Hi, I'm Dr. Kevin with Prococo Chiropractic and Rehabilitation here in Des Moines, Iowa. And today, I wanted to talk about the two most predominant healthcare models used in addressing people in pain today. The biomedical model and the... The Biomedical Model has been around since the mid 19th century and is the predominant healthcare model used by healthcare practitioners today in addressing people in pain.
What the Biomedical Model believes is that the sensation of pain is a sign of a disease of pain always manifests from a tissue damage problem. So there's a patho-anatomical process going on within the tissues that manifests itself as pain and the only way to get rid of pain is to fix what's going on within the damaged tissue. The model also states that say as pain you know proceeds into chronicity it can cause mental and emotional problems however at the cause of it always comes back to the tissue damage and the only way to get rid of tissue damage is through medical intervention. And so this model as a whole separates the mind and body. They are two separate things.
That pain comes from the body and it impacts the mind. As an overview of the biomedical model, the model does hold some merit within acute and traumatic injury. Oftentimes there's tissue damage.
Within a few short weeks as tissues repair themselves, pain goes away. However, where this model runs into a roadblock is when pain proceeds into chronicity. starts to cause mental emotional problems and the people in pain undergo every intervention within the medical system yet they're still left in a chronic disability pain state.
Which leads me to my next model the biopsychosocial model. The biopsychosocial model is gaining a lot of traction within health care because it's providing options to pain patients who proceed into chronicity and what the biopsychosocial model believes is that the mind and body are are one, they're cohabitating. And that's a pain is a manifestation of the brain in response to perceived threats to the body.
And these perceived threats are not any longer just tissue damage. They happen to be tissue damage, cognitive issues, emotional issues, psychological issues, social issues, or even nutritional issues. And so I want to use an analogy here to break it down even further for you. The analogy that I'd like to use here is referred to as the onion skin mask. model and at the core of the onion is true tissue damage and as you may remember with the biomedical model tissue damage causes pain with the biopsychosocial model again at the core is tissue damage however all these concentric layers of the onion are all factors that play into how and why you may manifest pain in any certain regard so on your first concentric layer your attitudes and your beliefs about pain and recovery psychological stressors negative emotions illness behavior and physical and social environment they all have an impact on how and why you feel the pain that you do and what we're finding as we integrate this model and no longer focus exclusively on tissue damage but treat a patient as a whole as mind and body is that we're we're now being able to provide outcomes successful outcomes for people who are in those persistent pain or disability states that we're no longer leading the narrative that it's a tissue problem but all of these different factors play into how you experience and how you manifest pain and so if you have any questions comments concerns leave them below reach out to me and we can talk further about it thanks have a good evening