Andrew Huberman· PhD
As a pain physician within the field of pain medicine or pain management, I think about six broad categories of therapies that we provide for people with chronic pain. One of these is the medications. And there's a whole large group of categories of medications, 200 or so available. Two, nerve blocks and procedures. These range everything from trigger point injections to nerve blocks with local anesthetic and steroid on up to minimally invasive procedures like spinal cord stimulators, implantation of drug delivery pumps. Three, psychological and behavioral therapies. Pain, psychology which has many forms now. Can be very effective. Four, physical and occupational therapy approaches to chronic pain. Five, this is what we typically call complementary alternative medicine approaches. It's a little bit of an outdated term. But I think of that as acupuncture, nutraceuticals. These are the over-the-counter agents that have actually shown to have benefit in pain that you can get over the counter. And last but not least, six, what I call self empowerment or increasing your agency. And here it's about education. It's about learning skills. It's about being here on the Huberman Lab podcast learning about pain. It's that self empowerment.