Sometimes linked misunderstandings possess awful power. Such has been the occasion of our growing public opioid mess. Opioid overdoses kill tens of thousands yearly, but will undoubtedly lead to far more fatalities. A misunderstanding of how opioids – the many synthetic and “natural” products of opium and morphine – work, has now been joined with a misunderstanding […]
The Pain Mess
Pain rots the soul. Pain scourges the body. Sadly, so does the present day treatment of chronic pain. What was a problem has become a national mess with thousands dying yearly and millions more suffering. Fashion may be the arbiter in social media, but it is a poor selector for health treatments. For many years it was […]
The Unnecessarily Painful Treatment of Chronic Pain (8/6/12)
What’s Happening To Chronic Pain Patients? Very difficult times. Federal and state governments have belatedly recognized there’s an epidemic of prescription medications – which includes pain pills like opiates. Influenced by that epidemic, some academic opinion on how to treat pain has also reversed. Many researchers who believed pain patients should be treated for maximum […]
Doctor Versus Patient – The Case of Chronic Pain (6/25/12)
When Words Don’t Mean the Same Things to People If there are fifteen treatments for an illness, chances are good that many don’t work very well. That’s the case with chronic pain. Pain is really an information issue. The brain senses something is very awry. We then call that feeling pain. And our sense of […]
How your brain processes pain (2/25/11)
Does What You Expect Change What You Get? Pain is information, how the brain interprets certain stimuli to form sensations almost all humans fear and detest. As Oxford researchers reported last week in Science Translation Medicine, how we individually interpret pain is markedly changed by context: The Study Subjects – 22 healthy people Method – […]