Chronic Pain Management—Coping With Migraine Headaches
Yesterday I conducted my Managing Pain and Coexisting Disorders Workshop at the University of Utah’s School on Alcoholism and Other Drug Dependencies. After the workshop several participants wanted to spend time with me to talk about some problems they were experiencing from living with frequent migraine headaches.
One of the participants has been on high doses of Percocet for the past three years and during that time her episodes increased in frequency and severity. She shared that after listening to my presentation she was afraid she might be getting addicted to the opiates. She shared those concerns with her doctor who told her not to worry—unfortunately, she should be worried. Maybe not about addiction but about the rebound effect opiates have on migraine conditions.
When people undergo chronic pain management and are on long-term use of any opiates there is always a risk of rebound pain or hyperalgesia. As anyone who ever experienced a migraine headache knows it can be extremely debilitating.
Unless a migraine sufferer goes to a treatment provider who understands appropriate treatment interventions for this condition, they can run the risk of unnecessary pain and suffering including potential prescription drug addiction and rebound headaches. Many people are prescribed opiates even though they are not an FDA approved medication for migraine treatment.
Medications used to combat migraines fall into two broad categories:
Pain-relieving medications. Also known as acute or abortive treatment, these types of drugs are taken during migraine attacks and are designed to stop symptoms that have already begun.
Preventive medications. These types of drugs are taken regularly, often on a daily basis, to reduce the severity or frequency of migraines.
I encouraged this participant to go to our website News/Research page and go to the 2009 and 2008 archives where we have posted several informative sections on migraines and also on opiates and hyperalgesia. On the 2009 archive I have one posting titled Long-Term Opioid Use May Increase Sensitivity to Chronic Pain.
On the 2008 archive I titled one article Information and Guidelines for Migraine Management, another was Some Medications Lead to Rebound Headaches and finally The Role of Opioids in Chronic Pain Management. To read the three most recent News/Research posts please click here, or you can click on either 2008 or 2009 archives and scroll down to read the titles I mentioned above.
To learn more about the Addiction-Free Pain Management® System, please check out my article The Need for Multidisciplinary Chronic Pain Treatment that you can download for free on our Ariticles page. This article also gives an overview of my Addiction-Free Pain Management® Workbook. To purchase this workbook please Click Here.
You can learn more about the Addiction-Free Pain Management® System at our website www.addiction-free.com. If you are working with people undergoing chronic pain management and want to learn how to develop a plan for managing their chronic pain and coexisting psychological disorders including depression, addiction and other coexisting psychological disorders effectively please consider my book Managing Pain and Coexisting Disorders: Using the Addiction-Free Pain Management® System. To purchase this book please Click Here.
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.
To learn about my upcoming trainings you can check out our Calendar page.
