Las Vegas Doctor Touts Treating Chronic Pain Without Drugs

Dr. Mel Pohl, local doctor and addiction specialist, told KNPR’s State of Nevada he has a different approach to tackling pain.

“There is no pill to really treat chronic pain,” Pohl said. He said for acute pain like headaches or incision pain from surgery opioids can work fine but used over a long period of time they cause more problems than they solve.

“Folks who have lifelong pain tend to develop this whole symptom complex and opioids really aren’t a good treatment because they don’t deal with the entirety of the problem,” Pohl said.

One of the problems is the body starts to tolerate the opioids and higher and higher doses of the drugs are needed to tackle the pain.

“They tend to backfire in a great many cases,” the doctor said.