Chronic Pain, Lifestyle, and Data: How Pain Coach Helps Clinicians See What Really Matters

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Struggling to turn complex chronic pain into simple, actionable care plans your patients can follow?

In this episode of the Modern Pain Podcast, Mark sits down with physiotherapist and Pain Coach founderLachlan Townendto unpack how lifestyle data, clinical reasoning, and tech can finally work together instead of against each other.

Lachlan shares his own journey with persistent groin pain, why the traditional biopsychosocial model often becomes “woo-woo” and unmeasured, and how he builtPain Coachto help clinicians track sleep, exercise, social connection, nutrition, and psychological distress in a way that actually guides treatment.

You’ll hear us dive into:

• How Lachlan’s personal pain story shaped his empathy and practice
• Why patients don’t want “complexity” – they want simple, actionable steps
• The limitations of manual therapy and short-term fixes (without throwing them out entirely)
• How to use lifestyle tracking as a clinical support tool, not a replacement for reasoning
• Using data to test-treat-retest lifestyle changes over time
• The tension between research, incentives, and real-world outcomes
• How AI could help clinicians ask better questions of their patients’ data

If you’re a physio, PT, chiro, OT, pain coach, or any clinician working with persistent pain, this conversation will give you a concrete way to move beyond the “magic hands” model and into measurable, whole-person care.