Interventional pain, addiction and obesity medicine · St. Louis

One physician, five boards, one argument: pain and metabolic disease are the same problem

Dr. Gurpreet Singh Padda, MD, MBA, MHP is a St. Louis interventional pain physician with three decades of practice and diplomate status in anesthesiology, pain medicine, interventional pain management, addiction medicine and obesity medicine. He treats chronic pain as a problem with structural, neurological and metabolic drivers, and he built the clinics, books and nonprofit divisions listed on this site around that model.

Dr. Gurpreet Singh Padda, MD, MBA, MHP is the founder and Chief Medical Officer of the Padda Institute Center for Interventional Pain Management in St. Louis. He has practiced interventional pain medicine in the region for more than three decades.

His argument is simple. Chronic pain, opioid dependence, obesity and type 2 diabetes arrive in the same patients. They share an engine: metabolic inflammation. Medicine splits them among four specialists who rarely talk. He holds the boards to treat all four.

This page covers his training, his credentials, the model he practices and the organizations he built. To reach a specific clinic or program, tap the directory assistant (the light in the corner of the page).

What are Dr. Padda's board certifications?

Board certification in pain medicine is common. This combination is not.

Each board answers a problem that walks through a pain clinic door. Anesthesiology and interventional pain cover the procedure: a needle placed precisely against a named target, under imaging, safely. Addiction medicine covers what arrives already attached to the pain: long-term opioids that stopped helping and cannot be stopped abruptly. Obesity medicine and metabolic health cover why the tissue hurts more than the scan says it should. Insulin resistance, visceral fat and chronic inflammation change how the nervous system processes pain.

Most interventional practices refer the second and third problems out. Holding all of them means one physician manages the whole patient.

Added competency certifications:

He is a Department of Homeland Security designated civil surgeon and a certified rater for the Montreal Cognitive Assessment.

Where did Dr. Padda train?

Surgery first. Then anesthesia. Then business.

He is licensed in Missouri, Illinois, Arizona, New Mexico, Georgia and Florida. He holds full staff privileges at Anderson Hospital in Maryville, Illinois, and a staff appointment at SSM Health St. Clare Hospital in Fenton, Missouri.

How can I verify his credentials?

Check them. Do not take a website's word for it.

What did he do in academic medicine?

He spent seven years on the faculty of Saint Louis University School of Medicine before moving into full-time interventional practice.

The pediatric years shaped the method. Children cannot report pain reliably. It has to be measured, not asked about. That habit of measurement runs through every clinic he built.

What did he fix inside the hospital?

The operator's work came early. At Cardinal Glennon he was Medical Director of the Preadmission Program (1996–99) and designed, built and ran it. The process redesign won an SSM Best Practice Quality Award in 1997. He built a Fast Track tonsillectomy program on a cost-benefit model, ran anesthesia quality improvement, chaired the Pharmacy and Therapeutics Committee (1996–98), and directed the Center for the Management of Preoperative Services and Informatics at Saint Louis University (1998–99).

The toolkit was business, applied to medicine: cost-benefit analysis, time-motion studies, failure-mode tables, inventory redesign, scheduling data. His research asked the same question. What does this test cost, and does it earn it? He published on the cost of preoperative pregnancy testing and presented cost-benefit analyses of outpatient tonsillectomy to the American Society of Anesthesiologists.

That habit explains the rest of the career. A preadmission program and a food supply are both systems with incentives. Follow the incentive and you find the disease.

What leadership roles has he held?

Society memberships include the International Anesthesia Research Society, the American Society of Anesthesiologists, the Society for Pediatric Anesthesia, the American Society of Interventional Pain Physicians, the Society of Metabolic Health Practitioners and the Association for Contextual Behavioral Science.

What is the collision of epidemics?

It is the model behind every clinic on this site.

The disc is where it hurts. It is not why it hurts. Here is the chain. Refined carbohydrate and industrial seed oils drive glycation and inflammation. Insulin climbs. Fat tissue stops acting as storage and starts acting as an endocrine organ, releasing inflammatory cytokines. Those signals sensitize the nerves. The same arthritic knee now hurts more than its X-ray. Pain breaks sleep, and one bad night measurably lowers the next day's pain threshold. Movement stops. Insulin resistance worsens. A prescription arrives. Long-term opioids blunt the body's own endorphin system, and the dose climbs while the relief shrinks.

Every step feeds the next. Treat one link and the chain keeps turning.

Then the social layer lands on top. Dr. Padda has spoken outside medicine on how education, incarceration, physical health and financial health intertwine, including a 2019 presentation for Exonerated Nation with Loyola Law School and Kaiser Permanente Northern California Community Benefit Programs. The patient in the exam room is also the patient in the food desert, the injured job and the unpaid bill.

So the clinical rule is fixed. Pain is a signal, not a diagnosis. Find the structure generating it. Then fix the terrain that keeps it generating.

How does that model show up in the clinic?

Three ways.

Diagnosis before the needle. Image-guided injections double as tests. A small dose of anesthetic placed precisely either stops the pain or it does not. That answer decides the treatment.

Lifestyle is treatment. At least 40 to 50 percent of treating pain is patient lifestyle coaching. Sleep, nutrition, movement, metabolic markers and the deficiencies nobody checks are treated as deliberately as a procedure. Counseling is delivered in-house by a clinical psychologist.

Medication is a bridge, not a destination. For patients already on long-term opioids, interventional procedures take over the work the medication was doing so the dose can come down safely. The practice does not accept patients seeking opioids as the treatment. The full approach is on the opioid stewardship page.

What has Dr. Padda published?

Peer-reviewed work in Neuromodulation, Pain Medicine, Pain Physician, Critical Care Medicine, Anesthesia & Analgesia, Anesthesiology, Paediatric Anaesthesia, Ophthalmology, Dermatologic Surgery and the Southern Medical Journal. Highlights:

He serves as a review editor for PharmacoEconomics and contributed to the Pain Medicine & Interventional Pain Management Board Review Self-Assessment (2011).

Where has he presented?

Twice as keynote speaker at the American Society of Interventional Pain Physicians annual conference:

Also for ASIPP: Revenue Enhancement with Risk Reduction: Measuring Patient Outcomes (2025), Metainflammation (2019), the Controlled Substance Management review course (2007), and the Pain Medicine board review course (2006), lecturing on healthcare ethics, medicolegal issues and third-party payors.

For the Society of Metabolic Health Practitioners and LowCarbUSA he has presented between 2020 and 2025, including The Hormesis Paradox and Reimagining Metabolic Health: Scaling Technology-Enabled Solutions (January 2025). Earlier research was presented at the American Society of Anesthesiologists, the Society for Pediatric Anesthesia, the Society for Ambulatory Anesthesia, the American Academy of Ophthalmology and the American Thoracic Society.

Outside the conference circuit he has sat for more than 45 podcast, radio and television interviews since 2019. The titles tell the range: Hyperinsulinemia Causing Chronic Pain on the LowCarbUSA Podcast, Collision of Epidemics: Pain, Opiate Addiction, Obesity, Diabetes Type 2 on Authentic Talks, Why Your Pain Won't Go Away: The Metabolic Connection on I Fix Hearts with Dr. Ovadia, and, just as often, physician finance and real estate: Passive Investing As A Full-Time MD, Creating Wealth with Real Estate for Healthcare Professionals, and Financial Freedom for Physicians.

Health and wealth are one system here. On the Entrepreneur Rx podcast he was introduced as President and CEO of Red Pill Kapital. A patient bankrupted by their disease has not been treated.

What books has he written?

Four titles in The Brain series, published by Nectar Media Group in September 2026:

He is also coauthor of Next Level Your Life (January 2023), an Amazon best seller in 41 categories, and of The Ideal.Fit Recipe Book (May 2020) with Ami Hendrix-Grimes. The series has its own page: the Brain book series.

What is his charitable work?

Sevadar means one who serves. Sevadar Foundation Inc. is a St. Louis 501(c)(3) public charity. It does not treat patients. It carries four divisions:

Separately, he is Medical Director of Valor Villages, a separate St. Louis charity that houses veterans and children in crisis.

Earlier service includes medical missions to Honduras, Guatemala and Nicaragua with the Catholic Medical Mission Association; the March of Dimes Program Services and Public Affairs Committees as a nonprofit board director; board roles with Exoneration Nation and Arise Veterans; and Executive Director of the Deva Singh Foundation. From 2023 to 2026 he also sat on the boards of directors of two real estate development funds, Grocapitus Investments and UGRO. The divisions are described on the Sevadar Foundation page.

Which organizations did he build?

Each category page describes its organizations and links to each one.

Frequently asked questions

Why does a pain physician hold addiction and obesity boards?

Because both sit upstream of the pain. Metabolic disease sensitizes nerves and stalls repair, and long-term opioid management is the most common thing a patient has already tried. Treating either without the other fails.

What does MHP mean after his name?

Metabolic Health Practitioner, a diplomate credential from the Society of Metabolic Health Practitioners. It is the credential most directly tied to his metabolic work.

Does Dr. Padda personally see patients?

Yes. He sees patients at the St. Louis clinics next to the airport, and at Regenerve the evaluation, the interpretation of nerve and vascular testing and the treatment plan are his.

Is he a surgeon?

He trained in general surgery before anesthesiology and is a licensed physician and surgeon with surgical privileges. His practice leads with the least invasive option that can answer the question and reserves surgery for when it is the right answer.

Can patients from Illinois see him?

Yes. He is licensed in Illinois and holds full staff privileges at Anderson Hospital in Maryville, which is why Metro East patients are treated here instead of being referred back across the river.

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