Aivo Health

03/21/2023

Nancy Becher is a patient advocate and community leader. Her own journey with chronic pain started with a car accident. With her lived experience combined with her Masters in counselling and PhD in sociology she is providing a much needed space for peer support through the community she is building. In this podcast episode she dives into the need and importance of finding health care professionals who will actually listen to their patients, and the importance of communities.

Did you know that you can be diagnosed without a scan or other tests revealing anything to be wrong? Did you know that there's science available to determine the diagnosis without symptoms that can be tested? I know that's a huge statement, but there are times where doctors diagnose patients with "d...

03/16/2023

If your brain is constantly processing acute sensory information, like pain for instance, your brain is not open to detect new potential threats or other input from your environment. So with time, if pain becomes chronic, other regions take over the responsibility of that pain perception, freeing up capacity to process new sensory information. These other regions are in the subcortex where we also process emotions and memories. In this way, chronic pain is a kind of emotional memory. What is important to keep in mind, is that the brain is always changing. This means that by challenging ourselves with new information and experiences, our brains can change out of a chronic pain state.

This and more in this podcast episode where Dr. Melissa Farmer is a guest on Dr. David Hanscom's show.

In this episode, Dr. David Hanscom talks with pain psychologist, neuroscientist and co-founder of Aivo Health, Melissa Farmer. Or eight years, she has worked with world-renowned neuroscientist Dr. Vania Apkarian on how our brains process chronic pain. She shares the important discoveries resulting f...

03/03/2023

How do you handle pain flares?

When pain is intense, the body responds best to self-soothing strategies that calm the nervous system and create feelings of safety.

Pain flares encourage the fight-or-flight response in the nervous system, which means the brain has limited ability to learn new coping skills and take in ne...

03/02/2023

Patient perspective: Some surprises that you might meet on the road to recovery.

Healing your brain from limbic system impairment which can often include: chronic fatigue, chronic illness, chronic pain, fibromyalgia, anxiety disorder, PTS...

03/01/2023

Personalized treatments that focus on all the aspects of the pain experience - emotions, thoughts, sensations, movement, and feelings of safety - are the most effective way to reshape an individual's unique pain memories.

In this video, Dr. Melissa Farmer, CEO & co-founder of Aivo, provides an in-depth answer to one of the most frequently asked questions that we hear from peop...

02/28/2023

Dr. Vania Apkarian, Aivo co-founder and Chief Science Officer, gives a highly insightful talk on chronic pain, the predictability of it, and potential new treatments for it while visiting Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy Syndrome Association (RSDSA) Facebook Live.

The past 35 years of Dr. Apkarian’s life have been devoted to unravelling brain mechanisms that underlie acute and chronic pain, and more generally how the b...

02/27/2023

Change happens gradually. Check out our workbook to figure out at what stage of readiness for change you are at and how to leverage that to get the most out of a pain management program.

Have you ever wondered why building new habits or making any sort of behavioral change is so difficult? It has nothing to do with you being lazy, lacking willpower or not being “good enough”. It’s just because you are human. There is always a level of ambivalence involved in making changes: a ...

02/17/2023

This is your opportunity to give Aivo a try, free of charge for 12 weeks.

Aivo Health provides help to anyone experiencing persistent low back pain. Our approach is based on years of academic research and provides personal programs via our excellent App.

02/15/2023

Here are some very useful tips on how to deal with pain flares, and how to make the most of your pain management efforts.

Pain flares encourage the fight-or-flight response in the nervous system, which means the brain has limited ability to learn new coping skills and take in ne...

02/14/2023

Let's spread some love and kindness today!

Here's a guided meditation for just that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CUDiXPdToPs

02/06/2023

CJ’s inspiring progress shows that relief doesn’t happen overnight. It happens in stages, by learning new ways of understanding pain and by exploring new ways to move, rest, recuperate, and focus on your own needs.

When CJ joined the Aivo research study, she had not tried brain-based strategies for managing chronic pain. As she was given the space to explore different aspects of the mind-body approach in the Aivo app, our team witnessed an inspiring transformation in her pain and sleep.