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THE FOUNDATION HELPING MAKE THE PAIN GO AWAY
Mersey Life talk to Dr Andreas Goebel , a consultant in pain medicine at the Walton Centre in Liverpool about his work at the Pain Relief Foundation .
Just about everyone feels pain from time to time . If you cut your finger or sprain your ankle , pain is your body ' s way of telling you something is wrong . Once the injury heals , you stop hurting .
Chronic pain is different . Your body keeps hurting weeks , months , or even years after the injury despite medication or treatment . Doctors often define chronic pain as any pain that lasts for 3 to 6 months or more .
The Pain Relief Foundation based in Aintree Hospital in Liverpool is on a mission to find out why 28 million people in the UK suffer with chronic pain and what can be done about it . The charity was founded in 1979 , in response to the need for specialised research in this area .
Dr Andreas Goebel is a consultant in pain medicine at the Walton Centre in Liverpool and a Reader ( Associate Professor ) in pain medicine at the University of Liverpool – he is one of the doctors whose research the foundation funded . We asked him why his work was so important …
What is chronic pain ? It ’ s more common than you think . It is a constant pain you live with . Sometimes nothing helps alleviate it , so our research investigates why people get this and what treatments we can develop to help them .
What sort of condition might you have if you have chronic pain ? Back pain is one of the most common and another is fibromyalgia . We use a numeric ratings scale to measure pain 0-10 , with 10 being the worst pain . A pain that is 7 or higher is called severe pain . We see mainly people who have high moderate pain or severe pain .
What would that look like ? It can be tricky because there ’ s a lot of variety . Some people who have severe pain will still go for short walks or do housework , but the crucial element that we find is how the person adapts their lifestyle due to the pain . They may reduce their activities or choose between activities to make sure that they don ’ t suffer further . The pain is there constantly , and they live with it , but certain things can make the pain worse such as moving in a certain way or doing too much . The types of choices that people without chronic pain don ’ t think about .
So , what type of treatment is there for chronic pain ? Painkillers do have their place , but as with most medications the body can get used to them and then increasing the dose has other issues as it doesn ’ t always make them more effective .
We have extraordinarily few tools to reduce the brain ’ s attention to pain , but one of the methods we use at the Walton Centre is support of behavioural change around the way you think about the pain , and of very gentle special exercises - whereas normal physiotherapy can actually make such pain worse . Our treatment doesn ’ t reduce the pain , but it helps the patient to become fitter and happier despite being in pain .
And how are you hoping your research will help this ? We ’ ve been looking at how the immune system correlates to the nerves and how the nerves then give wrong signals to the brain causing pain even when all tissue look normal under the microscope and in scans . We focussed mainly on the family of chronic pain which fibromyalgia comes under , but also some pains after trauma . I believe that we are on the brink of a revelation into why such pain happens and from there are able to produce new treatments for that pain .
How has the Pain Relief Foundation helped you with your work ? I wouldn ’ t have been able to conduct any of this research without the Pain Relief Foundation , they supported me in many ways in agreement with the University , so I ’ m very grateful that this Liverpool charity is there . Liverpool is one of only a few cities where this type of research is carried out . We are at the forefront of this area . One of our studies made the 2021 top 10 of all scientific stories in the world , and without the Pain Relief Foundation we wouldn ’ t have achieved such amazing results . They are the only charity in the UK who solely support the research of chronic pain , providing grants for people and I ’ m delighted that their funding has been successful , certainly with my research and what we have discovered about how chronic pain works so far . Liverpool has a Pain Research Institute which is also supported by the PRF , and we couldn ’ t be without it . We are incredibly lucky to have the support of the Pain Relief Foundation here .
You can find out more about or donate to the Pain Relief Foundation here . https :// painrelieffoundation . org . uk /
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