Adam Torres and Anju Madnani discuss chronic pain.
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Show Notes:
Chronic pain can be debilitating for many. In this episode, Adam Torres and Anju Madnani, MD, Vice President & Medical Director at Injury Pain MD and Aesthetics, explore Anju’s journey and her medical practice.
About Anju Madnani
Dr. Anju S. Madnani is a board-certified anesthesiologist with additional certifications in anesthesia pain care, currently practicing with her husband, Dr. Sanjay Madnani, at Oxford Valley Pain & Spine Center since April 2008. Previously, Dr. Madnani practiced at Southern Pain Consultants in Mississippi and was a Clinical Assistant Professor at LSU Medical Center. She is licensed in Pennsylvania and trained at the Havard Medical School in Acupuncture.
Dr. Madnani received her medical degree from Lady Hardinge Medical College in India, before coming to the US and completing her residency training in Pediatrics at the University of Mississippi Medical Center, as well as additional training in Anesthesia at Wayne State University. Dr. Madnani also completed a fellowship in Pain Management at LSU Medical Center, for which she received the Pfizer Scholars Award.
Full Unedited Transcript
Hey, I’d like to welcome you to another episode of Mission Matters. My name is Adam Torres, and if you’d like to apply to be a guest on the show, just head on over to missionmatters. com and click on be our guest to apply. All right. So today’s guest is Dr. Anju Madnani, and she is vice president and medical director at Injury, Pain, MD, and Aesthetics.
Andrew, welcome to the show. Thank you. Good morning, Adam and our guests. I feel so honored Oh, well, well, it’s great to have you here. And we got a lot to talk about today. So we’ll talk about treating and managing chronic pain. , maybe talk about fibromyalgia a little bit and how you’re helping with that.
And I think just to get us kicked off, you were introduced to us by Juliana over at the SRQ women’s expo. So talk to me a little bit about that. You’re going to the expo. Yeah. Yes, I’m so excited about this women’s expo. This is our first time in Sarasota to attend this show. We are originally from Pennsylvania, but I do come to Sarasota quite often because I do see patients here and I love beach town here.
Juliana is wonderful and I think I heard about them from from the email. And as soon as I saw that email, I said, yes, I’m coming. And I’m very excited to be there on Sunday. Yes. Oh, that’s wonderful. And getting into, I guess, going further into your, background as a doctor, when did you, like, how did this come about where you decided that you were going to go into treating and helping pain management?
Like where did that come from? So basically the pain management thing came from when I was doing my anesthesia residency. That was in , Wayne State University in Detroit. And we do pain, chronic pain rotation there. When I did that rotation, I saw that patients and I said, Oh my God, they, they do need help.
They basically, they want someone who can listen to them and then they do the comprehensive treatment plan. It’s not like, , doing, whether you see them just do injection right away now. So basically I like that part and we treat them like, , we, tailor the treatment approach for them.
It’s an individualized treatment. So one treatment doesn’t fit all. And I, and also the chat, this was a very challenging part and I love to take challenges. And that’s how I decided that I’m going to do chronic pain management. You said you went to Wayne state. You’re not from Michigan. Are you? No. No, I’m not.
I am. So I grew up, I know, I know Wayne State. I went to high school downtown. Yep. At Cass Tech. So I was I was over and hanging out at Wayne State all the time. So I was like, Oh, Wayne State. I’ve heard that name in a while. Yeah. And they had very busy hospitals there, like, , Detroit Medical Center, Sinai Grace.
So we did rotation at all those hospitals. Really, really good training. Amazing. So I want to, I kind of want to go further into this concept of pain management. Maybe can you talk, talk a little bit more about your practice and what I guess differentiates you from maybe some other, other clinics?
Like I know, I know first off it’s a husband and wife, or should I say wife and husband team? Like, like talk to me about that. Woman empowerment. I love that. There you go. Yeah. So my name is, and me and my husband, So we both are anesthesia pain fellowship trained and both certified in international pain management.
We have been practicing together, which is kind of fun part, right? Practicing together. Yeah, that’s what I was thinking about. You didn’t happen to meet at Wayne State, right? I don’t know. I just had to throw it out there. No, no, no. It didn’t happen that way. That’s like a long time ago. That magic happened.
30 years ago and believe it or not, we got married in 10 days, literally 10 days. We did it only two times and we decided we’re going to get married quickly. Wow. That’s amazing. Wait, where did you meet? I’m so curious. Yeah, it happened to be in India. Yeah. My husband was here. He came there. We met through a common friend and we dated two times only.
Then he proposed me and then, , we just got married in 10 days. Wow. It was quick. And we have two children and they are like all grown up. My son is going to Harvard Medical School pretty soon. Amazing. And wait, did , did at this time when you met, were like, were you, that you were both going to be doctors and all of this was already kind of known.
We both were doctors. We both were doctors. Okay. Were. Okay. We were. Yes. You were already in. So we decided. Oh, that’s amazing. You were like, okay. Okay. I love this. Great. This is a great story. All right. So continuing on, on, on to the to the practice husband and wife team. Go ahead. So we, Oh, actually I said about my son, let me tell about my daughter.
So she’s a law student, second year law student at Columbia. So I didn’t want to miss that too. I said, okay, for both of us. So definitely not the brightest kids, right? Harvard and Columbia, not the, yeah, it’s okay. You can blame it on the husband, right? No, that side of the family. I know in my household, that’s what my parents do.
They’re like, that’s your side of the family. So we have been practicing in Pennsylvania for some time, like almost 30 years. And then we decided that, , we’re going to, we have to move to Florida. And that’s why I wanted to start it, start practice here too. The name of the practice is injury pain, MD and aesthetic.
So we have been treating these chronic pain patients for a long time. And the, their pain, especially like. Injury patients, when they get in an accident, , it’s not only one thing which causes pain. They also have trauma from the accident. So that emotional component, then the depression. So their pain comes from like multiple structures.
They can be disc, a nerve , the other tissues and also the depression. So we basically try to do like evaluate them. I’m a very good historian and like. Kind of listen to the patients very well. And that’s how I just said, I said earlier too. So we treat our patients like very individual approach.
So we see where the pain is coming from and we do comprehensive approach, which includes like chiropractic treatment, medications, injections, psychotherapy, acupuncture, massage therapy. So that kind of helps them. Yeah. and this one’s in Florida. So you’re probably, you said some of the patients that you’ve been treating, you’ve been treating for a long time.
So I’m guessing like, especially with people retiring down there, right? To Florida. Florida practice is new. It’s only one year old, but in Pennsylvania we have been there for quite a while. Like, pretty long time. And here we are. So it’s basically as the name suggests, it’s injury, pain, MD and aesthetics.
And the aesthetics part was because chronic pain patients, other than pain, they also they cannot do their normal activities because of chronic pain. So they’re depressed, right? So they need something relaxing. So that’s why I started this aesthetic spot too. So when they come to our door, they have other options to do too, which can relax them.
, it can be massage therapy, acupuncture, facials. So it’s like, , they don’t have to go to different places to get those things. So that’s why I decided to do it together for them. Oh, that’s so interesting. And I guess , since we’re talking a bit about the Women’s Expo today, maybe let’s get into fibromyalgia a little bit and, and maybe how you’re treating that, because I know it’s very more, a little bit more common in women.
So talk to me about that a bit. Can I say something else too, about the injury patients? Absolutely. So I just wanted to say that, , for auto injury patients, we also work with their attorneys too, because these patients, they wait. long time for their treatment sometimes. So they reworked with their attorneys so they can get appropriate treatment and try to get back to their normal life.
So fibromyalgia is I think everybody knows about fibromyalgia. It’s a, Say it’s very, very confusing for some people. It used to be in the past that, , it was a made up thing and all this, but we all know now it’s a proven thing. And it was mentioned in 1990. And if you look at the word fibro means connective tissue and myalgia, myo means muscle and algae means tissue.
pain. So these people they suffer from pain, tenderness, a stiffening of the muscles and connective tissue. Unfortunately, women are seven to 10 times more prone to develop fibromyalgia than men. , so they have like a fatigue all the time, they have different disorders, it can be depression, they are like tired all the time, they are suffering, and also because of fibromyalgia, some people don’t even think about other pain in them.
They can have spine pain, they can have knee pain, they can have arthritis, but some people just think, oh, it’s all coming from fibromyalgia, that’s not right. So, even though they have fibromyalgia, providers are saying, supposed to get their knee accident. They’re supposed to get their spine MRI and see if they have anything else which needs to be treated other than fibromyalgia.
So because we had treated fibromyalgia for a long time, we also have fibromyalgia support group in Pennsylvania. So all these people they talked and , we kind of educated other providers to yet, , don’t miss other things because of fibromyalgia. But the reason for fibromyalgia, nobody knows exactly what causes fibromyalgia, but it can be like 50 percent environmental factors, which include they can be childhood trauma, they can be viral illness, they can be long surgery, pregnancy, anything which is high stress.
can cause fibromyalgia. And then 50 percent genetics too. So if some people like, , their mom has fibromyalgia, grandmom had, they have, they’re more prone to get fibromyalgia. So it’s like, , it’s, it’s a suffering. And there is not really very good treatment. It’s like, if there is no cure, first of all.
Right. No cure, but usually we recommend people like multiple multi modal approach, I would say, or polypharmacy approach with different medications from different groups, like anti inflammatory medicine anti seizure medicine, which is like Lyrica, which is FDA approved for fibromyalgia. They can be gabapentin, they can some antidepressants and other treatments like, , chiropractic treatment, physical therapy, acupuncture helps, massage therapy helps too, and injections, like steroid injection, which can relax the muscles, help with the tenderness and all.
Hmm. I’m curious from your end, why do you feel, or do you feel, excuse me, this is one of my beliefs. Why? Why is it sometimes, , people maybe are in pain, but they don’t come in to get to get treatment or come in to get like help or diagnose like people kind of sometimes feel like they’re just, , it’s just part of it.
Like the body’s breaking down or otherwise. And then sometimes they just don’t go into check. Yeah, all the things that you’re mentioning to me. It’s like, there’s help out there. Like, I, I dunno, I’m going to give you my random number thing again. I’m making this up doctor. I’m making this up. I’m not like your son going to school that being said, but like if you’re at a level five pain, like possibly you could be at a three or a four or you could like, you could have a better quality of living.
Why do you feel like people sometimes don’t seek out treatment? So what happens is, so first of all, this is more typical of men than women. Oh, that’s what it is. Hold on. I shouldn’t have said why people I should have said, why don’t I know? I don’t have anything. Yeah. I told you it’s my belief.
My belief. Right. Now, pain management is a new field though. It’s not, I mean, they say all evidence based medicine. Okay. So pain medicine is a new thing. So people in the past, they thought there was nothing available for pain management. So that’s why they just suffered and suffered. So now they know, but it also depends on their primary care physician, right?
Primary care physician doesn’t tell them. They don’t refer them. for them to the pain management, they will still keep tolerating the pain. And that’s what happened in the past too. Like they were just giving them pain medicine, especially it happened in Florida, right? A lot. So they were just giving them pain medicine, keep increasing the dose and everything, and they got addicted to them.
So they didn’t know what was available for pain management, , but now I think there is more awareness. And probably more primary care physicians are referring them to the specialist. So when we get patients, we kind of like, , because we don’t want them to get addicted to medicine, right?
So that’s why we do more comprehensive approach, including the physical therapy, chiropractic treatment, acupuncture. So it’s a balanced approach. It’s a multimodal therapy we take. I think it’s getting better now. Now people are more into like, , they don’t want to tolerate pain, , they see the doctor more now.
Yeah, and I think, I think what you just mentioned about, that’s a great point about, I don’t know if we’d call it the, the evolution of pain management, the way it’s marketed, the field, the education of it all, because you’re right, especially when like fibromyalgia was just kind of coming out. And like you mentioned, like the, I think you said made up disease, or people didn’t know what it was like a long time ago.
90s, I think you’ve mentioned, or even like Crohn’s disease, if you go way back, and like some of these other, like, things that people didn’t know, and they were, , trying to figure out. And so I think everybody had like maybe a horror story. They heard something or they had a friend or a cousin or something that had, , a bad experience getting treated or otherwise.
And then and then that, that would make you kind of then scared to be like, well, I know what happened to so and so, but now I feel like based on what you’re telling me, just that evolution, more of the understanding of some of these, what, I would argue are not common, like fibromyalgia, that’s a pretty common disease.
I mean, when you say that I can name multiple people in my life, like from that, that habit and now that they know what it is and it’s being managed that, , much better quality of life. Honestly, yes, that’s correct. Yeah. So they have to know they have to look at their options.
Don’t just get treated with the medicines because , you will get addicted to them and you won’t get anywhere. So it has to be multimodality approach. So you can have balanced approach and you can have much better life. I wouldn’t say that you can be cured. You cannot be cured, , but you can have much better lifestyle and more functional with the comprehensive approach.
Amazing. Well, Anju, this has been a lot of fun getting to know you, your family. Hi to the husband out there and the kids. I’m big shout out to them for doing such great things as well. Thank you. We have a wonderful fan family overall and I’m happy to have met you and bring you on the show. Anju, if somebody’s listening to this and they want to follow up and they want to learn more about your practice or connect how do they do that?
So, we have a website, it’s InjuryPainMDandAesthetics. com, and we do have location in Langhorne, Pennsylvania and Sarasota. And here in Sarasota is 1903 Northgate Boulevard, Unit 120, and they can also call us at the number 215 Amazing. And for everybody listening, just so , we’ll put the websites, all that good stuff on the, in the, in the show notes, so you can just click on the links and, and head right on over and speak it to the audience, if this is your first time with mission matters and you haven’t hit the subscribe button yet, I welcome you hit that subscribe or follow button.
Cause this is a daily show each and every day. We have new content coming out for you, new interviews, and hopefully new inspiration to help you along the way on your journey as well. And Andrew, again, thank you so much for coming on. There’s been a lot of. Have fun and good luck at the Women’s Expo. Oh, thank you so much.
I’m so pleased that I was here. Thank you so much again.
