In 2009, my doctor told me that, like "a lot of women", I was paying too much attention to my body. Saying there wasn't an issue, he suggested I just relax and try to ignore the symptoms.
The decision seemed to run counter to what my records showed. A few weeks earlier, I had ended up in the emergency room with chest pains and a heart rate hitting 220 beats per minute. The ER crew told me it was a panic attack, gave me Xanax and told me to try to sleep.
I'd had panic attacks before. I knew this episode was not one. So I went to my doctor.
He put me on a heart monitor overnight. Bingo: I had another episode, this time recorded. It didn't matter. I still left his office thinking it was perhaps anxiety. And so, listening to the advice, I tried to ignore the pain.
Until it happened again. And again. First every month, then every week. Over the following nine years, I would complain about it and be told again that I was having panic attacks or anxiety, that women don't feel heart pain the way I was feeling it, and that maybe I was just confused.
More ...
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20180518-the-inequality-in-how-women-are-treated-for-pain
Thursday, May 31, 2018
NIH Pain Consortium
The NIH Pain Consortium was established to enhance pain research and promote collaboration among researchers across the many NIH Institutes and Centers that have programs and activities addressing pain. To this end, the following goals have been identified for the Pain Consortium:
• To develop a comprehensive and forward-thinking pain research agenda for the NIH - one that builds on what we have learned from our past efforts.
• To identify key opportunities in pain research, particularly those that provide for multidisciplinary and trans-NIH participation.
• To increase visibility for pain research - both within the NIH intramural and extramural communities, as well as outside the NIH. The latter audiences include our various pain advocacy and patient groups who have expressed their interests through scientific and legislative channels.
• To pursue the pain research agenda through Public-Private partnerships, wherever applicable. This underscores a key dynamic that has been reinforced and encouraged through the Roadmap process.
https://painconsortium.nih.gov/
• To develop a comprehensive and forward-thinking pain research agenda for the NIH - one that builds on what we have learned from our past efforts.
• To identify key opportunities in pain research, particularly those that provide for multidisciplinary and trans-NIH participation.
• To increase visibility for pain research - both within the NIH intramural and extramural communities, as well as outside the NIH. The latter audiences include our various pain advocacy and patient groups who have expressed their interests through scientific and legislative channels.
• To pursue the pain research agenda through Public-Private partnerships, wherever applicable. This underscores a key dynamic that has been reinforced and encouraged through the Roadmap process.
https://painconsortium.nih.gov/
Saturday, May 19, 2018
Chronic pain treatment: Psychotherapy, not opioids, has been proven to work - Vox
When pain settled into Blair Golson's hands, it didn't let go.
What started off as light throbbing in one wrist 10 years ago quickly engulfed the other. The discomfort then spread, producing a pain much "like slapping your hands against a concrete wall," he says. He was constantly stretching them, constantly shaking them, while looking for hot or cold surfaces to lay them on for relief.
But worse was the deep sense of catastrophe that accompanied the pain. Working in tech-related startups, he depended on his hands to type. "Every time the pain got bad, I would think some variation of, 'Oh no, I'm never going to be able to use computers again; I'm not going to be able to hold down a job; I'm not going to be able to earn a living; and I'm going to be in excruciating pain the rest of my life,'" he says.
Like many patients with chronic pain, Golson never got a concrete diagnosis. For a decade, the 38-year-old Californian went from doctor to doctor, trying all the standard treatments: opioids, hand splints, cortisone injections, epidural injections, exercises, even elective surgery.
Golson's pain was not caused by anything physically wrong with him. But it wasn't imagined. It was real.
After weaning himself off the opioid Vicodin and feeling like he had exhausted every medical option, Golson turned to a book that described how pain could be purely psychological in origin. That ultimately took a pain psychologist, a therapist who specializes in pain — not a physician — to treat the true source: his fearful thoughts. Realizing that psychological therapy could help "was one of the most profoundly surprising experiences of my life," Golson says. No doctor he ever saw "even hinted my pain might be psychogenic," meaning pain that's psychological in origin.
More ...
https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2018/5/17/17276452/chronic-pain-treatment-psychology-cbt-mindfulness-evidence
What started off as light throbbing in one wrist 10 years ago quickly engulfed the other. The discomfort then spread, producing a pain much "like slapping your hands against a concrete wall," he says. He was constantly stretching them, constantly shaking them, while looking for hot or cold surfaces to lay them on for relief.
But worse was the deep sense of catastrophe that accompanied the pain. Working in tech-related startups, he depended on his hands to type. "Every time the pain got bad, I would think some variation of, 'Oh no, I'm never going to be able to use computers again; I'm not going to be able to hold down a job; I'm not going to be able to earn a living; and I'm going to be in excruciating pain the rest of my life,'" he says.
Like many patients with chronic pain, Golson never got a concrete diagnosis. For a decade, the 38-year-old Californian went from doctor to doctor, trying all the standard treatments: opioids, hand splints, cortisone injections, epidural injections, exercises, even elective surgery.
Golson's pain was not caused by anything physically wrong with him. But it wasn't imagined. It was real.
After weaning himself off the opioid Vicodin and feeling like he had exhausted every medical option, Golson turned to a book that described how pain could be purely psychological in origin. That ultimately took a pain psychologist, a therapist who specializes in pain — not a physician — to treat the true source: his fearful thoughts. Realizing that psychological therapy could help "was one of the most profoundly surprising experiences of my life," Golson says. No doctor he ever saw "even hinted my pain might be psychogenic," meaning pain that's psychological in origin.
More ...
https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2018/5/17/17276452/chronic-pain-treatment-psychology-cbt-mindfulness-evidence
Friday, May 18, 2018
New Drug Offers Hope to Millions With Severe Migraines - The New York Times
The first medicine designed to prevent migraines was approved by the Food and Drug Administration on Thursday, ushering in what many experts believe will be a new era in treatment for people who suffer the most severe form of these headaches.
The drug, Aimovig, made by Amgen and Novartis, is a monthly injection with a device similar to an insulin pen. The list price will be $6,900 a year, and Amgen said the drug will be available to patients within a week.
Aimovig blocks a protein fragment, CGRP, that instigates and perpetuates migraines. Three other companies — Lilly, Teva and Alder — have similar medicines in the final stages of study or awaiting F.D.A. approval.
"The drugs will have a huge impact," said Dr. Amaal Starling, a neurologist and migraine specialist at the Mayo Clinic in Phoenix. "This is really an amazing time for my patient population and for general neurologists treating patients with migraine."
Millions of people experience severe migraines so often that they are disabled and in despair. These drugs do not prevent all migraine attacks, but can make them less severe and can reduce their frequency by 50 percent or more.
As a recent editorial in the journal JAMA put it, they are "progress, but not a panacea."
More ...
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/17/health/migraines-prevention-drug-aimovig.html?
The drug, Aimovig, made by Amgen and Novartis, is a monthly injection with a device similar to an insulin pen. The list price will be $6,900 a year, and Amgen said the drug will be available to patients within a week.
Aimovig blocks a protein fragment, CGRP, that instigates and perpetuates migraines. Three other companies — Lilly, Teva and Alder — have similar medicines in the final stages of study or awaiting F.D.A. approval.
"The drugs will have a huge impact," said Dr. Amaal Starling, a neurologist and migraine specialist at the Mayo Clinic in Phoenix. "This is really an amazing time for my patient population and for general neurologists treating patients with migraine."
Millions of people experience severe migraines so often that they are disabled and in despair. These drugs do not prevent all migraine attacks, but can make them less severe and can reduce their frequency by 50 percent or more.
As a recent editorial in the journal JAMA put it, they are "progress, but not a panacea."
More ...
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/17/health/migraines-prevention-drug-aimovig.html?
Thursday, May 10, 2018
Treatments Prescribed For Lower Back Pain Are Often Ineffective, Report Says : NPR
Chances are, you — or someone you know — has suffered from lower back pain.
It can be debilitating. It's a leading cause of disability globally.
And the number of people with the often-chronic condition is likely to increase.
This warning comes via a series of articles published in the medical journal Lancet in March. They state that about 540 million people have lower back pain — and they predict that the number will jump as the world's population ages and as populations in lower- and middle-income countries move to urban centers and adopt more sedentary lives.
"We don't think about [back pain] the same way as cancer or heart attacks. But if you look at disability it causes, especially in middle- and low-income where there isn't a safety net, it impacts half a billion people," says Roger Chou, a physician who is a pain specialist at the Oregon Health and Science University and a co-author of the articles.
Disability from chronic back pain can hurt a person's ability to earn a living. One of the Lancet studies found that among rural Nigerian farmers, half reduced their workload because of back pain — an example of how the disability could contribute to the cycle of poverty in countries that lack benefits such as sick days or a social safety net.
Another study from Australia found that people who retired early because of back pain potentially lost out on hundreds of thousands of dollars of accumulated wealth when compared with healthy people who worked all the way to 65.
An overarching issue with back pain management is that the treatments doctors prescribe are often the wrong ones, the report concludes. Also, in many low-income countries, accessing health care is challenging — and getting appropriate care of back pain, specifically, is even harder. In some poor parts of Asia, pain medications are hard to come by and doctors may not have been trained on the most effective treatments.
More ...
https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2018/04/05/597505825/report-ineffective-treatment-often-prescribed-for-lower-back-pain
It can be debilitating. It's a leading cause of disability globally.
And the number of people with the often-chronic condition is likely to increase.
This warning comes via a series of articles published in the medical journal Lancet in March. They state that about 540 million people have lower back pain — and they predict that the number will jump as the world's population ages and as populations in lower- and middle-income countries move to urban centers and adopt more sedentary lives.
"We don't think about [back pain] the same way as cancer or heart attacks. But if you look at disability it causes, especially in middle- and low-income where there isn't a safety net, it impacts half a billion people," says Roger Chou, a physician who is a pain specialist at the Oregon Health and Science University and a co-author of the articles.
Disability from chronic back pain can hurt a person's ability to earn a living. One of the Lancet studies found that among rural Nigerian farmers, half reduced their workload because of back pain — an example of how the disability could contribute to the cycle of poverty in countries that lack benefits such as sick days or a social safety net.
Another study from Australia found that people who retired early because of back pain potentially lost out on hundreds of thousands of dollars of accumulated wealth when compared with healthy people who worked all the way to 65.
An overarching issue with back pain management is that the treatments doctors prescribe are often the wrong ones, the report concludes. Also, in many low-income countries, accessing health care is challenging — and getting appropriate care of back pain, specifically, is even harder. In some poor parts of Asia, pain medications are hard to come by and doctors may not have been trained on the most effective treatments.
More ...
https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2018/04/05/597505825/report-ineffective-treatment-often-prescribed-for-lower-back-pain
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)