Gary A. Walco, PhD
Hackensack University Medical Center
Excerpted from The New Medicine Interviews

About Cerebral Palsy
What happens with cerebral palsy… [is that] muscles go into states of contracture. They’re taut and frozen in certain positions. That puts a huge amount of pressure on different joints in his body.

Inhibiting Pain
Inhibiting pain responses was one of the things that sort of revolutionized our whole view of pain. …[For instance] If you’re talking about somebody who’s got an injury in a war circumstance, or an athlete who’s injured in playing… It may well be the case that an athlete who is so focused on the activity in which he or she is engaged, she can turn off, or ignore, to some degree, some of those pain stimuli. It’s only when you get a little time and distance from the immediate shock of the situation, , that the pain response overwhelmingly comes through.

Treating Pain
In many cases, [medications] don’t work so well. [In those cases], we need to look at other strategies, which may include, teaching patients self-regulatory strategies like imagery and hypnosis, so they can modulate their own pain better and teach them how to lead more functional and adaptive lifestyles. The idea of being completely immobilized and withdrawing from their activities is something that we work hard on changing. So, it’s more of a rehabilitation approach.

And, I think it’s also important to point out; these are not mutually exclusive. You can use medication and work on [strategies], and not just be wedded to one or the other.