Getting a handle on everyday stress can help you better manage the pain you’re experiencing. It’s easy to get stressed out when the pressures of work, family, and everyday life are weighing on you. These stresses can have not only an emotional impact, they can cause physical pain as well.
Stress and pain are often closely linked. Each one can have an impact on the other, creating a vicious cycle that sets the stage for chronic pain and chronic stress. So, part of getting pain relief is learning how to better manage stress.
“Lots of studies support the conclusion that what happens in the brain — depression, anxiety, being stressed out — can increase pain. At the same time, if you have more pain, you may be more stressed,” says Jennifer Schneider, MD, PhD, a chronic-pain specialist and author of the book Living With Chronic Pain. “Each makes the other worse, so if you decrease pain, you’ll likely also decrease stress and anxiety.” Pain Relief: Understanding the Stress-Pain Connection It’s not completely clear yet to researchers how stress and pain are related. However, stressed-out people often experience neck, shoulder, and back pain. This could be due to the link between stress and tension in the muscles. It could also be related to brain chemicals.
An estimated 43 million Americans report living with chronic pain, defined as lasting for at least 3 months. Yet experts agree that it’s woefully undertreated in our country. Despite breakthroughs in the understanding of pain, few doctors are aware of these advances or are trained in pain management.
One major shift in thinking is that chronic pain is now believed to be a disease, not a symptom, and that treating pain is about not simply targeting the source but treating the whole person. Like heart disease or other chronic conditions, there’s no magic bullet, so you need to draw on a number of approaches, from exercise and medication to relaxation techniques and talk therapy.
Eliminating your pain entirely may not be realistic; what is attainable is to lower it enough to improve your life and do the things you love. If you’re making any of the mistakes that follow, we’ve got the right formula for lasting relief.
If you guzzle 5-Hour Energy shots, you should know three states are suing for “deceptive and misleading” advertising.
Oregon, Washington and Vermont have sued the makers of 5-Hour Energy, Living Essentials of Farmington Hills, Michigan, over claims, such as “hours of energy, no crash later” promoted in commercials. Other states are expected to file suits in the coming weeks. “Plainly and simply, in Oregon you cannot promote a product as being effective if you don’t have sufficient evidence to back up your advertising claims,” Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum said in a statement.
Can Virtual Reality Therapy Help Alleviate Chronic Pain?
New Rochelle, NY — Chronic pain due to disease or injury is common, and even prescription pain medications cannot provide acceptable pain relief for many individuals. Virtual reality as a means of distraction, inducing positive emotions, or creating the perception of “swapping” a limb or bodily area affected by chronic pain in a virtual environment can be a powerful therapeutic tool, as described in several articles in Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, a peer-reviewed journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers. The articles are available free on the Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking website.
Editor-in-Chief Brenda K. Wiederhold, PhD, MBA, BCB, BCN and coauthors Kenneth Gao, Camelia Sulea, MD, and Mark Wiederhold, MD, PhD, FACP from the Virtual Reality Medical Institute, Brussels, Belgium and Virtual Reality Medical Center, San Diego, CA, created pleasant virtual experiences that patients could navigate through in simulated worlds to distract them from pain. They report both the patients’ subjective ratings of relief and how those compared to physiological measurements to assess pain responses in the article “Virtual Reality as a Distraction Technique in Chronic Pain Patients.”
HEALTH LINE: Understanding and Managing Chronic Pain
CINCINNATI—Acupuncture, exercise and massage and physical therapy are among the ways to deal with chronic pain that don’t require narcotic painkillers, says Nancy Elder, MD, professor of family and community medicine at the University of Cincinnati.
“A lot of patients think, ‘Oh, I hurt a lot, I hurt a lot all the time, the doctor should give me OxyContin and Vicodin,’” says Elder. “I think the most important thing that doctors and patients need to know is there is much we can do to help patients with chronic pain outside of narcotics.
“That doesn’t mean narcotics aren’t appropriate for some people in certain situations, but there are a whole lot of people that can get better without them,” she adds.
Elder says more doctors must have initial conversations with patients to manage expectations in dealing with chronic pain.
Opioid painkiller prescribing varies widely among states
Where you live makes a difference
Health care providers in some states prescribed far more painkillers than those in other states. Health care providers wrote 259 million prescriptions for opioid painkillers in 2012 – many more in some states than in others – according to a Vital Signs report released today by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that highlights the danger of overdose. The report also has an example of a state that reversed its overdose trend. Health care providers in the highest prescribing state, Alabama, wrote almost three times as many of these prescriptions per person as those in the lowest prescribing state, Hawaii. Most of the highest prescribing states were in the South. Previous research has shown that regional variation in use of prescriptions cannot be explained by the underlying health status of the population. The Vital Signs report also contains a study highlighting the success of Florida in reversing prescription drug overdose trends. Results showed that after statewide legislative and enforcement actions in 2010 and 2011, the death rate from prescription drug overdose decreased 23 percent between 2010 and 2012. Florida officials had taken these actions in response to a 28 percent increase in the drug overdose death rate over the preceding years (2006-2010).
Please sign our new petition that has been updated Petitioning • Petitioned The United States Senate And President Obama On Change.org
Stop using pain sufferers in the “war on drugs” and help pain sufferers and not treat them as addicts or drug seekers! Many strategies and options exist to treat chronic noncancer pain. Since chronic pain is not a single entity but may have myriad causes and perpetuating factors, these strategies and options vary from behavioral methods and rehabilitation approaches to the use of a number of different medications, including opioids.
Pain is one of the most common reasons people consult a physician, yet it frequently is inadequately treated, leading to enormous social cost in the form of lost productivity, needless suffering, and excessive healthcare expenditures. Impediments to the use of opioids include concerns about addiction, respiratory depression and other side effects, tolerance, diversion, and fear of regulatory action.
State law and policy about opioid use are currently undergoing revision. The trend is to adopt laws or guidelines that specifically recognize the use of opioids to treat intractable pain. These statements serve as indicators of increased public awareness of the sequelae of undertreated pain and help clarify that the use of opioids for the relief of chronic pain is a legitimate medical practice.
Due to concerns about regulatory scrutiny, physicians need guidance as to what principles should generally be followed when prescribing opioids for chronic or recurrent pain states. Regulators have also expressed a need for guidelines to help them to distinguish legitimate medical practice from questionable practice and to allow them to appropriately concentrate investigative, educational, and disciplinary efforts, while not interfering with legitimate medical care.
Our petition hopes to make a universal pain Patient Bill Of Rights in all states of North America.
Make sure that pain patients have the right to adequate pain management.
Create greater understanding among health care professionals, individuals and families who are struggling with pain management, the business community, legislators, and the general public that pain is a serious public health issue and needs to change.
Offer a comprehensive guide of networks and resources and knowledge about issues in pain management with different pain syndromes.
To: • Petitioned The United States Senate And President Obama, Dr. Patty’s Chronic-Intractable Pain and You Sites, Inc. To: The United States Senate And President Obama, Dr. Patty’s Chronic-Intractable Pain And You. A Chronic Pain Advocacy Site A 501C(3) Nonprofit Website I just signed the following petition addressed to: The United States Senate And President Obama. —————- Change the laws of prescribing for pain chronic/intractable pain sufferers Many strategies and options exist to treat chronic non-cancer pain. Since chronic pain is not a single entity but may have myriad causes and perpetuating factors, these strategies and options vary from behavioral methods and rehabilitation approaches to the use of a number of different medications, including opioids. Pain is one of the most common reasons people consult a physician, yet it frequently is inadequately treated, leading to enormous social cost in the form of lost productivity, needless suffering, and excessive healthcare expenditures. Impediments to the use of opioids include concerns about addiction, respiratory depression and other side effects, tolerance, diversion, and fear of regulatory action. State law and policy about opioid use are currently undergoing revision. The trend is to adopt laws or guidelines that specifically recognize the use of opioids to treat intractable pain. These statements serve as indicators of increased public awareness of the sequelae of under-treated pain and help clarify that the use of opioids for the relief of chronic pain is a legitimate medical practice. Due to concerns about regulatory scrutiny, physicians need guidance as to what principles should generally be followed when prescribing opioids for chronic or recurrent pain states. Regulators have also expressed a need for guidelines to help them to distinguish legitimate medical practice from questionable practice and to allow them to appropriately concentrate investigative, educational, and disciplinary efforts, while not interfering with legitimate medical care. Many strategies and options exist to treat chronic non-cancer pain. Since chronic pain is not a single entity but may have myriad causes and perpetuating factors, these strategies and options vary from behavioral methods and rehabilitation approaches to the use of a number of different medications, including opioids. Pain is one of the most common reasons people consult a physician, yet it frequently is inadequately treated, leading to enormous social cost in the form of lost productivity, needless suffering, and excessive healthcare expenditures. Impediments to the use of opioids include concerns about addiction, respiratory depression and other side effects, tolerance, diversion, and fear of regulatory action. State law and policy about opioid use are currently undergoing revision. The trend is to adopt laws or guidelines that specifically recognize the use of opioids to treat intractable pain. These statements serve as indicators of increased public awareness of the sequelae of under-treated pain and help clarify that the use of opioids for the relief of chronic pain is a legitimate medical practice. Due to concerns about regulatory scrutiny, physicians need guidance as to what principles should generally be followed when prescribing opioids for chronic or recurrent pain states. Regulators have also expressed a need for guidelines to help them to distinguish legitimate medical practice from questionable practice and to allow them to appropriately concentrate investigative, educational, and disciplinary efforts, while not interfering with legitimate medical care. Our petition hopes to make a universal pain Patient Bill Of Rights in all states of North America. Make sure that pain patients have the right to adequate pain management. Create greater understanding among health care professionals, individuals and families who are struggling with pain management, the business community, legislators, and the general public that pain is a serious public health issue and needs to change. Offer a comprehensive guide of networks and resources and knowledge about issues in pain management with different pain syndromes. —————- Sincerely, [Your name] Sincerely, [Your name]
Telecare Intervention Improves Chronic Pain for VA Patients
A telecare intervention using basic telephone technology and collaborative care management resulted in clinically meaningful improvements in chronic musculoskeletal pain compared with usual care, according to an article published online July 15 in JAMA.
Kurt Kroenke, MD, from the Veterans Administration (VA) Center for Health Information and Communication, Roudebush VA Medical Center, Indianapolis, Indiana, and colleagues conducted a randomized trial involving 250 patients from 5 primary care clinics within the center between June 2010 and May 2012.
Of the 250 patients, research assistants randomly assigned 124 to an intervention group and 126 to a usual-care group. All patients had chronic musculoskeletal pain for at least 3 months of at least moderate intensity, meaning a Brief Pain Inventory score of 5 or more on a 10-point scale. Movement of 1 point on the scale is considered clinically meaningful.
Dr. Patty's Chronic-Intractable Pain and You Sites, Inc. 