Podiatrist Explains Women’s Chronic Pain and Dr. Janet Travell

Here is an important article about Pain in Women, Dr. Travell and the Morton’s Toe,

A joint analysis and policy recommendations report by the Campaign to End Chronic Pain in Women and the Overlapping Conditions Alliance entitled Women: Neglect, Dismissal and Discrimination states that 50 million women suffer chronic pain, reporting more frequent, severe and enduring physical pain than men http://www.endwomenspain.org).

Women’s pain is also taken less seriously than men by medical professionals; their pain is frequently attributed to “emotional, psychogenic, hysterical, and oversensitive” factors. Therefore, women’s complaints of pain can be dismissed as a mental health issue and anti-depressants or anti-anxiety medications can be prescribed– while real physical causes and symptoms go untreated.

In For Her Own Good: Two Hundred Years of the Experts’ Advice to Women, authors Barbara Ehrenreich and Deidre English explain that the dismissal of women’s medical complaints as “hysteric” has unpleasant historical roots in medical research that focused on men’s bodies as the norm, therefore ignoring women’s unique physical ailments and perpetuating the idea that female complaints are byproducts of overactive imaginations

http://www.powells.com/biblio/1-9781400078004-0).

In the past four decades, thanks to the women’s health movement who published such seminal works as Our Bodies, Ourselves http://www.ourbodiesourselves.org), progress has occurred for women’s health issues, but this report reminds us there is room for improvement when it comes to understanding women’s “painful” medical experiences.

In fact, is it a surprise that it was a female physician who was most astutely focused on pain research in the mid twentieth century? In addition to her prominency as a White House physician (and the first female physician in the White House) for both Presidents Kennedy who described her as a “genius”) and Johnson, Dr. Janet Travell made a great contribution to the study of pain “Myofascial Pain Syndrome” (MPS)–muscle pain that can occur in many places due to pain trigger points throughout the body. In Why You Really Hurt: It All Starts in the Foot, Dr. Burton S. Schuler describes Travell’s research on pain as highly relevant for various physical conditions today http://whyyoureallyhurt.com/resources/dr-janet-travell/).

Myofascial Pain Syndrome (MPS) symptoms are nearly identical to another chronic and frequently misdiagnosed condition: Fibromyalgia Compare Travell’s description of muscle spasms, sleep disorders, motion limitations, depression, sleep disturbances, and circulation changes–as listed in Why You Really Hurt–to the report’s definition of Fibromyalgia as a “chronic condition characterized by widespread soft tissue pain as well as accompanying comorbidities, such as disturbed sleep, fatigue and cognitive difficulties”. http://whyyoureallyhurt.com/resources/dr-janet-travell/).

A recent Psychology Today article “Myofascial Pain Syndrome vs. Fibromyalgia,” states that it is more medically correct to refer to localized or regional pain as myofascial pain

http://www.psychologytoday.com/print/3136).

In the article, Dr. Mark Borigini states that trauma is a common cause of MPS (such as whiplash or muscle aches from repetitive use of certain muscle groups), and this is different than when one experiences pain somewhere in the body that is not related to a known trauma event. MPS is a much more common diagnosis than FM, and so Dr. Janet Travell’s groundbreaking research is highly relevant for many chronic pain sufferers today

In the 1920’s and 1930″s Dr. Dudley J. Morton of Yale Medical School and Columbia Medical School wrote that a problem with the 1st metatarsal bone, known as a Morton’s Toe could be the reason for most foot problems. Dr. Janet Travel, White House physician to Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, and Professor Emeritus of Medicine at George Washington University took this concept further by writing and teaching that the Morton’s Toe could cause pain all over your body. She wrote and taught for four decades that a Morton’s Toe could cause back, hip, knee, leg foot and ankles problems. She felt that the Morton’s Toe, was so important that at the age of 89 she made a video tape to teach other physicians about how to recognize it and how to treat it.

Why You Really Hurt: It All Starts in the Foot, tells the story of these two famous physicians and their association with the common, but painful, medical condition known as the Morton’s Toe. Millions of people suffer everyday with chronic aches and pains from head to toe and don’t know why. Many of them have lost all hope, and believe they will have to live with these pains for the rest of their lives. The book is significant because for the first time in seventy years the public is made aware of the importance of the Morton’s Toe (Long Second Toe) , and the fact that could be the real unidentified reason (the “medical missing link”) for their unending torments. This book will also show how Morton’s Toe can also cause fibromyalgia, arthritis, sleep disturbances (RLS), temporomandibular joint pain, and numerous other problems through out the body The good news is that all of these problems can be treated with a simple pad that costs about two to three dollars. The bad news is that in spite of the fact that two of the most famous doctors of the twentieth century were behind the Morton’s Toe, most modern day physicians are not aware of Morton’s Toe or of it ability of causing pain all over the body. This book took six years to research and write, but Dr. Schuler feels it was worth it because it should be able to help many people get out of pain. The book is disturbed national by the Cardinal Publishing Group. It will be translated to Greek this Year.