A new approach to suffering in life-limiting illness: Total pain, the brain-gut axis, and the human microbiome.
Dr Marian Krawczyk talks about her new Carnegie Research Incentive Grant:
This grant enables her to conduct a targeted review of literature across social, medical, and biological research to develop an innovative transdisciplinary theory that considers the connection between total pain and a disrupted gut microbiome in those with advancing life-limiting illness, as well as to identify future research directions. An important contributor to this work is Natalia Calanzani, who joins this project as she finishes her PhD work in Population Health Sciences at the University of Edinburgh.
Total pain is a complicated, multi-factorial experience. Exploring it from a microbial perspective may enable us to better understand this complex biopsychosocial phenomena, including new clinical approaches for engaging with it.