By Dr. Erin Wiley Doctor of Naturopathic Medicine

We all know pain, but when we are dealing with pain that does not go away it can feel devastating. Our team understands that consistent pain impacts every aspect of your life and health. The stress of coping with the pain can be extremely challenging, often creating anticipatory anxiety about the ability to function, maintain activity levels, and achieve goals.

While there is no simple solutions to chronic pain management, a comprehensive approach that supports all factors which contribute to pain and stress can be very beneficial. Not only does this physically support healing but also, the sense of having options and opportunity decreases anxiety by helping you understand how you can support your progress.

Our team has worked together for many years providing clients with a web of support for their pain-related health concerns. This is a simplified overview of how we work together to gain momentum in your recovery process.

Our Naturopathic Doctors get your physiology working for you, turning off inflammation, addressing the cause of the pain at its root and supporting optimal tissue recovery.

As opposed to drugs that block the pain response, which can give relief in the short term but are not a permanent solution, our Naturopathic doctors seek to understand and repair the influencing factors affecting your physiology that cause your body to respond with pain. Addressing inflammation is a good example. There are many environmental and lifestyle factors that trigger the body to either produce inflammatory or anti-inflammatory mediators. Working further upstream than most conventional approaches, your Naturopath can help you turn off inflammation, decreasing your pain and increasing your confidence. This decreases reliance on medication, which helps avoid the  many o unwanted side effects. Your Naturopath can also help you optimize the nutrients you need for tissue repair and decrease the effects of oxidative stress and damage to your nervous system.

Our Chiropractor helps to re-educate your nervous system, decreasing ergonomic stress and retraining your movement patterns.

Pain and the resulting change in behavior have a dramatic impact on your brain and movement patterns. Our chiropractor understands how everything is connected. He works to gently re-establish how your nervous system is communicating with your body through movement. Teaching you how to communicate with your nervous system can encourage and support your recovery.

Our massage therapy team helps to deepen your body awareness, relax your body and mind and increase circulation to support tissue repair.

Pain can be very stressful and the resulting stress can create tension in other areas of the body. New movement patterns can overwork and exhaust the areas of the body that are working hard to compensate for the movement deficits the pain is causing. Sometimes we are not aware of what we are holding on to until we create the opportunity to develop awareness and release some nervous tension. This happens on the massage table in the hands of a skilled therapist gently guiding you to areas of your body that need attention. As the tension moves out, blood flows in, nutrients and oxygen revive the starving tissue and the opportunity for healing begins.

Acupuncture offers relief of muscle tension, addressing unhealthy patterns at the source by balancing the autonomic nervous system.

Acupuncture needles can access areas of the body that manual therapy simply cannot touch. Their application can either tonify or sedate the nervous system. By providing support to the autonomic nervous system, acupuncture can provide lasting relief. Tissue healing is also enhanced by the micro stimulation of the tissue.

Our clinic also offers a variety of specialized and pain supportive modalities such as pelvic floor physiotherapy for pelvic pain, fascial release, cognitive behavioral therapy and hypnosis for pain and stress management. While all of the modalities have benefits, your health practitioner can help you choose the modalities that best suit your preferences, condition and concerns. The combined impact of choosing more than one therapeutic tool is what makes integrative medicine such an effective approach. Just as a triangle makes the strongest base because the forces on the structure are shared equally along all three sides, so too does combining different therapeutic modalities have the greatest impact to strengthen your body and enhance recovery. Let’s build some momentum in the direction of recovery. The next step is to book your appointment here.

Dr. Erin Wiley is a naturopathic doctor with a strong focus on preventative and integrative medicine. She is the Owner and Clinic Director of the Integrative Health Institute, an integrative medical clinic located in downtown Toronto. Erin has a strong clinical
emphasis on stress related illness, anxiety, depression and hormone balance. As a naturopathic doctor, Erin is passionate about working with people to help them better understand their health and achieve their health goals.