Very few people understand daily chronic pain, not to mention Complex Regional Pain Syndrome (CRPS). This is a condition that results in long-term, debilitating pain. Yet, chronic pain is becoming a real epidemic in the U.S. which, according to the CDC, affects more people today than diabetes, cancer, and heart disease combined.
Economically, chronic pain is equally taking a major toll as one of the most costly health problems in the U.S. Increased medical expenses, lost income, lost productivity, compensation payments, and legal charges are but some of the consequences to our economy. In other words, CRPS has become extremely relevant.
The Truth About CRPS
CRPS can set in after a minor injury, like a twisted ankle or sports mishap, and worsens over time to become a chronic disease. Alarmingly, 35 percent of sufferers eventually report symptoms throughout their entire body. The disease may remain localized, spread slowly over the years, or progress rapidly like a wildfire out of control. And worse, since the symptoms of CRPS are so severe, they hardly are connected to the original minor injury that set it off. Thus, CRPS is a ghost – seemingly without a cause.
Many doctors have never even heard of CRPS and don’t understand it. Even if patients are lucky enough to obtain an early diagnosis, finding successful treatment is as difficult as hunting a ghost.
Before patients are first diagnosed, they must navigate an endless maze of specialists, often painful tests, and misdiagnoses. Patients may spend thousands simply on co-pays and traveling costs only to be financially destroyed by the time they do find a promising treatment. And, if you are lucky enough to have been diagnosed relatively quickly, options remain few and limited.
Conventional Pain Programs
Contrary to the programs of the Arkansas-based Spero Clinic, most current CRPS treatments available on the market today involve the numbing, scrambling, or interruption of pain signals.
Lacking a real cure, physicians resort to pain medication to somewhat cover up the symptoms and provide some relief. Usually, because a CRPS patient experiences over-the-top pain levels, the milder types of pain medications like your typical Excedrin or Advil will not bring relief. It takes a “harder” category of drugs such as opioids to bring at least temporary comfort.
Opioids work by attaching to particular sites in the brain called opioid receptors, which carry messages to the brain. The message the brain receives is changed, so that pain is no longer perceived as painful.
A large number of medications prescribed for chronic pain conditions are listed in Schedule II of the Controlled Substances Act. These include:
- Hydromorphone (Dilaudid®)
- Methadone (Dolophine®)
- Meperidine (Demerol®)
- Oxycodone (OxyContin®, Percocet®), and
- Fentanyl (Sublimaze®, Duragesic®).
- Other Schedule II narcotics include morphine, opium, codeine, and hydrocodone.
Sadly, according to the Centers for Disease Control, “A systematic review published in 2014 by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) found insufficient evidence to demonstrate long-term benefits of prescription opioid treatment for chronic pain, and long-term prescription opioid use was found to be associated with increased risk for overdose and opioid misuse, among other risks.”
As a result, the only industry that is actively researching and benefiting from chronic pain are pharmaceutical companies which continue to launch a never-ending stream of “miracle” drugs. For these companies, chronic pain has become a billion-dollar market.
The Real Causes of CRPS
It may seem from the above that CRPS, due to its widespread symptoms throughout the body, is a condition without a cause. For example, acute pain has a direct cause such as a cut, a bruise, or a sprain. Chronic pain, however, does not end – even when the injury itself is long gone, and so must have its origins elsewhere.
Pain, itself, is the body’s alarm system to signify that something is terribly wrong. A cut or bruise will heal and the pain will stop. But when we’re talking about chronic pain, whatever is causing it is still making the alarm bells go off.
That phenomenon has been the basis of extensive research by the Founder and CEO of the Spero Clinic, Dr. Katinka van der Merwe. What exactly is causing chronic pain, and what are its common denominators?
Holistic Healing and the Nervous System
As a chiropractic physician, Dr. Katinka’s education centered around holistic healing and the fact that the body is wholly capable of healing itself unless hindered in that process. She researched studies suggesting that CRPS is associated with imbalance and malfunction of the autonomic nervous system resulting in disability, impairment, chronic pain, and functional loss.
Think of the central nervous system as the commander that runs the entire body, or the power supply to a building. If the main power supply to the building fails, none of the appliances will work. If the central nervous system fails, it gives rise to a myriad of problems manifesting in all sorts of symptoms. It may affect nerves, muscles, organs, and systems. It may also interfere with the way the body is supposed to function and respond to its environment.
Since the central nervous system controls the entire body as a massive and intricate switchboard, any malfunction of this system would explain the fact that CRPS is experienced as a full-body “phantom” or seemingly source-less pain. In other words, a phantom resulting from power outages and blocked circuits throughout the body.
The Nervous System’s Front Door
Central to the functioning of the body are the cranial nerves on the ventral (bottom) surface of the brain. These nerves control a lot of important things and act as the nervous system’s front door to the world. They allow a person to hear, see, taste, and smell.
Some of these nerves bring information from the sense organs to the brain. Some control muscles; others are connected to glands or internal organs such as the heart and lungs. One of the main functions of these nerves, in our caveman days and still today, is to perceive danger. We do this through our sensory nervous system.
In Dr. Katinka’s experience working with CRPS patients, the cranial nerves in almost every CRPS patient show abnormalities resulting in:
- Sensory abnormalities, such as abnormal pain responses to normal everyday sensory input. This includes directional pressure (such as being poked with a finger), light touch, circumferential pressure (such as putting on a tight sock), pain (being stabbed with a sharp object), cold, heat, exposure to humidity, and vibration. Pain will also be perceived at a heightened intensity.
- Vasomotor abnormalities, which include differences in skin temperature greater than 1 degree Celsius, and a difference in skin color when comparing one part or limb of the body to the opposite part or limb.
- Sudomotor/edema, which includes asymmetry in swelling and sweating.
- Motor/trophic, which is defined as decreased movement, muscle or nerve weakness, tremors, and changes in hair, skin, or nails.
Given the above groundbreaking research on the causes of CRPS, it became clear that a whole new method of treatment was needed to repair and reactivate the cranial nerves and central nervous system. And that new method started the healing process of hundreds of CRPS patients.
The Spero Clinic’s Different Approach
In a healthcare environment that primarily treats symptoms rather than causes driven by the need for quick results, longer-term treatments that address true causes are not the most popular. Today, “preventative” care is virtually nonexistent, and what is passed off as such really should be labeled as early detection instead. If this approach would be effective, we should all be extremely healthy. Yet, the nation’s healthcare tab was a staggering $4.6 trillion in 2020, accounting for about $1 of every $5 in the economy. So, something is not right.
The Spero Clinic’s treatment programs take a very different path. Practicing in a world driven by people seeking immediate relief and quick fixes can be tough. According to Dr. Katinka, “When you choose to become an alternative healthcare provider, you are going against the grain, trying to do your own small part to make people healthier from the inside out, not the outside in. You are like a soldier, fighting for people to begin to understand that their bodies can heal and repair themselves and must be kept in good order before they get sick.”
Dr. Katinka sees the body as more than the sum of its parts. It is understood that the body is a masterful, intelligent system where every part affects every other part. It is studied in terms of its dynamic connections with its environment. It boils down to “fix the whole, including its environment, and the parts will take care of themselves.”
Comprehensive Full Treatment
Factors such as stress, chemicals, processed foods and diets, toxins, inflammation, and, in many cases, drugs take a daily toll on the body and are directly affecting the central nervous system. It goes without saying that healing the body from years of abuse is not a quick affair. But it is an extremely rewarding and 100% safe process.
According to Dr. Katinka, “I had two rules that I held sacred while studying other treatment methods: all treatments had to involve healing the central nervous system, and no treatment could possibly harm the patient in any way.” So, the Spero Clinic’s full treatment program includes the following steps.
1. Nerve Interference Testing
When a patient enters The Spero Clinic, the first steps consist of a series of thorough exams involving the central nervous system. While the average CRPS patient has often undergone countless tests, including X-rays, MRIs, and nerve conduction tests, Spero’s tests (and how they are interpreted) are all designed to detect nerve interference affecting the body on a global scale, causing it to malfunction and often causing excruciating unrelenting daily pain.
2. Spinal X-rays
Next, the patient is given full-spine X-rays to determine the health of the spine, any abnormalities, signs of arthritis, and pathologies that can directly affect nerve function.
3. Meta-Oxy Inflammation Test
The next step is a Meta-Oxy Inflammation Test to measure inflammation in the body by showing how much cell membrane damage is occurring. The cell membrane is vital in communication, as signals from our nervous system, immune system, endocrine system, and other systems in the body attach to this membrane and tell the cells what to do.
4. Heavy Metal Testing
A heavy-metal test shows what metals are currently circulating in the body and being excreted by the kidney.
The Testing Period
Typically, the Clinic recommends that the patient comes in for a “testing period” of one to two weeks. During this period, Spero staff perform tests and, depending on the outcomes, start the treatment program which lasts 10 weeks on average. This program is conducted in four phases.
1. Waking up the Vagus Nerve.
Within the central nervous system, the Vagus nerve is a major player in building the puzzle that forms CRPS. The Vagus nerve is the single most important nerve inside the human body outside of the spinal cord. It is one of twelve pairs of cranial nerves. These nerves emerge directly from the brain and brainstem and provide motor and sensory information mainly to the structures of the head and neck (like smell, taste, hearing, or vision, for example.) Reactivating or “waking up” this nerve is the first and most important component in full-body healing.
2. Frequency Specific Microcurrent (FSMsm).
FSM is used to stimulate and encourage the healing of the tissues. There is much to be done in terms of tissue healing if a patient suffers from CRPS. The inflammation needs to be decreased all the way from the spinal cord to the nerves.
3. Rehabilitating the Nervous System.
The nervous system has to build up stamina and strength, at which point the repairs become permanent. In other words, this system “toughens” up the nervous system.
4. Increasing Circulation.
This is done with Vecttor therapy, which is a form of electrostimulation utilizing the principles of acupuncture, reflexology, physiology, and cellular physiology. It’s designed to stimulate the nerves to produce certain vital neuropeptides essential for the optimal functioning of the body.
Results Count – Choose the Spero Clinic Today
While Spero’s success rate is high, they cannot help everybody. Spero’s treatment is not covered by insurance, and patients have to travel all the way to Arkansas to try it. However, the pros are obvious: no side effects, a high success rate, making the body healthier overall, and the ability to reasonably be able to predict if the treatment will work early on in the process.
The number one thing all successful patients have in common is hope. Hope allows patients to still try, and do what they have to do in order to get better.
Take for example Carlos Jasso, who suffered from full-body CRPS in the internal abdominal area in 2005, before it spread through his entire body within a month. He was finally diagnosed two years later, in 2007. Carlos underwent numerous treatments in the following years, including morphine and other opioids and spinal injections, to no avail. Through a friend, he came in contact with Dr. Katinka.
In his own words, “Dr. Katinka helped me gain my life back. By week 10, I was off all medications. For the first time since 2005, I was pain-free on some days. Then, as the treatment progressed, the soreness became less, and the pain-free days more. I have not had further treatment in almost four years, and I am still pain-free. No burning, stabbing, sharp shooting, sensitivity to light or air, nor extremely bad migraines. I am now living without fear of pain, and I am not using any medications. Dr. Katinka gave me back my life when everyone else had given up on me.”
For more information about the Spero Clinic, go to www.thesperoclinic.com or call (479) 304-8202.
Dr. Katinka’s book about CRSP, Putting out the Fire, can be found on Amazon.com.
