Speaker 1: 6:14, this is 1320 WILS. If you’ve been watching the Olympics, besides Michael Phelps winning yet more gold medals, you’ve noticed he’s got these big marks all over his body. This is due to this ancient practice of therapy known as cupping. My next guest, Dr. John Michels, here to tell us if it actually works. He’s a pain doctor, actually a Super Bowl champion.
Speaker 1: Dr. Michels, great to have you on WILS.
Dr. J Michels: Thank you for having me on tonight.
Speaker 1: Just clearly to talk about you, so you won the Super Bowl with the Green Bay Packers, then you injured your knee, and that eventually led to the end of your career. How frustrating was that for you?
Dr. J Michels: Well, losing your dreams and your passions to an injury it was devastating for me, but it’s what’s inspired this next career in my life. I said, “You know what, if I can keep that from happening to someone else that’s a life well lived,” so I always joke with my patients that I spent the first half of my life inflicting as much pain as I could, now, I’ve dedicated the second half of my life trying to cure it.
Speaker 1: As you’re trying to deal, though, with the pain were there points for you thought you were going to be able to overcome it, and then it just didn’t work? How did it go for you?
Dr. J Michels: I had taken a big chunk of bone off of my knee, I’ve had six reconstructive surgeries, I’ve gone through extensive rehabilitation. I tried everything under the sun, and couldn’t run again, I couldn’t run pain-free. Every time I took a forceful step on my right leg it shot a lightning rod right up my knee, so that was the answer that I was looking for was I’ve done everything that I could, I’ve tried multiple surgeries, I’ve done every type of rehabilitation that I could try, and the writing’s on the wall, I can’t play this game anymore.
Speaker 1: Did you try these Eastern medicine approaches?
Dr. J Michels: I did acupuncture, I did some chiropractic work, I’ve done some of the Thai massage-
Speaker 1: Did any of that help, or …?
Dr. J Michels: Nothing got me back to the point where I could play again, and that was really the litmus test was can I get back on the field and play at the level I wanted to play?
Speaker 1: How’s your knee doing nowadays, then?
Dr. J Michels: I don’t mess with it, so it doesn’t mess with me. I had to change the way I exercise. I took up surfing in my 30s, I actually took up snowboarding a couple years ago. Oddly enough, because the weight’s on my left leg when I snowboard, it doesn’t bother me. I found new ways to stay active and had a lot of fun doing so. That’s what it takes, is just adaptation when you have an injury like I’ve had.
Speaker 1: The pain doctor, Dr. John Michels, former Super Bowl champion. Michael Phelps says he uses this cupping technique to relieve muscle soreness and pain, it leaves these big round marks. How effective is it really, then?
Dr. J Michels: In Eastern medicine they’ve been doing it for thousands of years. In fact, the earliest literature dates back to 1550 BC discussing the techniques of cupping, so there is some efficacy that’s lasted throughout the centuries and millennia. However, in Western medicine we don’t have any hard literature that truly defines whether it’s successful or not-
Speaker 1: Is it clear what it does? It leaves these big round circle, what is it actually doing, this cupping?
Dr. J Michels: The thought is by providing the suction through the cup you’re drawing blood to the surface of the body, and that blood is carrying healing nutrients, so you’re bringing it in a rush of healing nutrients to the areas that need to recover, or need to heal from an injury. Michael Phelps is doing it, basically, trying to more rapidly recover in between events, so that he can perform at peak levels when he’s called to.
Speaker 1: Do you think it has an actual effect, then?
Dr. J Michels: Like I said, from a Western medicine point of view we haven’t seen much more than a placebo effect, but the reason it’s difficult to study is because technically we’re going to do a double-blinded study to test a treatment like this. Now, what you do is you put a patient through an actual treatment, and then another patient through a sham treatment, and you compare the outcome.
Speaker 1: There’s never been this kind of a study, you’re saying, on cupping?
Dr. J Michels: It’s pretty difficult because, like you see, those welts on Michael Phelps’ back, a patient’s going to know pretty quickly whether or not they’ve had this therapy. We haven’t come up with quite a good design model to be able to effectively study that. Now, that being said, there are over 600 studies in PubMed Literature, but the point there’s no clear definitive answer as to whether this is really effective or not.
Speaker 1: It seems like when you’re in pain you’ll do literally anything to make it stop. In the work you do, then, other than medication what’s the most effective approach to dealing with pain?
Dr. J Michels: It’s really taking a -multidisciplinary approach, and not all pain is the same. The first thing to do is to figure out what the source of the pain is because if there is something structurally wrong, say someone breaks their arm, the best way to treat that pain is reset that fracture, and give it time to heal. There are varying degrees of pain whether it’s caused by nerve injuries, whether it’s chronic pain that’s lasting post a traumatic event then you have to figure out ways where’s this pain coming from, and let’s get right to the source of that pain and treat it. We use a multimodal approach, I use minimally invasive injections to treat nerves, and to treat the sources of pain. We also use things like physical therapy, and massage.
Speaker 1: What about pain killers, is there a problem with using those regularly?
Dr. J Michels: Absolutely. In fact, I think, we’ve gone down this route where we’ve seen opioids become an epidemic in this country. Last year more people died from opioid abuse and opioid overdose then from automobile accidents.
Speaker 1: Do you use those that all in your practice?
Dr. J Michels: I do, but for a short period of time. There is a time and place when someone has had an acute injury where those were designed to be very effective to minimize the amount of pain and enable them to function, but I try not to use them for long-term. Now, there are-
Speaker 1: Do you think that generally most injuries, no matter what they are, can be dealt with long term without pain medication?
Dr. J Michels: I think with the technology that we have at our disposal today most injuries can be treated without long-term opioid use, yes.
Speaker 1: People that turn to Eastern medicine and say, “Look, maybe the evidence is in there, but this is the path I want to go down,” what do you think of that approach, and do you work with them on that?
Dr. J Michels: I absolutely support that approach. I think we use everything at our disposal to minimize pain and maximize function. Obviously, things like acupuncture and cupping they’ve been around for thousands of years you would think that over those thousands of years if they truly didn’t work, or if they were completely ineffective for everybody who used them they would just disappear, but these modalities still exist, so there are people getting benefit from these. My wife swears by acupuncture. Now, I personally used it and it didn’t have the effect I wanted to see.
Speaker 1: In your patients, the percentage of them where their mind, the way their mind is working is a big part of why they’re in pain, what would you say that percentages?
Dr. J Michels: As far as chronic pain patients probably 85, 95% of those patients have some kind of psychological, or emotional component that exacerbates their pain. A lot of them deal with chronic anxiety states, or depression states. Now, you get into what came first, the chicken or the egg, is depression and the anxiety because of the pain or did it preexist the pain, but the two definitely exacerbate one another.
Speaker 1: It’s Dr. John Michels pain doctor, a real expert at this field. One of the reasons is he went through a lot of pain himself, former Super Bowl champion. Dr. Michels, thank you very much.
Dr. J Michaels: Appreciate you having me on. Take care.
