One of the more challenging types of chronic pain involves neuropathic (burning, tingling, shooting, etc, nerve pain) symptoms that opiates do NOT adequately address.  A report came out in October 2007 published by Science Daily that discussed why painkillers don’t work for neuropathic pain from fibromyalgia and states in part: “When the painkillers cannot bind to the receptors, they cannot alleviate the patient’s pain as effectively, Harris says. The reduced availability of the receptors could result from a reduced number of opioid receptors, enhanced release of endogenous opioids (opioids, such as endorphins, that are produced naturally by the body), or both, Harris says.” To read the complete report, please Click Here.

Neuropathic pain is frequent for diabetics, fibromyalgia, and shingles.  Many pain management providers have tried alternative (“off-label”) medications such as Neurontin (Gabapentin) with varying degrees of success.  Unfortunately, this medication sometimes causes significant side effects for many people.  Fortunately, there are other medication choices such as pregabalin (Lyrica). 

For example, I just came across a report presented at the American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA) 2008 Annual Meeting regarding the Perioperative (the time period surrounding a patient’s surgical procedure; this commonly includes ward admission, anesthesia, surgery, and recovery) administration of pregabalin significantly decreases the incidence of neuropathic pain at 3 and 6 months after total knee arthroplasty (TKA), according to research.  The report concluded that this procedure significantly reduced the patients’ pain.  To see the entire report please Click Here.

In June of 2008 the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved duloxetine HCl delayed-release capsules (Cymbalta) for the management of fibromyalgia. Previously, only pregabalin (Lyrica; Pfizer, Inc) was approved to treat this painful condition. Some see this as a major victory in validating fibromyalgia as a legitimate diagnosis while others see this as a greed-driven pharmaceutical ploy. Having worked with many patients who were diagnosed and living with the pain and problems of fibromyalgia I am firmly in the first camp.

To read more about this topic please go to our 2008 Research Archive and scroll down to the Cymbalta posting.  Also, near the end of the page is a posting titled Neuropathic  Pain Management.

To learn more about effective chronic pain management check out my article The Right to Quality Chronic Pain Management that you can download for free on our Ariticles page.

You can learn more about the Addiction-Free Pain Management® System at our website www.addiction-free.com. If you are in recovery and want to learn how to develop a plan for managing your pain and medication effectively go to our Publications page and check out my book the Addiction-Free Pain Management® Recovery Guide: Managing Pain and Medication in Recovery. To purchase this book please Click Here.

We have a busy fall schedule and some new postings for 2009 for upcoming trainings that you can check out on our Calendar page.

To listen to a recent radio interview I did conducted by Mary Woods for her program One Hour at a Time please Click Here to go to this interview.

To read the latest issue of Chronic Pain Solutions Newsletter please click here. If you want to sign up for the newsletter, please click here and input your name and email address. You will then recieve an autoresponse email that you need to reply to in order to finalize enrollment.

Chronic pain is a serious health crisis confronting many people today.  According to recent research it currently affects well over 100 million American adults and is estimated that an excess of $100 Billion per year is spent on medical costs and lost productivity. 

Pain is disabling for many people and sometimes there are few safe alternatives available when they are seeking help.  As a result, patients end up suffering or developing an addiction to the medications that they are using to help manage their pain.  Rod Clovin in his book Prescription Drug Addiction states that in 1999 over 9 million people reported abusing their prescription medication.

By 2003 there were over 117 million people with chronic pain and 11.7 million people experiencing either abuse or addiction problems with their prescription medications.  Also, people who are in chemical dependency recovery face potential relapse or sometimes death from their addiction as a result of an untreated—or mistreated—chronic pain condition.

According to researched published in Pain Physician Journal (2006), 90 percent of people in the US receiving treatment for pain management are prescribed opiate medication.  Of that number 9 percent to 41 percent had opiate abuse/addiction problems.  We also know that at least 80 billion dollars is spent for pain relief in the United States each year—a significant amount of that is for prescription medications.  What is harder to quantify is the emotional cost to family systems when one or more members suffer with a chronic pain condition.

Yes our current chronic pain problem in this country is costing us in money, time, energy, lost relationships and much more. That is why I believe that using a multidisciplinary approach in chronic pain management is crucial and not to do so is unethical.  I also believe in treating the whole person and working with people—not on them—is a much better solution.

To learn more about effective chronic pain management please check out my article The Need for Multidisciplinary Chronic Pain Treatment that you can download for free on our Ariticles page.

You can learn more about the Addiction-Free Pain Management® System at our website www.addiction-free.com. If you are working with people in chronic pain and want to learn how to develop a plan for managing their pain and medication effectively go to our Publications page and check out my book the Managing Pain and Coexisting Disorders: Using the Addiction-Free Pain Management® System. To purchase this book please Click Here.

To listen to a recent radio interview I did conducted by Mary Woods for her program One Hour at a Time please Click Here to go to this interview.

To read the latest issue of Chronic Pain Solutions Newsletter please Click here. If you want to sign up for the newsletter, please Click here and input your name and email address. You will then recieve an autoresponse email that you need to reply to in order to finalize enrollment.

I received an interesting but somewhat confrontational email that I saw when I first got up this morning.  The person had been looking around our website (www.addiction-free.com) and obviously became very upset with some of what they saw or an article they read.  This person completely dismissed the concept of pain having both physical as well as psychological and emotional components and also became a little abusive.

When I tried to respond to their email address I found out it was a bogus address.  To be fair I’ll put the original email and my response below in case they happen to read this blog.

Original Email

Comments: You sound like a quack who has not experienced chronic pain. The mumble jumble of mind over matter is a load of crap. If I could make my pain go away or hurt less by “thinking it isn’t so bad” I would be pain free. I am not pain free and articles like yours make some doctors unwilling to believe a person is truly in severe chronic pain. It is hard enough to get a doctor to treat pain.

My Response

Thank you for taking the time to email me.  I’m sorry that you think I sound like a quack.  I’m not even sure which article you are referring to. 

Also, I have been living with my own chronic pain for over 27years now and I really do know that it’s not ALL about mind over matter; but that is an important part of it.  I have worked with thousands of chronic pain patients the past 25 year and I never minimize the seriousness of my patients’ pain or try to convince them they don’t feel what they feel.  Too many healthcare providers do just that.

I don’t expect to convince you but I would ask that you at least don’t completely rule out the psychological and emotional components of pain; because they are just as important as the physical when living with chronic pain.  There is a big difference between living with chronic pain and suffering with chronic pain: I have decided I don’t ever want to suffer with my pain again as I did for the first year after my injury.  Before you make a final decision about the work I’m doing please check out more of my articles especially “Pain versus Suffering.”

To learn more about pain and suffering please check out my article Pain versus Suffering that you can download for free on our Ariticles page.

To learn how to tell the difference between physical and psychological pain symptoms please go to our Publications page and check out my Addiction-Free Pain Management® Module One: Understanding and Evaluating Your Chronic Pain Symptoms. To purchase this module please Click Here.

You can learn more about the Addiction-Free Pain Management® System at our website www.addiction-free.com.

We have a busy fall schedule for upcoming trainings that you can check out on our Calendar page. To listen to a recent radio interview I did conducted by Mary Woods for her program One Hour at a Time please Click Here to go to this interview.

To read the September Issues of Chronic Pain Solutions Newsletter please Click here.   If you want to sign up for the newsletter, please Click here and input your name and email address. You will then recieve an autoresponse email that you need to reply to in order to finalize enrollment.