As a chronic pain naturopath in London, I start with functional testing to understand what’s actually driving your specific pain, rather than a generic protocol.. Chronic pain affects millions of people, caused by injury, illness, inflammation, or a combination that’s built up over months or years.
Pain that doesn’t show up on a scan carries its own particular burden, having to justify it to people who look at you and see nothing wrong. Cancelled plans, jobs that become harder to sustain, relationships strained by a version of you that’s more withdrawn or more irritable than you’d like to be. The isolation of chronic pain is often as hard to carry as the pain itself.
Pain that doesn’t show up on a scan carries its own particular burden, having to justify it to people who look at you and see nothing wrong. Cancelled plans, jobs that become harder to sustain, relationships strained by a version of you that’s more withdrawn or more irritable than you’d like to be. The isolation of chronic pain is often as hard to carry as the pain itself.
What the evidence actually points to
Pain and imaging findings often don’t match
Pain severity in conditions like knee osteoarthritis and chronic low back pain frequently doesn’t correlate with what shows up on an MRI or X-ray. This isn’t a sign the pain is imagined, it’s central sensitisation, where the nervous system itself amplifies pain signals, sometimes independently of ongoing tissue damage. This matters clinically, it explains why some people with severe scan findings have little pain, and others with a clean scan are in genuine daily pain.
Central sensitisation predicts who does and doesn’t respond to standard treatment
Patients with higher central sensitisation scores consistently show poorer outcomes from injections, surgery and standard pain management, even for the same underlying joint condition. This is exactly why treating the nervous system alongside the joint or tissue itself changes outcomes.
Nutritional deficiencies and inflammatory diet worsen pain directly
An inflammatory diet, unresolved nutritional deficiencies, and psychological load such as stress and depression all drive or worsen chronic pain, often several factors acting together rather than one clean cause.
How I work with chronic pain
I start with thorough assessment and targeted functional testing to understand what’s actually driving your case, nutritional, inflammatory, structural, or nervous system sensitisation, then build a plan that may include dietary changes, herbal medicine, hyperbaric oxygen therapy, frequency specific microcurrent, red light therapy or ear acupuncture. Where medication is part of your picture, any change to it goes through your prescriber, not through this work.
If this sounds like where you are, apply for a 15 minute consultation, in person or online, and let’s work out the best way forward.
