
By Christine Graf
Clifton Park physical therapist and massage therapist Laura Brown is on a mission to help chronic pain sufferers eliminate their need for opioids. According to the National Institute of Health, 25 million Americans suffer from daily chronic pain and lack effective non-opioid treatments to manage that pain.
“I want to get people off the opioids and the narcotics. You can’t live on that stuff and you shouldn’t have to,” said Brown. “My mission is to give people a little bit of their life back.”
In order to help patients suffering from chronic neuropathic and oncologic pain, Brown purchased an $80,000 FDA-approved pain therapy device called a Calmare. The device delivers gentle electrical stimulation, and clinical studies have shown that its technology successfully reduces pain in more than 80 percent of treated patients without the adverse side effects commonly associated with drugs. It is not effective in treating pain caused by inflammation.
Brown first learned about Calmare from one of her massage clients, a physician whose daughter found relief from chronic pain after receiving Calmare pain treatment therapy. Intrigued, she set out to learn more.
“I saw that it didn’t just have a bunch of advertisements,” she said. “It had clinical studies and publications. Johns Hopkins uses it, the Mayo Clinic uses it, VA centers across the country use it.”
Because she is a physical therapist, Brown met the medical standard requirements necessary to become a Calmare practitioner and was able purchased the device in December 2019. Just as she completing the necessary training, the COVID shutdown forced her to close her office for three months. Since reopening, she is working to spread the word about the revolutionary pain treatment therapy she offers.