Create The Best Me

Chronic Pain Relief Without Drugs or Surgery - Here’s How

• Carmen Hecox • Episode 133

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Are you tired of relying on medications or receiving recommendations for surgery while your chronic pain lingers? In this empowering episode, I sit down with Stacey Roberts, a seasoned physical therapist, holistic nurse, and author of "The Pain Free Formula: Solving the Puzzle of Muscle and Joint Pain Without Surgery, Drugs, or Injections," to explore "Chronic Pain Relief Without Drugs or Surgery – Here’s How." We dig deep into the surprising root causes of chronic pain, including how your gut health, food sensitivities, stress, and inflammation could be keeping you from living pain-free. 

What You’ll Learn

  1. How Gut Health Drives Chronic Pain
    Understand the science behind the gut-joint axis and how leaky gut, inflammation, and food sensitivities can manifest as chronic joint and muscle pain even without obvious digestive trouble.
  2. Personalized Diets for Pain Relief
    Discover why classic “anti-inflammatory diets” may not hold the answer for everyone and how targeted food sensitivity testing can uncover your unique triggers, sometimes even healthy foods like spinach!
  3. Innovative Drug-Free Therapies
    Learn about SoftWave therapy, a breakthrough non-surgical device for reducing local inflammation and accelerating healing, plus how advanced physical therapy and mindful movement restore mobility.
  4. Mindset is Medicine
    Find out why hope and belief in your ability to heal are just as important as physical strategies for managing chronic pain—and how to reframe your brain’s pain pathways for genuine relief.
  5. A Holistic Pain Relief Formula
    Discover how gut healing, hormone balance, probiotics, sleep, and customized lifestyle changes work together for long-lasting, drug-free pain relief and renewed vitality. 

Ready for Life-Changing Chronic Pain Relief?

Call to Action: 

💬 Comment below: What’s the biggest roadblock in your chronic pain relief journey? Which pain relief method are you curious to try next?

And don’t forget to click on the links below to Stacey’s free eBooks!  

📕 Resources: 

https://createthebestme.com/ep133

www.newyouhealthandwellness.com

Naturally Relieve Your Aches & Pains Today with Stacey's Free Ebooks: https://newyouhealthandwellness.com/ebooks/

Purchase a copy of “The Pain Free Formula: Solving the Puzzle of Muscle and Joint Pain Without Surgery, Drugs, or Injections” https://www.amazon.com/Pain-Free-Formula-Solving-Injections/dp/0998183717

Find a SoftWave Provider near you: https://softwavetrt.com/providers/ 

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Ever thought that spinach could ruin your day? Neither did my guest until her favorite breakfast smoothie started causing her mysterious joint pain. Today we're chatting with Stacey Roberts, a physical therapist, holistic nurse, and the author of "The Pain Free Formula: Solving the Puzzle of Muscle and Joint Pain without Surgery, Drugs, or Injections." Stacey's here to unravel the hidden connection between your gut and chronic pain. And believe me, some of the answers might surprise you. Stick around because by the end of this conversation you might rethink your grocery list. Let's dive in. Stacey Roberts, welcome to Create the Best Me. This is an honor and a privilege to have you on. Oh my gosh, it's such an honor and privilege of mine to be here. Thank you so much. So, Stacey, before we get into today's amazing conversation, could you please tell the listeners and viewers a little bit about who you are and what you do? Sure, I am a physical therapist and a holistic master's prepared registered nurse. I've been doing physical therapy for oh gosh, 35 years now, which I can't hardly believe. And then I recently became a nurse and expanded into functional medicine as well. Cause I've also been treating men's and women's pelvic health and sexual health for many years as well as sports medicine, orthopedic injuries. So I help people deal with and get rid of their pain. Perfect. And the reason why I invited you on to the show is because you, also have an understanding of how and it's something that we all overlook is how our gut health impacts our pain. Or how our body responds to pain. Absolutely, I stumbled upon that myself years ago. And it was really hard for me as a physical therapist that deals with musculoskeletal muscles and bones and joints to really kind of understand how the gut has anything to do with that. But in the last 10 years, you know, as everybody pretty much knows, the microbiome and gut information and research has exploded. And as it's been doing that, we have found that you don't need to have digestive issues to know that you potentially have gut issues if you have joint pain, muscle pain, all that can be impacted by your gut as well too, which it's called the gut joint axis. So that kind of blew me away, and I had my own personal experiences dealing with that as well. So tell us about your own personal experience. Sure. So, I used to have, I, I used to do a lot of coaching, so I'd be doing standing, you know, with my son, teenage girls for 20 to 25 years in basketball, volleyball, and I would stand and I would get the shooting pain down my leg and my toes would even curl and numbness and tingling. So I went and had an MRI found that I had, you know, three bulging discs in my back. And as a physical therapist, I knew kind of how to take care of that. But there was a point in time where all the different exercises I was doing, everything like that wasn't taking the pain away. So, I'm was seeing a patient at the time who I had thought had celiac disease, which is an autoimmune issue related to the gut where people can't have gluten. And it was confirmed that she did have that. And when she, um, stopped eating the gluten, her joint pain went away. And I'm like, that's really interesting. I didn't expect that to happen. So I thought, well, I'm gonna try that for myself. And sure enough, when I got rid of gluten, and it doesn't have to be gluten for everybody, but for me it was gluten and I'm not celiac. I noticed that I do not have any of that pain down my leg despite having those bulging discs. And then fast forward a few years later, probably five or six years later, I started to have this aching in my hands and I thought, I'm gluten-free, I'm dairy free. I really watch my sugar. What in the world could this be? Thought it was arthritis, had x-rays, no arthritis. And uh, what I did is did a food sensitivity test again, to see how my gut was doing in relation to certain foods. And sure enough, uh, spinach came back as severe for me. And guess what I was putting in my smoothie in the mornings every morning was spinach. Remove that and the joint pain went away. I never really had digestive issues beyond some, you know, minor constipation. So it really took a couple experiences, personal experiences for me to really wrap my head around it. But the gut and food sensitivities directly is related to pain for many people. Yeah, I mean, cause like myself, I can't have hot dogs. And if I eat a hot dog, ah and, I ate a hot dog, 4th of July. My gut is still hurting today because I can't have hot dogs. So I think that's how most of us would respond to recognizing that our gut does impact how our body responds and may respond for several days. Absolutely. Now, now if I have gluten, like I'll occasionally try something that I know potentially has gluten or it might be in something that I don't know about. You know, sure enough, I'll have that pain that comes back. Or if I'm like, oh, that croissant looks so good, I'm just gonna have like half of it, then I know that I will most likely pay for it. And each time I'm hopeful that I won't. But unfortunately I do. And I continue to work on my gut to minimize the impact that foods can have on it, because I wanna get away from the leaky gut, if you've heard of that before. Basically when the tight junctions in the endothelial lining as your gut is just a tube and it's lined with these different cells and if you think of the tight junctions along those, that cell lining, it's basically like grout and tile. Or if you think of the slats in a fence and you put some glue in between those slats, that tight junction, which is in between those cells can get weaker. And it allows food particles to get into the bloodstream and the body reacts to it right away with significant inflammation. And if that happens over time for a long period of time, then other particles can get into the body called lipopolysaccharides. Those have been shown to be related to inflammation and increased in the joints, especially arthritic joints. So we're even rethinking arthritis, right? We're starting to rethink our arthritis is not necessarily always wear and tear, but can potentially be these, you know, lipopolysaccharides that are ending up in the joint, kinda wearing it away as a result, and then we end up with pain and inflammation. So it's really looking at body holistically to figure out, okay, if I address the gut and stay away from the foods that are irritants, I can really be pain free. Mm-hmm. And I know that, um, I suffer chronic pain. I have chronic migraines. I get Botox every 90-days to control my migraines. But I also have arthritis on my left shoulder. And I need spine surgery, but I'm not going through that again cause I already went through two neck surgeries and if I can suck it up as much as I can, I'm going to do that. But I remember when I was learning to try to live a life pain, a pain free life, I had a girlfriend tell me, you should try an anti-inflammatory diet. Cause that was the big thing, you know, 20 some years ago. But I didn't quite understand what is an anti-inflammatory diet. And how do I know whether that particular diet is really going to restore my life or give me a life that I'm going to be able to move without pain. Yep, so, an anti-inflammatory diet basically is generally right. So here's, there's a differentiation, but let's talk about generally what the anti-inflammatory diet is getting away from those ultra processed foods that we know contribute to significant inflammation in the system. Eating more whole foods, okay, that are more, anti-inflammatories, such as like the Mediterranean diet. Things that are giving your body what it needs versus things that make you crave more things like sugary processed foods. Because a lot of the food companies have figured out the science of what to give us so that we crave more of it, even though it's not healthy for us. But it improves their sales, right? So when we eat more whole foods, more foods that are less processed or not processed, we're able to then decrease the inflammation in the system. Now, a lot of my patients will say to me, I eat really healthy, it can't be my food. Well, for me, spinach is pretty healthy. You know the multi-grain bread that I was having that had gluten in it, that's pretty healthy. But for me in particular, this is where we get into more personalized medicine. We can look at that food to see what in your body is reacting and you know, for some of my patients it's blueberries or white potato or black pepper. So once we kind of narrow those things down and get rid of those, then we can start rebuilding the gut because it doesn't have as much irritation anymore in that system. So we're also an anti-inflammatory diet is generally like the Mediterranean diet, but your own personalized anti-inflammatory diet is, we do that by identifying what you're reacting to and remove those things. Rebuild the gut and then potentially add some of those things back if your body can tolerate them. Mm-hmm Yeah. And I'm blown away when you said spinach, cause I love spinach and I would have never, ever in a million years thought that, spinach was the culprit that causing your pain. Me either. So how would someone, cause like you said, some of your patients, they are eating generally healthy diets. How does someone find out exactly what foods is it that are causing my pain? Or could be causing, maybe not pain, but disruption? Right, exactly. Inflammation in general, that can show up as skin issues. It can show up as hormone fluctuations that are not in our favor. It can show up as many things, including pain. The test that I use is called the ALCAT, A as in apple, L as in Laurie, CAT as in cat. I like that because it has the research behind it. Some of the older tests out there; we have to look at the test and what kind of test it is called IGG tests. Those have been shown to be less accurate. They are cheaper, so people are still typically doing them. And they don't tend to show the specifics that something like the ALCAT or the MRT test. Which you usually have to go through a practitioner to get and be able to help interpret. And there's a blood draw involved with those as well. So that's the way I've used this for 20, probably 23 or 24 years now, and it's been very, very accurate for the majority of my patients. It's just difficult, right? So when we find out foods that we really like, like chocolate or other foods that come up on there, like you said, spinach, you know what the heck? You don't wanna give that up. But what I tell patients is you're not giving up forever, you're just giving up for three months. You see if it feels better, if it's a severe reaction, maybe six months, and then we work on the gut. So you can add that back in and see if you still react to it. So most of my patients, after that three or six months, start adding things back in, and then they might be down to like two or three things that they're like, hmm, I just don't wanna have that in my diet because that specifically creates this problem. So after not having it for three or six months, it's really not that hard to get rid of it, then for the long-term. Mm-hmm And so when you got rid of the spinach, did you immediately notice that your aches and pains were gone? Within two to three days had no more pains in my hands. It was, that's what blew me away. Again, it took me years to kind of really wrap my head around that. Okay, I get gluten cause there's celiac, there's, you know, other people that talk about gluten sensitivity. But I'm like spinach, you know, then I read up on spinach and there's oxalates and spinach that some people react to. Thankfully I can have spinach today. I started to add that back in after working on my gut. And I don't have the issues that I had with spinach, uh, you know, many years ago now, over 10 years ago. And I can eat that in like mixed green salad and I don't have any reaction whatsoever. I don't go crazy on it. I don't go to town on spinach because I'm, worried that it would, I'd have that same reaction. But that's also another thing too, is sometimes you can add it back in, but you just can't have it every day. And you notice that you feel good for one or two days, but if you have it that third day, that's a little bit too much. So, that's another way to kind of see how you can manage the foods, especially if you miss them from your diet, when you have to eliminate them. So when you go through this elimination process, is it kind of like you are detoxing the gut? And then once you've like kind of, it's almost kind of like a bug. You got rid of the bug, then you can slowly bring it in and maybe you can have it again, or maybe you just can't? I wouldn't call it detoxing from my standpoint. It's more of decreasing the inflammation. So anytime we eat any food, we create inflammation. It's part of the body being able to break that food down. Part of the body being able to utilize it. And what we're doing really is decreasing that inflammatory load on the body. So the body can handle inflammation, but just not too much of it. When it becomes overwhelming, then the system starts to break down. And we can see, you know, uh, like I said, things that the irritants; could be skin, could be hormones, could be gut, could be joint pain, could be, you know, pretty much any of those symptoms, headaches, the migraines that you're having, those types of things could be triggered, buy something that you're eating. So when we decrease that inflammatory load, the body can manage that better. And we all have what's called a pain threshold. So we all have a a portion of inflammation that's going on all the time that we really don't notice or feel, but once it gets beyond that pain threshold, that inflammation crosses that pain threshold, we start to feel it. Then it could be minimal. Maybe moderate and then becomes severe, and that's when our body tells us to protect ourselves. Stay away from what that is. But if we don't know what it is because it's coming from our food and we're eating so many different things, then it's very hard to be able to, you know, get rid of the one or two or three things that are significantly contributing to that inflammation and causing pain. When you're working with, people in your office and they're not responding or, or they're going through the physical therapy that you're putting them through; when do you decide that it's time to check their gut health? You know, because they're like, you know what, I've been coming to you, Stacey, and it still hurts. Mm-hmm In an ideal world, I would start working on that right away. But because there's so much disconnect between thinking our gut has anything to do with pain, not many of my patients are in that space to kind of understand that yet. So we have a device in our clinic called SoftWave, which is a type of shockwave device. Which works in 35 years I've never seen something that works this well with localized inflammation. As a matter of fact, I totally thought it wouldn't work when I first was exposed to it five years ago and I was doing everything I could to prove that it didn't work. I talk about that in my book, The Pain Free Formula, how I kind of stumbled on that and really was very skeptical. Now I use it on 90% of my patients. And why is because it's so good at decreasing the inflammation for a localized area that patients will feel 50 to a hundred percent better after the first treatment. That may not last more than a few days, but then with each treatment, that gets longer and longer. So I know that if they are not having that kind of progress in three treatments then i've been educating them over those three treatments that, hey, your hormones can contribute to pain, your gut can contribute to pain. So by that third treatment, if they're not where they should be from that SoftWave treatment and my advanced physical therapy and manual therapy, then I know it's time to look for other things. And if that patient's sitting across from me is perimenopausal, is, you know, having hot sweats is having all these other things, we may look at hormones. How are your hormones contributing to your pain? But if that person across from me has constipation, other gut issues, joint pain that fluctuates. So sometimes it's there, sometimes it's not, maybe they have pain at night after dinner. Those types of things, then I'll look more towards gut first. Or if it's a, I have some, patients who are 65 and up, which probably it's not a hormonal thing, then I'll look more towards gut. So it really depends on how that patient's presenting to me to know whether we're gonna be working on gut health. But I love the SoftWave device cause it helps me determine whether this is localized inflammation or systemic inflammation contributed to by gut hormones or food sensitivities. And what does this device look like? So it is, unfortunately, I don't have it here right now. But it is, basically a regular device, like a box. And it's, you know, kind of looks like it's, newer, I don't wanna say space age, but very, new device that has, an applicator that I just placed on the body. I can send you, a video of it as well too. So your listeners and people who are watching can take a look at it. But it just sits on the body in the area that's irritated and then it feels like, it sounds like a clicking sound. What's happening is these waves are going into the body and when you go over a certain area, it'll just feel like tapping if there's no inflammation. But when you go over the area where there is inflammation and it's familiar pain to the person, the person will be like, Ooh, boy, yeah, that's the spot, that's exactly the pain that I feel. And nothing else is, as good at identifying that besides my hands. And my hands can't always get as deep as I want them to get as this device called SoftWave. So it's, it's absolutely fantastic. And, another thing, there's no other device does the patient feel like the pain is actually reducing and going away in real time as we're doing the treatment. So it's really spectacular for me to be able to differentiate between systemic inflammation and localized inflammation for that patient. And I would say probably 70% of the people that I see do fantastic on SoftWave and don't necessarily right away have to go to look at their overall health in regards to their gut regards to their gut health. But, as I'm talking to them about different things, I'm finding more about them that they might have some digestive issues or they have this other pain that's kind of niggling. They don't necessarily wanna deal with it like they do maybe their knee, but that also can contribute. Or they have migraines like you, or headaches or skin issues. And we talk about, Hey, what's going on with your gut here? What can we do to optimize it? Because then that's gonna also help minimize the localized pain and keep them from, you know, having additional injuries in the future. Mm-hmm. So is the SoftWave sort of like getting an ultrasound? So a lot of people say it looks like an ultrasound, but ultrasound will heat up the tissue and ultrasound doesn't get as deep. So ultrasound has to dilate the blood vessels in order for the blood to get to the area. SoftWave, there's no dilation of the blood vessels. There's no chance in in hurting the patient by heating the area too much. It's just like as if you were standing on the edge of the ocean and the waves were kind of going along your legs, and your legs were the cells, the stimulation from those shockwaves contract and expand the cells, and then the brain goes, huh, it's going on down there. We need to send some reinforcements over there to see what's going on. And that's where stem cells, anti-inflammatory molecules start to travel to the area much faster than they would otherwise. And we get that healing process moving from a pro-inflammatory state into an anti-inflammatory state. And that's when the body can heal. Your body can't heal when it's continually irritated. And can SoftWave be applied in an area where a person might have hardware? Because you know how like ultrasound, you can't put that on hardware. Correct, yep. SoftWave, our type of SoftWave comes out more like a flashlight with a focal center. Other types of shockwave devices come out like a laser and they warn against doing it over metal. I have metal in my knee. I've treated my patients SoftWave after knee replacements, hip replacements does not heat up the source of metal and it doesn't cause any issues. Actually, after those replacements, people come in to help decrease the inflammation significantly and help them with their rehab. So, thankfully our type of shockwave device, cause there's many out there, some that even say their shockwave and aren't so buyer beware. Our type of device is not contraindicated over any type of metals. Yeah, and a lot of people need to understand too that when you have surgery or have hardware put in through the healing process, you have a lot of scar tissue. And so a lot of times, you know, the pain is coming from the scar tissue, and it's hard to get in there and break that scar tissue because it's surrounded by hardware. Correct. And what's good about SoftWave is it helps to revascularize some of that scar tissue. So we're able to do more manual therapy, more advanced physical therapy to get the patient moving. And a lot of my patients say it feels like it's breaking up the scar tissue, which is fascinating to me. So then it'll help with range of motion and decreasing pain. So it's just has a myriad of uses, especially with, post-surgical or anybody who, you know, has had trauma or any ongoing pain that people are having. Mm-hmm. Especially like women with menopause. I think the first thing we start complaining about is our shoulder. Yeah. You know, people don't realize that, you know, everybody talks about hot flashes, right? But joint and muscle pain is just as common or more common in some studies than actually hot flashes. So it's a big deal for people, and it usually comes outta the blue, like maybe you're playing pickleball and you hurt your shoulder, sure. But, I was sitting, I'm, you know, pushing 60. I was sitting with my front office person and all of a sudden, literally sitting on my computer doing nothing else, and my shoulder just went clunk like that. And my front office person, Stephanie, she goes, what was that? I'm like, I don't know. Um, I mean, I kind of had an idea of being a physical therapist, but I didn't know why it all of a sudden would happen. But when our hormone levels decrease, the change in elasticity, and collagen in our tendons and ligaments will change as well. And I had been doing a workout program with my arms and I think it just kind gave way unfortunately. And that's when I started to look at hormone replacement as well. Because until then I really didn't need it. I sailed through menopause because of all the lifestyle stuff that I've done with my diet and my food sensitivity and my gut health, that was huge for me to get through menopause without pain or issues. But then I had to start thinking, okay, what can I do now to make sure that I can still be as active as I want to be going as I get older. Mm-hmm What are the common signs that digestion might contribute to chronic pain? Sure. So if you have something to eat, and this can be hard to do unless you write it down. So a lot of times I have my patients do a food diary and a symptom diary. So if you have something to eat and then an hour or two later or immediately is always easiest to identify, but within a couple hours, your joint starts to ache. So, for example, most people will know if they have too much alcohol, they can feel achy and stiff, things like that. But if they, let's say, have pain at night, but it's not every night. What I tell people to do is, okay, let's keep track of what you're having for dinner. Alright, and then let's see if there's any correlation to those nights that you're having that pain so that you can see if what you've eaten potentially is an issue. Other things like, you know, the more, identifiable things are easy to identify as if you do have, constipation or bloating, things like that, and that's chronic, but then when that's better, then your joint pain's better. When the digestive issues get worse again, your joint pain gets worse, those things can kind of tie us into, whether or not the gut is contributing to pain. But overall generally, if we work on the gut, it's gonna optimize our health anyway. So when we get to that point, we try to look at optimizing the health of the gut, not just for improving joint pain, but also improving the immune system, improving your skin, improving your nails, improving your hair, all those types of things that need good absorption of nutrients into your system in order to thrive. Do you ever tell your patients to take a, like if they go out to dinner, maybe take a digestive enzyme before they eat because there is that possibility that they could be exposed to something that is on the do not eat list for themselves? So a digestive enzyme wouldn't necessarily help with the food sensitivity. It would help if you're not digesting the food really well. So here's a trick that I tell my patients. I say, if right after you eat, within that 30 minutes to an hour after you eat, you just feel like the food's just sitting there like nothing is kind of broken down. You feel really heavy, then that's probably a digestive issue. The digestive enzymes, maybe you kind of are eating too fast or maybe you're eating something that you don't normally eat. Like if you don't have beef a lot in your diet and you have a steak and your body's having difficulty, if you do have that, then you take the digestive enzyme before or during eating and you'll feel that you don't have that heaviness and difficulty to digest about 30 to 60 minutes after. If some of the bloating, because let's think about that for a minute. The digestive enzyme is in your stomach, right? So as you're consuming the food, you're gonna be feeling that relatively soon after eating. If what you're feeling is kind of like an hour or two or more after, that's after the food has kind of moved from the stomach into the small intestine, and there can potentially be issues with more of a good versus bad bacteria in your gut. So that would be for somebody for that who's having it kind of a couple hours after food, I'd recommend more probiotic to be able to address those things versus the digestive enzyme. Now some people need a combination of the two. Or somebody's had their gallbladder removed, I've always strongly recommend digestive enzymes because they don't have that gallbladder to help them break down the foods, especially fatty foods. So we add that and then they would take that before either, their meal that the digestive enzyme they would take before a meal that's, you know, maybe, a little bit more fatty than normal. Or some of those, patients in mind who don't have a gallbladder will just take the digestive enzyme before each meal just in case. Mm-hmm. You brought up probiotics. Do you recommend that your patients take probiotic and prebiotics just daily. Just kind of like, this is what I'm gonna take every day, like a vitamin. So I believe that if everybody took a good quality probiotic their immune system would be significantly improved. Now, not everybody can tolerate, you know, really high potency probiotics. Some people need, lower potency probiotics to be introduced and then maybe kind of climb that up. Prebiotics again, in my opinion, I try to streamline supplementation, so as much as we can get fermented foods into our diet, they're loaded with prebiotics and some probiotics as well. So if we, instead of having another pill to take of prebiotics, I'll have people stick with the probiotics, as maybe before bed, as the digestive system slows down, there's no food competing with it. But then really try to get the prebiotics from the foods that they're eating. Some people will take a combination of prebiotic and a probiotic. We really try to personalize it to what that person needs. And some people don't believe in prebiotics. Some people don't believe in probiotics. But for my personal situation probiotic has been fantastic. And then utilizing my diet with those fermented foods to get the prebiotics from there. Hmm. You mentioned hidden barriers to healing in your book; can you elaborate on what some of these barriers are? So, basically hidden barriers to healing, one of the thing is mindset. I've had patients who will do the food sensitivity test. I mean, and they're in a lot of pain. They do the food sensitivity test, I just had a guy who did it and in, I think it was in moderate column, which means you need to give that up for three months, hops came up. And hops is in beer. And he literally had been seeing me for a while. We said, okay, this is more than just, you know, localized issue. You have other things like digestive issues and other stuff that really tells me your gut is dealing with, a lot of stuff. So we need to look at those food sensitivities. And he just looked at me and he is like, I, I, I, there's no way I can do it. And I said, well, well wait, I didn't tell you have to give it up forever, just three months. He's like, no, I, I just can't do it. I said, so you love the beer more than you hate all this pain that you're having? And he kinda sat there and he was thinking, he is like, I guess so. So the person has to be ready. And I tell people you don't have to do it, jump in, do everything at once. Just start slow moving around. Or depending on your personality, that may be what you have to do in order to be successful. So you need to know yourself. But you wanna have an open mindset and really start to think, okay, if I could tell you a hundred percent for sure, that hops would take your pain away, would you get rid of it? And if you hesitate, then you may not be ready, right. So mindset is, number one and what we're kind of committed to and how we think about food, you know, how we're socialized to think about food and conditioned to think about food is really important to explore. Because some people will say, I'll do anything, anything to get rid of this pain. And they'll say, well, chocolate came up on your food sensitivity, or coffee came up on your food sensitivity. And they're like, uh, maybe I'm okay with this pain. You know, it's really, really interesting. So mindset would be one barrier potentially, but it also can be your greatest asset. And the next barrier is just hormones. So if your hormones are outta whack and you're dealing with optimizing your gut health like myself, I have a long history of thyroid issues. So, many, many years ago I started thyroid medication. My family, a lot of my family has thyroid issues. I wish, I would've known then what I know now about nutrition because I may have been able to avoid taking those hormones. But, they've been fantastic for me. So the other barrier is if you have an underlying hormonal issue, like thyroid that's not been diagnosed, that can be an impedance. So having somebody look at your hormones as a whole, whether it be thyroid, adrenals, estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, DHA. And how your body's processing those things can be really, really important as well, too. Sleep if you're not getting great sleep. Because of digestive issues potentially or because of hormone issues, that can be a barrier to recovering because sleep helps us with our recovery. So I would say those are the top three that I would say are the main things that we really need to look at to start with. And you know, it's so funny that you brought up the mind because when I started seeing doctors about my pain early on 20 some years ago, I had one doctor tell me, he says, attitude, mindset is the key to healing. I can give you any drug you want. I can send you to biofeedback, I can send you to acupuncture, physical therapy, anything. But if your mindset is not in the right place to where you honestly believe that you are going to be pain free, once you do this or do that, you're not going to be pain free. I can give you anything, everything, and you will constantly be in pain. Mm-hmm That's a great doctor to keep, cause not many doctors talk about mindset at all. They don't even consider that it's part of healing even though there's this, this thing called placebo, which we all know is fantastic. But they kind of poo poo that as, something. You know, that, is bad or that we shouldn't really look at. Whereas I think they should be studying the placebo responses because those are the people that are able to heal themselves from just believing that something's going to work. Mm-hmm Yeah. You know, and he said, if you're a person who's chronically depressed, then he says, I already know that no matter what I do, that patient's not gonna get better. Hmm. Because it has nothing to do with the injury or the root causes to where the pain, where we think the pain is coming from. The pain is more internal. Right Or mental. That's a vicious cycle, right? Because you know, people who are depressed tend to have more pain, but more pain kind of makes people depressed, right? So it's this vicious cycle. And if they do, that's another point that I didn't bring up earlier. If they do have a history of depression, anxiety, I immediately look at the gut. Because, I mean, there's thousands of research studies now supporting that gut brain connection and those lipopolysaccharides that I talked about before that can get through that leaky gut and into the system where they're not supposed to be. They've seen elevated levels of those lipopolysaccharides in the brain for those people who are depressed, who have depression, chronic depression, as well as anxiety. So we know there's that connection, and if we can work on the gut and optimize it, that can absolutely improve our mental health as well too. And do you find that when you start working on the gut, does that also reduce stress. You know, stress that we know we have, or some people may not even know they have. Right, so I differentiate stress between physiological stress, and emotional stress. They both interact and affect the body in a physiological way. But absolutely if we're able to optimize the gut health and we keep our the good bacteria happy and give them, and feed them what they need to thrive, then that's gonna decrease that inflammation that we talked about. It's gonna repair those tight junctions and it's absolutely going to decrease both, physiological stress. And then we need to take steps to address our emotional stress as well. So if we are putting ourself in an environment where we're overwhelmed, it's a negative environment, it's something that's really destructive for us. We have to then also remove ourself from the environment. It's kinda like if you had an injury and you kept on poking at the injury, it's never going to heal. If you keep putting yourself into an environment that is not great for you, and destructive to you, your mental health is going to suffer. So finding that environment, creating that environment that's right for you, and really believing that you from the inside out can create an environment that's, that's good for you as well. Instead of blaming everybody else around you, really find where you can, you know, take responsibility and accountability for where you are in your life and create the environment that you want to be in. Stacey, what can people expect to learn in your book, "The Pain Free Formula?" Oh boy, how much time do we have left? Basically breaking it down into two sections is how we're dealing with pain now, conventionally and why it doesn't work. Like, for example, taking NSAIDs, pain meds, things like that right away to address pain. Why that actually makes you hurt more. It actually makes you more sensitive to pain if you take them in the long run. So that's definitely something. We talk about what you can then do instead. So that's part two. We then go into what can you do instead of the conventional way if it's not working for you. How to avoid surgery if possible. Sometimes I'll, you know, refer people to a surgeon to take a look at things if things aren't progressing the way that they should. But for the vast majority of people, surgery is not the first option. My friend fell off a pier and shattered her arm in like 15 pieces. Surgery is her first option, right? But for somebody who has chronic pain, we don't necessarily wanna push them right through surgery, just give them NSAIDs or just give 'em cortisone injections and say, come back when it hurts again, versus being proactive and looking at the big picture. So we talk about what you can do instead if the conventional way of treating things is not working, or if you want an alternative to the conventional way of treating. When I hurt my knee at a wedding, you know, a few years ago, my knee popped while I was doing the polka with my son. It blew up like crazy balloon and I'm like, oh my God, thankfully I have SoftWave to work on this. So it only took me three treatments to be back to walking normally again. But I was curious about what that pop was, so I went to the surgeon just to take a look at it and thought I was gonna talk to a colleague about the different structures of my knee, what it could be. And she basically looked at the x-ray and said, you need a knee replacement. And I'm like, what? I just came here to find out what that pop was. She's like, look at your knee, it's full of arthritis. But I was really pleased I had that appointment because I hadn't seen an x-ray of my knee in probably 30, 40 years, and it was full of arthritis. But I was so excited, Carmen, because I didn't have any pain up until that point. So that just taught me that you can have arthritis, even severe arthritis, and not have any pain. So that, I learned a lot from that and that really inspired me to write the book because I was also irritated that this surgeon wouldn't even talk to me about, you know, possibly what that structure was. She's like, doesn't really matter, you basically, you know, don't have any meniscus left. You're full of arthritis. The only thing we can do is a knee replacement or a cortisone injection. And I said, no thanks. And she said, do you mind if I ask why. I was really trying to be a patient and not, you know, talk about research and all that. But I said, well, she asked. So, you know, I said, well there's, studies that show that cortisone injections actually contribute to the arthritis getting worse. So why would I wanna do that if I know that I already have arthritis in there? And she's like, oh, you'd have to have a hundred cortisone injections for that to happen. And I'm like, uh, that's completely not true. And that just made me like, I have to get more people understanding this about those conventional options. Not that they're always wrong, but if you want another option, if you want something that's gonna be more proactive than reactive, you wanna avoid joint replacement in the future if possible. You know, I would want to know this information before I make that decision to, inject something into my body, especially if it has a tendency to make it worse. Even if it's in two years, five years down the road. Yeah, and I think you brought up an important point here is that you said, I didn't know I had arthritis, had I not gotten this, diagnostic testing done. Right? But another thing that you were doing other than your diet is you kept moving. And I think that that's something when we, when we have pain, let's say the knee, we don't wanna walk three miles every day because it hurts. But what people need to understand is you need to move the joint. Because if you don't move it, yes it hurts, but once you get warmed up, the pain goes away. Mm-hmm. Because it's going to give you longevity. It's gonna allow you to keep moving. Yep. And we also talk about in the Pain Free Formula, how important motion is, right? So if you have like a new injury, let's say, and we'll go to chronic injury in a minute, but if you have a new injury and you keep walking the way that you did previously, you could potentially be really irritating that. So the biomechanics of how you're walking before the injury, worked fine for you, but after the injury, they may be irritating you and you may be compensating as a result of the pain, which then can contribute to another injury or irritation in another area, right. So looking at the biomechanics, and this is where as a physical therapist, I'm really passionate about how people are moving and educating them to just make some little tweaks in the way that they're moving or how they're stretching or how they're strengthening in order to get rid of that trigger. If I had a scratch in my hand and I kept on scratching it, it's not gonna go away. It's gonna stay red and puffy. Everybody understands that. So if I'm walking in a way that continues to, let's say, scratch the scratch or trigger the pain, it's not gonna go away until that's addressed. So that's really my first line is to look at how people are moving, get them to be moving more appropriately. And with less pain so they can still move even after they're injured. Now, if somebody has a chronic issue, that's where we start thinking about more holistic, but also biomechanics are also very important there too. Getting them to move differently and more optimally or efficiently for their system. That goes all the way down to the feet. You know I could have somebody who has knee pain or a pelvic health issue and I'm looking at their feet, how they're walking that affects their pelvis, that will affect their knee. I'm myself, after that knee injury, I developed plantar fascitis like a year later. And when I did a survey of a hundred women who had plantar fasciitis, 60% of them had had a previous injury within the, previous two years of developing plantar fasciitis. So I had to work on my hip, I had to work on my, calf stretches. I had to work on how I was walking. I'm still working on that today as a maintenance program to be able to make sure that my biomechanics aren't continually irritating my knee and other parts of my body. So thank you for bringing that up. As you can tell, I'm a little passionate about that. And it, you know, and a lot of times it's hard for us to, it's hard for us to walk and focus on our structure. You know, are we walking the way we're supposed to walk in order to keep our body in alignment? I don't know. I struggle with it sometimes. Yeah. And you don't have to be perfect. If sometimes I see somebody walking down the street and I wanna hand 'em my card and go, you're gonna need me someday, cause I don't understand how you are even upright at this point and moving forward. However, we're just talking about little tweaks, little changes, you know, a few degrees, different of motion. It goes such a long way to be able to get that person. So it's not about achieving perfection, it's about achieving the, the biomechanics that that particular person can do without significant struggle, so that they can then get stronger in that realm, and more flexible and more stable, so that they don't create more pain in the future. What advice would you give a person who feels stuck in their pain and just feels like it's just gonna get worse and I'm going to not be able to ever move. You know, that is such a common mindset, especially with chronic pain. So there's a couple things that we wanna look for there. Is if you've had pain for a while and it's just not getting better, no matter what you try, some of it you can look at, again, not necessarily mindset, but kind of mindset related. Is all pain that we have really is in the brain. So when somebody has chronic pain over a period of time, the brain actually changes. Again, that's proven in research. We see that over and over again. So what I do with my patients sometimes who are really struggling is I say, okay, I want you to think about in the past; when you know that you didn't have pain, I want you to think about whatever activity now, causes you pain. And if you can't picture yourself in the past without pain, even though you consciously know that you didn't have pain at that time, that's again, a signal that your belief system, how you're really looking at this pain, you're reinforcing those neural networks in your brain that are contributing to your being hypersensitive and overprotective of yourself. So we work on, okay, picturing yourself in the past, remembering that you didn't have pain. How did that feel? How does that feel in your body? Now, think of yourself in the future without pain. Can you picture yourself? That's a hard one. A lot of people are like; you know, they'll be sitting there and they're not doing the activity. But they're thinking about the activity and the pain starts to come on. That's when I know we need to do more work on retraining that brain. Cognitive behavioral therapy has been, shown to be successful with that. So seeing a therapist to help with that. But just mindfulness and meditation as well too. And working on just constantly, okay, I know that I can see myself without the pain in the future will significantly decrease that. And sometimes. If there's an emotional attachment to the pain or from an emotional event that when you think about, again, you start to hurt during you kind of reliving that emotional experience. You have that pain again, that cognitive behavioral therapy and other therapies out there, I personally use timeline therapy for myself to be able to separate yourself from that pain and learn from it, because that's what pain is. It's a signal to learn from, and then potentially you can let that go. So if you're out there and you're like, oh my gosh, nothing has worked, I would definitely encourage you to go look at somebody who has SoftWave in your area, to try to see if there's a provider that will help you see if it's just simply localized pain. But if not, then I would start to work on that mindset or mindfulness meditation, really seeing yourself without pain in the future. And you'll be surprised how difficult it is, to see yourself; to deliberately see yourself in the future or even the past without pain. If you can work on that with someone, it will significantly reduce the pain that you have. Hmm, and I'm just gonna ask this because I know that many people always think about this. Is SoftWave covered by insurance traditionally, normally. So there is a CPT code for it, and that you would think if there's a CPT code, then insurances should pay for it. But because there's so many different shockwave devices on the market and some aren't even truly shockwave, the outcomes for some of those devices are all over the place. So insurances look for an excuse not to cover something. So unfortunately it's not covered. So at this point in time, it's out of pocket. But I am working with SoftWave and have had them do a CPT code for men's health issue, erectile dysfunction. They've helped to pass that and get that through, and some of that is being reimbursed. So we're hopeful that if we can continue to create good research and outcomes to show that this type of shockwave SoftWave in particular works really well, that potentially there will be the CPT codes that are getting paid on it. But at this point right now, it's an out-of-pocket expense typically. Okay, because I know a lot of times people unfortunately will, if it's not covered by insurance, they won't pay for it themselves. Yeah, it, it's changing. I mean, I've seen from 20 years ago, a hundred percent absolutely, people wouldn't pay for it. It's starting to change cause people do massage therapy, they do acupuncture. Some of the chiropractic sometimes isn't covered, so they're starting to understand that things are beneficial. That you do have to pay out of pocket for some of those things that aren't covered by insurance. Some people have massive deductibles, right? So they'd have to pay for it anyway, right? Even if it's covered by insurance, they have this huge deductible. So times are changing and starting to understand as we're becoming more accountable for our own health. But it is, frustrating when you're paying insurance and it's not being covered. So it is frustrating for sure. Yeah. Yeah. Stacey, do you only treat people locally or do you treat people online as well? So I do telehealth, especially for the functional medicine parts of things like the gut health that we were talking about, hormone health that we're talking about. Anybody who needs SoftWave will come to my clinic, so those patients will be local. But I can always connect patients with somebody in their area that has SoftWave or something similar. If I know, obviously if there's somebody in that area or of course I didn't have SoftWave forever, you know, until like five years ago. So I can help patients, you know, with pain via telehealth as well too, without putting my hands on them, or at least coach them to say, okay, this is what you should be asking your physical therapist. This is the type of physical therapist you should look for, or a chiropractor or acupuncturist or physician. You know, what hormone levels should we be checking? What should we be doing in regards to your gut health? So yes, that was a long answer to, yes, I do do telehealth as well. Okay, yeah. And I think that this is an important thing to point out, cause I remember earlier you had said that there are some fake SoftWave machines Fake shockwave machines. Yep. Mm-hmm. Yeah, so connecting with you might be the key because like let's say I live in California, if I wanted to find a provider here in California, I think contacting you, you would be able to have more resources as to who really has this particular device I'm seeking. Absolutely. And on the SoftWave device, and I'll give you this, URL as well too, to put in the show notes, they do have a provider search. So on the SoftWavetrt.com site, it says provider search. So you can find somebody in your area. And then I can help you go ahead and find that person and then talk to them in a way that, hey, this is the problem. How are we gonna treat it? I train people on how to utilize SoftWave in their clinics all around the country. I've trained the professional sports teams, you know, down to the single person running their own clinic. So, I have a really good grasp of that and I teach courses about shockwave around the country as well too. Because I'm so passionate about it, it's really a game changer in the you know three plus decades of my experience. The last five years has been just so amazing about how quickly people get better with software. Like before plantar fasciitis, like I mentioned, I think I'm pretty good as a PT, and 12 to 14 visits is what they would get better in. Now they're getting better in three to six. So it just really accelerates the healing when it's used correctly. That's amazing. Mm-hmm. I mean, it sounds, it's al sounds too good to be true. It totally does, and that's why I was so skeptical about it. I was a hundred percent skeptical. I really didn't think it was gonna work. But then I observed it working and then when I observed that kind of biofeedback that it gives; I'll give you an example real quick. My really good friend of mine wanted me to go with her I talked about the story in the Pain Free Formula. Wanted me to go with her cause she found this device, about an hour and a half away. We got the guy to bring it in town. I'm like, I'm coming for the free lunch and the snacks, right. I'm sitting there and she usually had pain when she raised her arm up in the back of her head, like if she slept on it wrong. Cause I've worked with her many, many years on strength and stability. So overall she was pretty good except for that pain. Well, he put that applicator that I was talking about before over her shoulder without her moving and it found the source of the pain. It helped, well, it didn't find it. The wave went over it and my friend was able to give feedback to say, that's it, that's the source. I've never seen that with anything else. So I was really, really interested. And after that treatment, she raised her arm and she goes. It's gone. And I'm like, okay, it'll come back in, you know, two or three days. But for her, it didn't, it was two years before I had to treat her again for her shoulder. So, if anybody's skeptical about it, I was absolutely too, and I completely understand if you are. But most places that have SoftWave give a trial so that when you come in to see me, I say, look, I want to do this trial so that I know that you're a good candidate. I don't want you to spend money on something that neither you or I are very confident in. So usually that patient should experience significant relief that first time. And you were looking at it from a different perspective, you were looking at it from a professional perspective that this is a person selling snake oil and I'm not buying it. Exactly a hundred per 1000%. Cause I can't tell you how many other devices I've seen or been presented to over the years, and none of them ever move the needle. And I can say that honestly, none of them move the needle like software has. And I use it now in 90% of my patients. So that's a huge testimony to this technology. Because, I just relied on my hands before and people did really well, in very few modalities. Now, SoftWave helps me distinguish what I'm treating. It enhances my hands on therapy and the exercise that patients do. And it's a really beneficial treatment, and that's why I feel good about it. Even if the patient has paid out of pocket, I know they're gonna cut down the number of visits that they would normally have by at least half, if not more. Mm-hmm. Stacey for the listener or viewer who was watching right now and says, I just don't know how long I can continue to live with this pain. What are three pieces of advice that you would give them? To give them hope. Number one, don't give up. Keep looking, right. Use the resources we've talked about in here to try to investigate. Hopefully you've got now, maybe you didn't think about your gut health before. Maybe you didn't think about hormones before. Maybe you've never heard of SoftWave, so hopefully that's given you some hope to do more research and be accountable, right? Be accountable for your own health. And your research towards it. So understanding, connecting with people like me, other experts that can help you, give you the right questions to ask your providers, things like that. And then truly work on your mindset and understand that pain doesn't have to be a life sentence. I want you to experience pain because it's a message. It tells you it's trying to protect you. But the kind of pain that you're having in the long term, I don't want that to control your life. So my idea of a pain free life is something where we'd have pain occasionally. It tells us a message, tells us what to do, and how to change our lifestyle, but not something that affects your activity. So if you're dealing with the pain, definitely look into the areas that we talked about today, on the program. And then truly keep yourself in that mindset of I can feel better in the future. And if you do have a good day, acknowledge that you have a good day. A lot of times people are like, oh, my pain's less so I still have it, so it's not any better if your pain's less celebrate that, right. Really celebrate it and utilize that and be open. I'm sorry, this is probably more than three things, but be open to different things that are out there, like what we've talked about today on the program. Yeah. And that, that's exactly what I do because I'm like, you know what I still got a long life to live. I have a long life to live and I wanna live it to the best of my ability. I'll try anything. You and me both, girl, I'm right with you. Without taking drugs. Minimizing. Yeah. I'm like, I'm against them, but I'm against people taking them if they're gonna make them worse and they don't know that. So I want everybody to be educated so they can make their own decision and minimize the amount that we need if you need them at all. Stacey, thank you so much for coming on the show. I will include all your information in the show notes. How to get your book, how to get in contact with you, information about, SoftWave. Correct. Yep. Mm-hmm. So that people know that hey, there, there's hope out there. Absolutely. Absolutely. Oh, thank you. We really appreciate you. Alright. Thank you. I don't know about you, but I think it's time for me to get my own food sensitivity test. Who knew that in Stacey's case, spinach was the sneaky culprit behind her chronic pain? Huge thanks to Stacey Roberts for sharing these eye-opening, insights. If you're ready to dig deeper, grab a copy of Stacey's bestselling book,

"The Pain Free Formula:

Solving The Puzzle of Muscle and Joint Pain Without Surgery, Drugs, or Injections." You'll find the link below in the show notes. And if you wanna connect with Stacey or learn more about tackling pain without drugs or surgery, head on over to createthebestme.com/ep133. Be sure to join me next week because I've got another amazing episode lined up just for you. And don't forget to hit the like button, and since you're there, don't forget to hit subscribe. Until then, keep dreaming big. Take care of yourself. And remember, you are beautiful, strong, and capable of creating the best version of yourself. Thank you for watching. Catch you next week. Bye for now.