Pain Management and You
Pain is one of the most common reasons people seek medical care—but what actually causes pain, and when should you seek treatment?
Two Mount Sinai experts—Drs. Tanvir Choudrhi and Houman Danesh—discuss how physicians diagnose and treat pain, particularly neck and back pain that originates in the spine. Together, they break down:
- Why pain is often more complex than it seems
- How signals travel between the body and brain
- Why identifying the root cause is key to effective treatment.
To learn more about pain management or spine care at Mount Sinai Health System, or to schedule an appointment with a specialist, visit Mount Sinai’s website: https://www.mountsinai.org/
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Dr. Houman Danesh
That’s a good topic, what causes pain? And I think that is a topic that's up for debate, believe it or not. So it's not like pain is not you touch a hot stove, you take your hand back. That's a reflex which is also painful. But pain is a complex system where hundreds of thousands of signals are going up to the brain, and hundreds of thousands of signals are coming down from the brain.
Dr. Houman Danesh
So how do you know which one to pay attention to? If you're in the Final Four playing basketball and you sprain your ankle, you're not paying attention to that ankle sprain. You're on adrenaline. You you have a goal. You're pushing past that pain. But the same signals is there, the same hot stove is there. So you're able to suppress pain.
Dr. Houman Danesh
And so part of this is understanding the complex mechanism between signals going up and down your brain to help you deal with pain.
Leslie Schlacter
Hello and welcome back to the vitals. The Mount Sinai Health System's groundbreaking roundtable video podcast. I'm your host, Leslie Schachter, a neurosurgery physician assistant here at the Mount Sinai Hospital. And this episode will delve into a subject that most of us, unfortunately, can relate to pain. And I am one of them. I'm joined by two Mount Sinai doctors in this field pain management specialist Doctor Hooman Danish and neurosurgeon Doctor Tanveer Chowdhry.
Leslie Schlacter
Gentlemen, welcome. We're here talking about pain. There's a million different reasons why people come to see you for pain. But generally, people are coming to you for, like, spine pain. Right. Yep. Okay. So hopefully the goal is to do noninvasive things first with a pain management doctor. And if they ultimately need surgery, they see a neurosurgeon. Right. That's correct.
Leslie Schlacter
All right. So what I like the most common reasons you see people for pain.
Dr. Houman Danesh
Most commonly neck pain, migraines back pain facial pain and then slew of shoulder knee back everything else too.