Speaker 1: at things, see what's up. So I go to the doctor.
1:11
Speaker 1: They referred me to a dermatologist. I said, okay, fine,
1:14
Speaker 1: we'll go through this romgrim Moreau. The dermatologist saw me
1:18
Speaker 1: for five minutes and told me that I had filiculitis,
1:22
Speaker 1: which I know what filiculitis is, but that wasn't what
1:25
Speaker 1: it was. She saw me for five minutes and gave
1:28
Speaker 1: me a diagnosis that didn't feel right in my system.
1:31
Speaker 1: So what I ended up doing was I left the
1:33
Speaker 1: office frustrated of course, probably like most of you, and
1:37
Speaker 1: I ended up going to see a holistic practitioner who
1:41
Speaker 1: just stripped me of everything I was eating, started me
1:44
Speaker 1: from the very basics. They ran all types of blood tests.
1:48
Speaker 1: Originally they thought that I had ciliacs, but it came
1:50
Speaker 1: to be that I was under stress from work. Who
1:54
Speaker 1: would have thought that stress would cause all of this
1:58
Speaker 1: and my body would respond in that way. So for
2:02
Speaker 1: my audience today, how many of you have been in
2:05
Speaker 1: that boat of being frustrated, No answers, but you knew
2:09
Speaker 1: there was something more. So I have a special treat
2:13
Speaker 1: for all of you today. So today on the show,
2:16
Speaker 1: I'm joined by a gentleman who is making a change
2:19
Speaker 1: in the chronic pain space. So welcome to Groul Porsche.
2:23
Speaker 1: Doctor David Clark, who is the president of the Association
2:27
Speaker 1: for the Treatment of Neuroplastic Symptoms. So welcome doctor Clark
2:31
Speaker 1: to Glue of Porsche. How are you today.
2:33
Speaker 2: I'm just great, wonderful to be with you, Porscha. Thank you.
2:37
Speaker 1: Doctor Clark. Is an honor. I think there's so many
2:40
Speaker 1: people who struggle every day with chronic pain and they
2:45
Speaker 1: kind of get stuck in the shuffle of going here
2:48
Speaker 1: and going there without many answers. So I'm curious, doctor Clark,
2:52
Speaker 1: for Starters, what are you grateful for today.
2:55
Speaker 2: I'm grateful to still be here. I'm grateful to be
2:59
Speaker 2: talking to people about this condition that affects twenty five
3:03
Speaker 2: percent of the adult population at least. And I'm grateful
3:07
Speaker 2: for my family. I've got two boys, their wives, and
3:11
Speaker 2: five grandchildren.
3:13
Speaker 1: Oh man, so you got a full house. Huh yeah, Lively, Well,
3:20
Speaker 1: we are grateful to have you too, doctor Clark. And so,
3:23
Speaker 1: doctor Clark, for all audience who's tuning in for starters,
3:27
Speaker 1: can you tell us what are neuroplastic symptoms first of all,
3:31
Speaker 1: and also what kind of led you down this path
3:35
Speaker 1: to go into neuroplastic studies. Considering that your background is
3:40
Speaker 1: in internal medicine, and gastrontrology.
3:44
Speaker 2: Yeah, neuroplastic symptoms are symptoms generated by the brain. Most
3:48
Speaker 2: people assume, and unfortunately, most healthcare professionals are trained as
3:53
Speaker 2: I was, that if you've got pain or illness, it
3:56
Speaker 2: must be coming from disease or injury. But it turns
4:00
Speaker 2: out there's this whole other category of neuroplastic symptoms where
4:03
Speaker 2: the brain is generating pain or illness in the body
4:07
Speaker 2: even when there's nothing physically wrong with the body, and
4:10
Speaker 2: the symptoms are one hundred percent real. They can be
4:13
Speaker 2: just as severe as symptoms caused by anything else. They
4:17
Speaker 2: can put you in the hospital, they can last for years,
4:20
Speaker 2: they can even last for decades. It includes things from
4:24
Speaker 2: head to toe like your rash, but also things like migraines, dizziness,
4:29
Speaker 2: visual problems, trouble swallowing, fibromyalgia, irritable bowel, pain in the spine,
4:35
Speaker 2: pain in the chest, the belly, the pelvis, the bladder,
4:38
Speaker 2: the joints, chronic fatigue in many cases, long COVID in
4:43
Speaker 2: many cases, functional neurologic disorders, complex regional pain. The list
4:50
Speaker 2: just goes on and on. The only common denominator is
4:52
Speaker 2: that people tend to have more than one symptom at
4:55
Speaker 2: a time, and the more symptoms that you have simultaneously,
4:59
Speaker 2: the more like it is that a neuroplastic process is
5:03
Speaker 2: causing it. How I got into it, I was absolutely
5:07
Speaker 2: traditionally Western trained doctor and didn't hear anything about this
5:13
Speaker 2: at all for the first seven years. It's almost embarrassing
5:17
Speaker 2: to admit that as a physician that I went seven
5:19
Speaker 2: years and nobody even mentioned this. So it came as
5:23
Speaker 2: a complete shock to encounter a patient in my eighth
5:27
Speaker 2: year that I didn't know the first thing about diagnosing
5:30
Speaker 2: or treating. This unfortunate woman late thirties for two years,
5:34
Speaker 2: had been averaging one bowel movement per month. And I'm
5:37
Speaker 2: sorry to get you know, graphic about this, but you know,
5:40
Speaker 2: you invite a gast wentrologist onto your program, you're going
5:43
Speaker 2: to hear some things like this. But you know, she
5:46
Speaker 2: had all the tests at another university. She came to
5:49
Speaker 2: US at UCLA for some specialized testing, and that also
5:53
Speaker 2: was normal. We didn't expect that. We thought we were
5:56
Speaker 2: going to find the answer, and that special test was
5:59
Speaker 2: normal as well. So I'm doing her exit interview. I'm
6:03
Speaker 2: telling her I'm sorry, but you're going to have to
6:05
Speaker 2: live with this. We've got nothing for you. But we
6:08
Speaker 2: kept talking, and eventually she trusted me enough to begin
6:12
Speaker 2: telling me about abuse that she had suffered as a
6:15
Speaker 2: girl at the half of her father, and it was
6:18
Speaker 2: pretty severe, but it had stopped twenty five years in
6:21
Speaker 2: the past, so I didn't think it could possibly be
6:23
Speaker 2: connected to her illness. But it gave me an excuse
6:26
Speaker 2: to send her to a doctor named Harriet Kaplan, who
6:29
Speaker 2: was a psychiatrist who was interested in the connection between
6:32
Speaker 2: the brain and the body, and I thought, you know,
6:34
Speaker 2: maybe Harriet can help this poor woman live with her
6:37
Speaker 2: condition a little bit better. Three months later, you know,
6:40
Speaker 2: I forgot all about the patient. Three months later, I
6:42
Speaker 2: run into Harriet in the elevator ride. That changed my
6:45
Speaker 2: career because between the ground floor and the fifth floor,
6:48
Speaker 2: she told me she had cured this patient with about
6:50
Speaker 2: ten weeks of counseling sessions. And that just shocked me
6:54
Speaker 2: that you could alleviate a serious physical condition just by
6:58
Speaker 2: talking to somebody. Because out the long term impact of
7:02
Speaker 2: her abuse had absolutely affected her body in this profound way,
7:07
Speaker 2: but that it was curable, that the patient was fine.
7:10
Speaker 2: She had been taking four different laxatives that double the
7:13
Speaker 2: recommended doses, and it wasn't helping at all, and now
7:16
Speaker 2: she didn't need them. So I thought, Okay, if I'm
7:19
Speaker 2: going to be a complete doctor, I should learn, you know,
7:22
Speaker 2: how in the world doctor Kaplan pulled this off, and
7:26
Speaker 2: I thought, you know, it's going to be rare, but
7:27
Speaker 2: I should still know. So over the last year and
7:30
Speaker 2: a half of my training before I went into practice
7:33
Speaker 2: in Oregon, she taught me her basic framework and I
7:36
Speaker 2: started using it when I encountered patients that had these problems,
7:40
Speaker 2: and it turned out to be five or six a week,
7:44
Speaker 2: and you know, two hundred and fifty three hundred patients
7:47
Speaker 2: a year with this, thirty five percent of my practice
7:50
Speaker 2: had nothing physically wrong, but they still had very significant symptoms.
7:55
Speaker 2: And I used her framework and people started getting better,
7:58
Speaker 2: and I thought, this is amazing, and I just kept
8:00
Speaker 2: doing it and getting better at it. Five years later,
8:04
Speaker 2: I got the Doctor of the Year award from my
8:06
Speaker 2: medical community because I was having so much success with this,
8:10
Speaker 2: and it just went on from there.
8:12
Speaker 1: You know, doctor Clark, I'm you know, first of all,
8:15
Speaker 1: I'm thinking, this woman is not too far from my age,
8:18
Speaker 1: and I'm like to only have one bomb movement a
8:22
Speaker 1: month that seeing no pun intended. That's that's pretty crappy.
8:27
Speaker 2: Literally, like, it's amazing what the brain can do to
8:31
Speaker 2: the body. I had another patient is stomach was completely paralyzed.
8:34
Speaker 2: Not not the belly, not the adam, but the actual
8:37
Speaker 2: organ of digestion. It we had we did a special
8:40
Speaker 2: test because he was he was vomiting and we couldn't
8:42
Speaker 2: find any reason, so we tested the muscle contractions of
8:45
Speaker 2: his stomach and it was just sitting there. I wasn't
8:48
Speaker 2: doing anything, but it was completely stress related. Because when
8:51
Speaker 2: I eventually uncovered what the stress was and helped him
8:55
Speaker 2: with it, stomach went back to normal. But it's amazing
8:59
Speaker 2: what the brain can do. Nobody ever mentioned it in
9:02
Speaker 2: my training, but now I've seen it in over seven
9:05
Speaker 2: thousand patients over the last forty years. Wow.
9:09
Speaker 1: And I mean, who would have thought, right, just that
9:12
Speaker 1: little incident for you, after what seven years of training,
9:17
Speaker 1: never saw this, and then to learn that through hearing
9:23
Speaker 1: this patient's story, that that was the root cause of
9:28
Speaker 1: her issues.
9:29
Speaker 2: Literally, Yeah, and what we call adverse childhood experiences in cases,
9:35
Speaker 2: they're very big in this population of patients, and they're
9:38
Speaker 2: not always the real obvious ones like sexual abuse that
9:42
Speaker 2: that first patient had suffered, or physical abuse or violence
9:45
Speaker 2: in the home, or one or both of the parents
9:48
Speaker 2: having a serious substance abuse problem. Those things clearly happened.
9:52
Speaker 2: But for a lot of my patients, they look back
9:55
Speaker 2: and they're not really seeing that it was so bad.
9:58
Speaker 2: But when you talk to them in more detail, you
10:01
Speaker 2: find out that there was a lot of pressure going
10:03
Speaker 2: on simple patient recently. You know, if she got a
10:07
Speaker 2: grade anything less than an A, they parents really came
10:11
Speaker 2: down on her, and it just put pressure on her
10:14
Speaker 2: that she was still carrying with her well into her twenties,
10:19
Speaker 2: you know. Other patients, and another one I talked to
10:21
Speaker 2: him for must have been forty forty five minutes, and
10:24
Speaker 2: he suddenly remembered that the only time he got praise
10:28
Speaker 2: from his parents was when he did something better than
10:31
Speaker 2: his brothers and sisters could do it. And he had
10:33
Speaker 2: three siblings and they were very talented, so he didn't
10:37
Speaker 2: exceed them very often, and so he grew up feeling
10:41
Speaker 2: like a failure, even though he was anything but I mean,
10:43
Speaker 2: he was a successful attorney and was doing well in
10:48
Speaker 2: his career, but he still felt like a failure, and
10:51
Speaker 2: he had a number of other long term impacts from
10:54
Speaker 2: childhood adversity. So it can be fairly subtle. Yet another
10:58
Speaker 2: patient that I interviewed from my own podcast, her parents
11:03
Speaker 2: didn't like her to experience negative emotions, so if she
11:06
Speaker 2: was angry or upset or afraid that they would, you know,
11:10
Speaker 2: tell her, don't feel like that. You know, you shouldn't
11:13
Speaker 2: feel like that. Go to your room until you get
11:15
Speaker 2: over this this feeling. And she was taught with the
11:20
Speaker 2: good intentions by her parents, but she was taught to
11:23
Speaker 2: repress her own emotions. And a lot of people who
11:26
Speaker 2: experience adversity in childhood learn to do that. But you
11:30
Speaker 2: lose out on an important signal that's telling you about
11:33
Speaker 2: your what's your interactions with the world, And it led
11:38
Speaker 2: to sixteen years of physical symptoms, It led to a
11:42
Speaker 2: terrible career choice for her, led to choosing mister wrong
11:46
Speaker 2: for relationships over and over again. It can be subtle. Sometimes,
11:50
Speaker 2: anything you wouldn't want for a child of your own.
11:53
Speaker 2: Anything you would say this happened to me, it's not
11:55
Speaker 2: happening to my own kid. That is the kind of
11:58
Speaker 2: thing that can have these long term impacts.
12:01
Speaker 1: Ntri Clark. You brought up about this framework. I'm curious
12:05
Speaker 1: because a lot of people come into the doctor's office,
12:07
Speaker 1: let's be honest, they're already nervous because maybe you're not
12:11
Speaker 1: the first physician that they've seen. They might have seen
12:14
Speaker 1: what three or four before they got to you. So
12:18
Speaker 1: can you talk a little bit about how this framework,
12:21
Speaker 1: how you use it to get patients to feel comfortable
12:25
Speaker 1: enough to share what's really going on and you kind
12:29
Speaker 1: of having that intuitive knowledge of oh, this from your
12:33
Speaker 1: childhood is what's potentially the root cause of what's causing
12:37
Speaker 1: all this for you.
12:38
Speaker 2: Yeah, Well, a lot of the patients, especially a few
12:41
Speaker 2: years into my career, were kind of mystery cases. I
12:45
Speaker 2: was the doctor to which they sent patients who were
12:48
Speaker 2: not making any physiologic sense, where all the diagnostic tests
12:52
Speaker 2: were normal, and when that's the case, it's almost always
12:56
Speaker 2: a neuroplastic condition that's going on. And I explained that
12:59
Speaker 2: to people, say that you know, these are not imaginary,
13:02
Speaker 2: these are real. These are not quote unquote all in
13:05
Speaker 2: your head. The brain is actually physically changed in the
13:09
Speaker 2: nerve pathways, and that's what results in these very real symptoms,
13:13
Speaker 2: either pain or illness or both. And so we need
13:17
Speaker 2: to investigate. We need to see, you know, what's been
13:20
Speaker 2: going on in your life. Can we find out, for example,
13:23
Speaker 2: that there's a stress happening that is connected chronologically with
13:29
Speaker 2: where your symptoms are happening. And sometimes it's very simple.
13:32
Speaker 2: One of my patients I learned through this line of
13:35
Speaker 2: questioning that he only got his stomach pain when he
13:38
Speaker 2: was driving to work. Oh, when he was driving home
13:42
Speaker 2: from work, he was fine. So you know, the obvious
13:47
Speaker 2: follow up question was, well, what's happening at work? And
13:50
Speaker 2: it turned out that he worked in a two person
13:52
Speaker 2: office in a big company, and right before he became ill,
13:56
Speaker 2: his partner was transferred to another office fifteen hundred miles away,
14:01
Speaker 2: so his workload instantly doubles and they were having trouble
14:06
Speaker 2: hiring a replacement. So, you know, his stomach started to
14:09
Speaker 2: hurt when he was on his way to work. Another gentleman,
14:13
Speaker 2: he was sent to me with twenty five plus years
14:16
Speaker 2: of daily back pain, and his X rays weren't that bad,
14:19
Speaker 2: even though he was seventy five years old, and they
14:21
Speaker 2: were just saying, this is this pain is way out
14:25
Speaker 2: of proportion to what he should be having. With the
14:28
Speaker 2: X ray that he's got, and it turned out that
14:31
Speaker 2: he wasn't having the back pain every single day. There
14:33
Speaker 2: were two weeks out of the year when he was fine.
14:36
Speaker 2: He had no pain at all. So you can probably
14:39
Speaker 2: guess what he was doing during those two weeks out
14:41
Speaker 2: of the year. He was on vacation, and so I thought, well,
14:45
Speaker 2: maybe he's resting his back carefully on a warm beach
14:49
Speaker 2: somewhere and that's why it's not hurting. But no, he
14:53
Speaker 2: was fly fishing in British Columbia. So he's out there.
14:56
Speaker 2: You know, he's twisting around, he's wading out into the river,
14:59
Speaker 2: he's bending over to pick up the fish that he's caught.
15:04
Speaker 2: And then he tells me at the end of the day,
15:06
Speaker 2: he helps the lodge owner clear brush from behind the lodge.
15:10
Speaker 2: So he's doing all this physical activity. To anybody with
15:13
Speaker 2: a structural back pain, it's going to make it worse.
15:16
Speaker 2: He was fine, He had no difficulty whatsoever until he
15:20
Speaker 2: got back to his very stressful lifestyle. So some you know,
15:24
Speaker 2: a lot of times it's pretty obvious, but other times
15:28
Speaker 2: it's you know, the childhood stress that's still impacting them,
15:33
Speaker 2: you know, And I look for that as well. I
15:35
Speaker 2: look for depression because that can be subtle. A lot
15:38
Speaker 2: of people suffer from depression, and they don't necessarily feel
15:41
Speaker 2: all that depressed, but they've lost interest in things they
15:45
Speaker 2: used to love to do. They're not sleeping well, their
15:48
Speaker 2: energy level is down, their appetite is off, they are
15:51
Speaker 2: sometimes crying for a little or no reason. So they've
15:54
Speaker 2: got the hallmarks of depression. But they may just feel
15:58
Speaker 2: subjectively frustrated, stressed out, exasperated, but they don't necessarily tell
16:04
Speaker 2: you that they feel depressed, and so it's missed through
16:08
Speaker 2: the normal medical evaluation process. Anxiety disorders are another one.
16:14
Speaker 2: The tip off there is that people are more symptomatic,
16:19
Speaker 2: they have worse symptoms or more frequent symptoms when they're
16:22
Speaker 2: away from a safe environment, whatever a safe environment is
16:26
Speaker 2: for them. One of my patients only got her symptoms
16:29
Speaker 2: when she was away from home. Home was safe for her.
16:32
Speaker 2: When she was away from home, that's when she had
16:35
Speaker 2: her attacks of illness. So the brain doesn't know if
16:39
Speaker 2: you're at home or somewhere else. I mean, sorry, the
16:41
Speaker 2: body doesn't know. The brain does. So if your symptoms
16:45
Speaker 2: are much worse away from a safe environment, that means
16:49
Speaker 2: the brain is involved. Another patient, severe diarrhea, but only
16:56
Speaker 2: on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Once again, your bowels don't know
17:01
Speaker 2: what day of the week it is, right, They just
17:05
Speaker 2: it's dark in there. We have to bring our own light.
17:08
Speaker 2: But the brain knows what day of the week it is.
17:11
Speaker 2: And this was a sixteen year old girl who was
17:13
Speaker 2: very anxious about how she was going to perform playing
17:16
Speaker 2: varsity soccer, and the games were always on Tuesdays or Thursdays.
17:21
Speaker 2: If there happens not to be a game and it
17:23
Speaker 2: was just practice, then she wouldn't have any symptoms. So
17:27
Speaker 2: that was clearly an anxiety related thing. Post Traumatic stress
17:33
Speaker 2: is another one I look for. A colleague of mine
17:35
Speaker 2: actually told me this story. This was not my patient.
17:38
Speaker 2: Women had been going from doctor to doctor with severe
17:41
Speaker 2: symptoms for six months, and he was the one who
17:44
Speaker 2: found out that right before and there were no explanation.
17:46
Speaker 2: All the tests were normal. He was the one who
17:49
Speaker 2: found out that right before her symptoms began, she had
17:52
Speaker 2: been a hostage during the robbery of a store. Oh
17:55
Speaker 2: and for forty minutes she had a handgun pointed at
17:58
Speaker 2: her neck, and the symptom began right after that. She
18:01
Speaker 2: had post traumatic stress. And nobody had diagnosed it because
18:04
Speaker 2: they were so focused on finding an abnormality in her
18:08
Speaker 2: body that was accounting for her symptoms. So those are
18:12
Speaker 2: the that's the framework, that's those are the things that
18:15
Speaker 2: I look for.
18:16
Speaker 1: Hey know, doctor Clark, I'm glad you brought that up,
18:19
Speaker 1: because I think there's we're getting there, right. I think
18:24
Speaker 1: there's still a long way to go when it comes
18:27
Speaker 1: to the connection between the mind and body.
18:30
Speaker 2: Right.
18:30
Speaker 1: I brought this up a couple of times where we
18:33
Speaker 1: don't know when somebody starts a new job, for example,
18:37
Speaker 1: if at their previous employer, they might have not have
18:42
Speaker 1: liked their boss, but their boss was triggering them because
18:45
Speaker 1: maybe they were robbed at gunpoint by somebody who wore
18:48
Speaker 1: a blue hoodie, right, but their boss liked to wear
18:51
Speaker 1: blue hoodies, and they didn't know what it happened to
18:55
Speaker 1: them previously, right exactly. And I'm curious that Clark. In
19:01
Speaker 1: the world today with AI, with the advancement of technology,
19:06
Speaker 1: also with often a shortage in healthcare these days, right,
19:11
Speaker 1: because of so many changes in that, I'm curious for you,
19:15
Speaker 1: how has this been adopted more into the healthcare field,
19:21
Speaker 1: into the modern Western healthcare field and what can be
19:25
Speaker 1: done to really increase this level of awareness of neuroplastic symptoms,
19:32
Speaker 1: to really help patients be more holistically well instead of
19:37
Speaker 1: just treating one thing at a time.
19:39
Speaker 2: Yeah, it is definitely growing because now not only do
19:43
Speaker 2: we have all of my fun stories, but we also
19:46
Speaker 2: have research that is confirming that this approach works. There
19:52
Speaker 2: have been studies all across North America from leading centers
19:56
Speaker 2: published in top journals. The one I can quote most
20:00
Speaker 2: easily is the Boulder Back Pain study where they had
20:03
Speaker 2: fifty people with back pain for an average of ten years,
20:07
Speaker 2: and they gave them just four weeks of this new
20:11
Speaker 2: kind of treatment that we call now neuroplastic recovery therapy
20:15
Speaker 2: and their pain scores dropped by seventy five percent in
20:19
Speaker 2: four weeks. And these are people who've been ill, who
20:21
Speaker 2: had pain for ten years on average, and its stayed down.
20:25
Speaker 2: They've now got five year follow up and they didn't
20:28
Speaker 2: do anything else just the four weeks of treatment and
20:31
Speaker 2: the pain scores have now stayed down for five years
20:34
Speaker 2: of follow up. And there's similar research studies from like
20:37
Speaker 2: I say, across North America, and people are paying attention
20:41
Speaker 2: to this because you know, after ten years of back pain,
20:44
Speaker 2: you have racked up a very large medical bill, and
20:48
Speaker 2: the system is, you know, in the United States at least,
20:51
Speaker 2: very expensive, so that any way that you can legitimately
20:55
Speaker 2: save money is you know, a good thing, and people
20:59
Speaker 2: are paying attention this. Health insurers are paying attention to this.
21:02
Speaker 2: I was finally invited to teach at my local medical
21:05
Speaker 2: school several years ago because they've recognized the importance of this.
21:10
Speaker 2: I've been teaching at the Physician assistant school now for
21:12
Speaker 2: thirty years. They're recognized they were ahead of the doctors
21:17
Speaker 2: in this. I give lectures on this to healthcare professionals
21:21
Speaker 2: all across North America and Europe. So people have recognized
21:26
Speaker 2: that the correct diagnosis in these patients is way better
21:30
Speaker 2: than no diagnosis at all, which is what has usually
21:34
Speaker 2: been the case. So it's absolutely growing and there's more
21:38
Speaker 2: research in the pipeline. I know a lot of people
21:40
Speaker 2: who are doing the research and they've got a bunch
21:43
Speaker 2: of studies going on. There's one not too far from you.
21:47
Speaker 2: They're in Detroit and they're doing a study with four
21:49
Speaker 2: hundred people in it, and that's going to come out
21:52
Speaker 2: in a couple of years. So it's finally getting recognition
21:57
Speaker 2: and it's been great to see that.
22:00
Speaker 1: And doctor Clark, I want to commend you for being
22:02
Speaker 1: a part of this new movement because I think for
22:04
Speaker 1: quite a while, I mean, I was kind of in
22:07
Speaker 1: that boat, even though I had a shorter turnaround than
22:10
Speaker 1: a lot of people. Right, you're talking people with ten
22:13
Speaker 1: years of chronic back pain or not being able to
22:16
Speaker 1: go to the bathroom at all. You know, there are
22:19
Speaker 1: no pun intended back up. I mean I always used
22:21
Speaker 1: to say constipated people don't give a crap, right, but
22:24
Speaker 1: clearly they do as they go, you know, they go to.
22:27
Speaker 2: You for help.
22:28
Speaker 1: And so I want to commend you for being a
22:30
Speaker 1: part of this change and movement and giving people that
22:33
Speaker 1: hope to not give up right, that they're not crazy,
22:37
Speaker 1: that just because they have a slew of symptoms, it
22:42
Speaker 1: may just be one route causing not a multitude.
22:45
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, absolutely. I mean one of my patients, I
22:48
Speaker 2: was asked to see her on her seventieth day in
22:51
Speaker 2: the hospital. She had unexplained abdominal pain. She had seen
22:56
Speaker 2: six other gastroentrologists over the previous two years. She was
23:00
Speaker 2: getting massive doses of morphine around the clock for the pain.
23:06
Speaker 2: They had no idea what was causing it. It was
23:08
Speaker 2: a neuroplastic condition, It was linked to a stress. We
23:11
Speaker 2: identified that, we began treating it, and she started turning
23:15
Speaker 2: her own morphine dose down. She got it all the
23:18
Speaker 2: way to zero and was out of the hospital in
23:21
Speaker 2: a week on opioid tablets, and then she started weaning
23:24
Speaker 2: those down. She was on no pain medication at all
23:27
Speaker 2: thirty days after we met. So even somebody as seemingly
23:31
Speaker 2: hopeless as that, another patient my personal record in terms
23:35
Speaker 2: of duration of illness unexplained abdominal pain for seventy nine years.
23:42
Speaker 2: That patient was successfully treated as well.
23:44
Speaker 1: Wow ooh, seventy nine years of that.
23:48
Speaker 2: And she was a nurse. I mean, she had access
23:50
Speaker 2: to plenty of medical care over the decades. They completely
23:54
Speaker 2: missed it.
23:56
Speaker 1: Well, you know they always say, right that normally is
24:00
Speaker 1: the common story that people go into a field because
24:03
Speaker 1: of their own challenges. But not all the time you
24:07
Speaker 1: get the if you want to call it the superman
24:11
Speaker 1: because of what you're going through, a lot of times
24:14
Speaker 1: it's through other alternatives that you get no pun intended relief, right,
24:19
Speaker 1: doctor Clark, Let me just say this has been an
24:22
Speaker 1: amazing conversation. We might have to almost do a part
24:25
Speaker 1: two of some sort, because I think there's so many
24:28
Speaker 1: people who want to really get rid of that chronic
24:33
Speaker 1: pain and find relief that's out there, right, But sometimes
24:37
Speaker 1: you have to, you know, kiss a few bad frogs
24:39
Speaker 1: in order to find the right one. Right. And so,
24:42
Speaker 1: doctor Clark, for our audience who's tuning in, I'm sure
24:45
Speaker 1: that there's gonna be plenty of individuals who want to
24:47
Speaker 1: connect with you, learn more about you. You know, if
24:51
Speaker 1: you're doing a talk somewhere, they want to come see you.
24:53
Speaker 1: Please share with us how they can get in touch
24:56
Speaker 1: with you, any kind of way.
24:58
Speaker 2: Yeah. Symptomatic Me is the website of my nonprofit. I
25:03
Speaker 2: don't get any money for this work, and if I do,
25:07
Speaker 2: I donate it to the nonprofit. We have a twelve
25:10
Speaker 2: question quiz on there that people can take in less
25:13
Speaker 2: than three minutes and find out if their own symptoms
25:16
Speaker 2: might be connected to this process. We have webinars that
25:20
Speaker 2: we do online where we do Q and A with
25:23
Speaker 2: experts to answer people's questions, and they're all kinds of
25:28
Speaker 2: resources on that website. There are courses. We have an
25:32
Speaker 2: annual conference. The next one is in mid October and Dallas, Texas.
25:37
Speaker 2: In twenty twenty six. We had three hundred and fifty
25:40
Speaker 2: people came to our last one from all around the world.
25:44
Speaker 2: There's videos, there's recommended apps, recommended books in this field.
25:49
Speaker 2: My own book is called they Can't Find Anything Wrong.
25:53
Speaker 2: There's a ton of resources that I dearly wish I
25:56
Speaker 2: would have had when I started in this field forty
25:59
Speaker 2: years ago, but they're available today and there's tremendous hope
26:03
Speaker 2: for people with this.
26:05
Speaker 1: Excellent So those of you who heard doctor David Clark,
26:09
Speaker 1: you can go to his website Symptomatic dot me right,
26:13
Speaker 1: or you can do a Google search. You know, Google
26:15
Speaker 1: is your friend. You can google doctor David Clark and
26:17
Speaker 1: we'll also have his information in the show notes. Well,
26:22
Speaker 1: everybody that was doctor David Clark that you heard from
26:26
Speaker 1: today on grew with Portia. And that concludes another conversation
26:30
Speaker 1: for today and until next time. Everybody, piece and hair
26:32
Speaker 1: grease everyone.
26:44
Speaker 2: I don't want to