Why Most Chronic Pain Treatments Fail—And What Actually Works
- Dr. Jason Winkelmann
- May 29
- 5 min read
The Chronic Pain Epidemic No One Is Solving
If you're living with chronic pain, chances are you’ve been to countless specialists, taken every medication under the sun, maybe even tried injections or surgeries. Yet the pain remains. Or worse—it’s getting worse.
You're not alone. Over 50 million Americans suffer from chronic pain, yet fewer than 10% ever find true, lasting relief. That statistic isn't just alarming—it's unacceptable!
So why are we failing? The answer lies not just in what we’re doing, but in how we’re thinking about pain. To break free, we must shift our perspective and our strategy. It starts with understanding why the conventional approach doesn’t work—and what a truly effective holistic chronic pain treatment looks like.
What Is the Standard of Care for Chronic Pain?
When someone enters the conventional healthcare system with chronic pain, the typical steps look something like this:
Diagnosis based on symptoms: “Where does it hurt?” “What does it feel like?” “On a scale of 1–10, how bad is it?”
Medication prescriptions: Painkillers, muscle relaxers, anti-inflammatories, sometimes antidepressants.
Referral to physical therapy: Often a standard protocol not tailored to your specific imbalances.
Advanced interventions: Steroid injections, nerve blocks, or surgeries when the above fail.
Specialist referrals: Neurology, rheumatology, pain management—often resulting in a cycle of contradictory advice.
At first glance, this seems thorough. But it isn’t. It’s a reactive system built to suppress symptoms, not solve them. And therein lies the problem.
Why the Standard Approach Fails
1. It’s Fragmented and Compartmentalized
Conventional medicine breaks the body into parts: orthopedic pain goes to the orthopedist, nerve pain goes to the neurologist, stomach pain to the gastroenterologist... But chronic pain doesn’t play by those rules. It’s systemic, layered, and deeply interconnected—something the standard model isn’t designed to address. All parts of your body are connected, your healthcare should reflect that.
2. It Focuses on the Symptom, Not the Cause
Pain is not the problem. Pain is the solution! Your body creates this signal to tell you that something is wrong, and to point you in the direction of the problem. Painkillers, injections, and even surgeries aim to block that signal—but they rarely identify what’s causing it in the first place. When we suppress pain without treating the root, we’re not healing. We’re just quieting the alarm while the fire still burns.
3. Protocols Over Personalization
The average doctor visit is under 10 minutes. In that time, how deeply can they understand your full history, stress levels, lifestyle, diet, emotional state, and trauma background?
Chronic pain is deeply personal. One-size-fits-all protocols don’t work for a condition that affects everyone differently.
4. It Ignores the Role of Biochemistry and Emotions
The mind and body aren’t separate—but modern medicine often treats them as if they are. Emotional trauma, stress, repressed feelings, hormone imbalances, gut dysfunction, nutrient deficiencies—all of these can directly contribute to chronic pain. Yet they’re rarely addressed in conventional settings.
What Holistic Chronic Pain Treatment Looks Like
No matter your diagnosis, how long you've been in pain, or what initially got you into pain, chronci pain is a physical, biochemical, and emotional problem. This is true for 100% of sufferers. If you ever want to get out of pain, you have to find and treat all of the root causes of your pain, on all three of those levels, at the same time. With that in mind, a truly effective chronic pain treatment must be:
Whole-body focused
Root-cause driven
Supportive of human physiology
Personalized
Patient-empowering
At True Health Centers, we’ve developed a 6-month, all-inclusive holistic chronic pain treatment program designed to address pain physically, biochemically, and emotionally—all at the same time. No drugs, no surgeries, no “standard protocols.” Just a comprehensive plan tailored to you.
Physical: Addressing Structural Causes of Pain
Muscle imbalances, joint restrictions, poor posture, soft tissue damage—these are common physical contributors to pain. To correct them, we utilize:
Chiropractic adjustments and mobilizations to restore mobility and alignment
Soft tissue therapies to break up scar tissue and adhesions
Individualized rehab plans that correct muscular imbalances
Custom orthotics to balance the entire kinetic chain
We don’t just treat “where it hurts.” We investigate why it hurts and correct the movement patterns causing it.
Biochemical: Healing From the Inside Out
Many patients suffer from undiagnosed gut issues, chronic inflammation, hormone imbalances, or nutrient deficiencies that silently fuel their pain. We use advanced lab testing to uncover hidden drivers like:
Leaky gut, dysbiosis, and food sensitivities
Mold toxicity and environmental toxin exposures
Hormone and adrenal dysfunction
Oxidative stress and mitochondrial insufficiency
And we treat them with a holistic approach of:
Therapeutic nutrition and lifestyle plans
Pharmaceutical-grade supplementation
Infrared sauna therapies for detoxification
Cold laser therapy to boost cellular energy
Simply put, the body can’t heal if it doesn’t have the raw materials to do so!
Emotional: The Most Overlooked Cause of Pain
This might be where I lose some people—but the science is undeniable: repressed emotions and unhealed trauma can, and do, cause physical pain!
Pain is one of the brain’s most powerful communication tools. When we suppress emotional pain—through distraction, denial, or medication—the brain can turn that into physical pain to get our attention.
Mind-body counseling, nervous system regulation through breath work and constitutional hydrotherapy, and simply giving patients a space to process can dramatically reduce physical symptoms.
As we say often in our clinic: your body doesn’t speak English. It speaks through symptoms. We can either listen to them, or we can drown them out.
Nervous System Regulation: The Hidden Key
Your autonomic nervous system runs all your background processes—heart rate, blood flow, digestion, inflammation. It is broken into two branches: sympathetic (fight or flight) and parasympathetic (rest and digest). When it’s out of balance, pain and dysfunction follow. Especially in conditions like fibromyalgia, CRPS, and migraines, nervous system dysregulation is the primary cause. We regulate the autonomic nervous system through:
Breathwork and vagus nerve activation
Lifestyle training to reduce chronic sympathetic activation (fight-or-flight mode)
When the nervous system calms down, pain often follows.
Education: The Most Important Therapy of All
Getting out of pain is one thing. Staying out of pain is another. This requires learning everythign there is to know about your body and your pain. In our program, we teach patients:
How to recognize the early signs of imbalance
How to adjust their nutrition, movement, and mindset
How to avoid becoming dependent on any one provider—including us because true healing means becoming your own best healer.
A Real Case: Holly’s Story
Holly came to us with a diagnosis of fibromyalgia and daily pain at an 8/10 level. Like many, she had tried everything—meds, specialists, PT, diets—with little success.
Six months later, Holly is pain-free!
What changed? We didn’t treat her fibromyalgia. We treated her.
We corrected her musculoskeletal imbalances
We uncovered gut inflammation and nutrient deficiencies
We supported her emotionally and rebalanced her nervous system
We gave her the tools to stay pain-free
Now Holly is not just out of pain—she has her life back. More energy. Normal blood pressure and blood sugar. Even fuller hair and stronger immunity.
This is the power of holistic chronic pain treatment. You'll get out of pain and be healthier overall!
Ready for a New Approach?
If you’re tired of managing symptoms and ready to heal, we invite you to schedule a free phone consultation. Let’s talk about what’s going on, what you’ve tried, and whether our program is a fit for you.
You don’t have to live with chronic pain. You just need the right plan.
Schedule your free consult online or call us at (970) 716-0557.
Final Thoughts
Chronic pain isn’t just physical. It’s emotional. It’s biochemical. It’s a signal that something deeper is out of balance. If your current treatments aren't working, it’s not because you’re untreatable—it’s because you haven’t been treated the right way.
Holistic chronic pain treatment is not a trend. It’s a return to what healing was always meant to be: individualized, comprehensive, and empowering.
You deserve that. And we can help.
Comments