On December 11, 2007 FoxNews.com reported on a survey by the University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research, which looked into the drug use of 8th, 10th and 12th graders nationwide. According to the 2004 National Institute on Drug Abuse's (NIDA) financed survey released Tuesday at the White House, illicit drug use by teens continued to gradually decline overall this year, but the use of prescription medication painkillers remains popular among young people. To see this full article please go to http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,316463,00.html.

The survey found that OxyContin was one of the most popular prescription drugs for adolescents. This is confirmed by many addiction treatment professionals around the country who are reporting that prescription opiates are more popular than alcohol and marijuana for many youth. This should not be surprising due to the inappropriate marketing and news stories about OxyContin. Fortunately, the Connecticut-based maker of this powerful painkiller and three of its current and former executives pleaded guilty last year to misleading the public about the drug's risk of addiction. Purdue Pharma L.P. and the executives were forced to pay $634.5 million in fines.

The NIDA Monitoring the Future survey of 8th, 10th, and 12th-graders found that 9.3 percent of 12th-graders reported using Vicodin without a prescription in the past year, and 5.0 percent reported using OxyContin, making these medications among the most commonly abused prescription drugs by adolescents. Many teens get their "supply" from parents, other family members or friends. Many of the pain clinics I consult for are advising their patients to obtain a "medication safe" for the stronger opiates in order to protect their children and others who might try to divert/steal the medication.

NIDA hopes to decrease the prevalence of this problem by increasing awareness and promoting additional research on prescription drug abuse. Prescription drug abuse is not a new problem, but one that deserves renewed attention. It is imperative that as a Nation we make ourselves aware of the consequences associated with the misuse and abuse of these medications. For updated and accurate information about any drugs of abuse (including prescription drugs) please visit the NIDA website http://www.nida.nih.gov and use their search feature to find the information you need.

In chronic pain management one of the big concerns is the addiction potential of many prescription opiate medications. Physical dependency and a rapid build up of tolerance is also a concern, not only for pain management providers but also their patients. According to a new research study out from the University of California San Francisco (UCSF) morphine dependency may be blocked by a single genetic change.

It's still too early to get excited as the study was conducted on mice. Human trials are still needed, as well as validation and reproduction by other research but it does look hopeful. Many people today, especially older patients, are afraid to take their needed pain medication due to paranoia about addiction and thus are not receiving effective pain management. The media has increased this fear with reporting that labels medication like OxyContin as "demon drugs." It is true that people have died from this medication, but not as a result of taking it as prescribed.

I will post some highlights from the UCSF news release, and if you want to read the entire article go to http://pub.ucsf.edu/newsservices/releases/200801281/. The research team was lead by Jennifer Whistler, PhD, an investigator in the UCSF-affiliated Ernest Gallo Clinic and Research Center, and associate professor of neurology at UCSF. A portion of this news release is below.

"As more pain medications are being removed from the market, new strategies to overcome chronic pain become crucial," Whistler says. "If new opiate drugs can be developed with morphine's pain killing properties but also with the ability to promote endocytosis, they could be less likely to cause the serious side effects of tolerance and dependence." The research is the first direct demonstration that this single cellular change can block the body's tendency to become tolerant of the drug, she points out. Several strategies are now being tested to counter morphine addiction, Whistler says. These include development of morphine derivatives such as oxycontin, that are delivered in a time released manner or only once they have been processed in the digestive system. Other approaches seek to develop morphine derivatives that target only certain opioid receptors but not others. "The most promising aspect of these other approaches is that they have the potential to prevent or delay dependence and addiction to morphine, but few of them address the development of tolerance," Whistler said.

According to other research chronic pain 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. For a chart showing the cost breakdown of pain management for several different conditions click here.

• Several reviews have demonstrated that women respond to noxious and potentially noxious stimuli with greater pain experience than men. In particular, women tend to have reduced pain threshold compared to men women respond with pain to lower intensity stimuli than men. In addition, there are numerous pain conditions that show a bias towards women: Berkley listed 38 clinical pain disorders as having a female prevalence but only 15 having a male prevalence and 24 having no sex prevalence. It is tempting, therefore, to suggest that women have a biological profile that predisposes them to experience pain at lower stimulus intensities and thus also suffer a disproportionate amount of clinical pain.

• Men's Hormones Make Them Feel Pain Differently
  Men's hormones make them “feel” pain less intensely or at least differently than women do, according to pioneering new research involving transsexuals in Germany. Female-to-male sex-change procedures involving transsexuals undergoing hormonal treatment show that post-procedure subjects say their new lives as males are literally less painful than their previous lives as females. “Testosterone appears to reduce sensibility to pain, whereas estrogen actually increases pain sensitivity,” says Professor Hartmut Goebel, director of the Pain Clinic in Kiel, Germany.

  Post-procedural transsexuals who have received testosterone as part of their sex-change report that they experience lower overall pain levels since having become men, Dr Goebel says. Not only do they experience lower levels of pain in a quantitative sense, but the quality of pain is different, he adds. “The female brain colours pain with more emotional responses,” says Goebel. “Men aren't bluffing when they say they can ignore pain. Their brains actually do in fact allow them to mask low-level pain in a way that women's brains do not.” He theorizes that “Men tend to suffer in silence, thinking it's not all that bad. But women say 'I just can't stand this' and so they seek medical help.”

• How LLLT Works
  Low level laser therapy traces its history back to the early 1960's when researchers discovered that laser light could stimulate a response at the cellular level of tissues in the body, resulting in increased energy levels (ATP, adenosine triphosphate). This increase in energy enables the body's cells to metabolize at a higher rate and speeds its natural ability to heal. In short, the body converts the laser light into a form of energy that it can use (biochemical energy) to repair itself and function at a higher efficiency level. This process is similar to the human body using the sun's energy to manufacture Vitamin D.

• LLLT is FDA Approved
  Researchers have since experimented over the decades to find out which intensities and wavelengths of light work best to promote healing in the body. Laser therapy has been successfully utilized in Europe, Asia, and Canada for years. In 2002, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the use of low level laser therapy for use in the United States.