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Healing—possibly up to 80%—comes from factors outside of what practitioners usually do in the clinic or hospital. Patients, through diet, can combat some chronic pain and fight some genetic factors. Most people don’t realize that what they eat influences their pain. What else should patients be...
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Pain conditions—such as vulvodynia, temporomandibular disorders, irritable bowel syndrome, interstitial cystitis/painful bladder syndrome, fibromyalgia, endometriosis, and chronic tension-type and migraine headache—often occur together and either solely or predominantly affect women. Would...
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Michael C. Barnes, JD, MIEP, a Washington, DC, attorney on the future of pain management and drug policy. Does medical marijuana have a role?
It’s an interesting time in United States for drug policies:
- As we see efforts to loosen restrictions on what are currently federally illicit substances...
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Neuromodulation has become an important alternative treatment option in refractory chronic neuropathic pain syndromes. The field of neuromodulation has advanced over the years. Now you can give patients:
- Multiple frequencies up to 10,000 hertz
- Different kinds of patterns of stimulations, like...
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With increased efforts to decrease opioid prescribing for chronic pain conditions, nonopioid analgesics and coanalgesics are being more widely utilized. Skeletal muscle relaxants (SMRs) are frequently used chronically despite a paucity of data supporting this practice. People who have really good...
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Pain is common in the aging population. Findings from an NIH funded study found >50% of the older people surveyed had pain within the last month, often in ≥1 location.
Why?
- People gain weight as they age
- Bones break down
- Older people have spinal cord issues
Drugs for the elderly: care...
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It has been discovered and noted that activation of trigeminal pathways to the meninges is what’s responsible for the onset of migraine pain; many migraine symptoms are activated through CGRP relevant neurons associated with the trigeminal vascular system.
CGRP—calcitonin gene-related peptide—is...
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The US is struggling with competing problems: the undertreatment of pain and the abuse of opioids. At the same time, millions of people in third-world countries are dying without access to any opioids. Could marijuana be the solution to both problems? Although it continues to remain prohibited by...
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Facial pain can be difficult to diagnose and treat. What might work?
Treatments:
- Injections of the sphenopalatine ganglion, a little nerve bundle that sits behind the ethmoid sinus or behind the nose, and influences the pain experience in the head
- A stimulator (if the FDA passes it)
- Inject...
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Leigh Ann Wilson is a licensed clinical social worker and Collin Montgomery is the program coordinator for the Adult Sickle Cell Program, both at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences in Little Rock. Why and how did they develop a clinical decision tool to standardize opioid prescribing...