Why Chronic Pain Treatments Fail: Finding the Root Cause with Dr. Sean Altman

Why do so many chronic pain treatments provide temporary relief, only for the pain to return?

In this episode of Beyond The Pain, Leigh Brandon speaks with Dr. Sean Altman about why persistent pain often requires a much broader approach than simply treating the area that hurts.

After experiencing multiple injuries as a competitive ice hockey player—including concussions, migraines, vertigo and brain fog—Dr. Altman discovered the limitations of treating symptoms in isolation. His search for more complete answers led him to develop an approach he calls orthopedic functional medicine, combining traditional orthopedic care with functional medicine principles.

Sean explains why the painful area is not necessarily where the problem began, how weaknesses or imbalances elsewhere in the body can contribute to injury, and why the nervous system may continue generating or amplifying pain after the original tissues have healed.

You’ll discover:

• Why chronic pain treatments sometimes deliver only temporary relief
• What orthopedic functional medicine means
• Why the location of pain may not reveal its underlying cause
• How different systems within the body influence one another
• How chronic pain can change the nervous system
• The role of neuromodulation, biofeedback and frequency-specific microcurrent
• How manual therapy, laser therapy and shockwave therapy may support recovery
• Why treatment must be personalised to create more durable results
• What practitioners and patients can do to reduce the likelihood of pain returning

If you have tried multiple treatments without achieving lasting relief, this conversation may help you understand why—and show you a different way of approaching recovery.

Listen now to discover why lasting change may require treating the whole person, not simply the painful body part.

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