New Chronic Pain Care Guidelines Recommend Ditching Medication

painkillersThe National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) recently released some updated guidelines for how pain practitioners should help their patients deal with their chronic pain condition. The most notable suggestion is that NICE is advising doctors to avoid prescribing pain medication for a pain condition and instead believes they should recommend exercise or psychological therapy for the most effective treatment. For chronic pain sufferers who rely on pain medication as part of this treatment process, the news may cause anxiety and fear over whether or not they’ll have their access to these medications restricted.

We’re here to let you know that while these recommendations certainly have merit, no physician worth his salt is going to take medications away from someone who is using them responsibly and progressing in their rehab. In today’s blog, we take a closer look at the recommendations and explain how they’ll likely be implemented going forward.

Exercise Over Medication

If we just look at the headline and start to draw conclusions from there, it’s easy to get worked up over the latest recommendations. We’re here to help calm your fears and explain that although the recommendations are rooted in sound science, applying them unilaterally to a condition so unique as chronic pain is a terrible idea. Pain is unique to the individual, which is why there is no one-size-fits-all treatment for chronic pain. Even when two people are suffering from the same diagnosis, their treatment regimens may be different. That’s why we can’t just say that medications should never be used for effective pain care.

Nobody is saying that all you need to do to rid yourself of your chronic pain condition is to lace up your running shoes and go for a jog, but as we’ve talked about on the blog in the past, there is extensive research behind the idea that exercise and movement can be a key factor in helping fight back against a chronic pain condition. Exercise is an active solution that improves muscles, helps to control inflammation and works to stabilize joints that could be contributing to your pain issue. Medications, on the other hand, are a passive treatment that work to mask pain instead of treating the underlying issue. Medications alone will not cure your pain condition, but exercise and strength training or psychological therapy could.

With that said, painkillers and active treatment modalities can absolutely compliment one another, and this is when we’re all for prescribing medication to patients. If medication can make it easier for you to follow through on a physical therapy routine or to stick to your exercise program, then we’ll gladly walk you through a responsible painkiller management plan. We want to give patients all the tools they need to take control of their pain condition, and pain medications can certainly be part of that equation, so long as the patient is educated on their purpose and continues to prove that they can use the medication responsibly.

So in spite of the new recommendations, know that your pain physician will only recommend tapering off your medications if they aren’t actually promoting your recovery. If they aren’t doing any good and are putting you at a heightened risk for dependency or overdose, any good physician will adjust treatment to find a more effective method.

If you have been unable to find an effective solution for your pain, or you just want to talk to a physician who will take the time to get to know you and your diagnosis to provide the best level of care, reach out to Dr. Cohn’s office today.