pain medication

Let’s Talk About Chronic Pain and Suicide

/ Thomas Cohn, MD

chronic pain suicideNew research presented at PAINWeek 2017 in Las Vegas suggested that individuals with chronic pain are twice as likely to attempt suicide than those without chronic pain.

For their study, researchers asked more than 1,500 chronic pain sufferers to fill out a questionnaire on their pain and their mental mindset. What they found was that individuals with chronic pain were twice as likely to attempt suicide than individuals without chronic pain, and that 32 percent of chronic pain sufferers reported “suicide ideation in some degree.”

According to researchers, chronic pain (as opposed to acute pain) may share some neural networks with mental health disorders like depression, which can contribute to self-harm tendencies.

“This shared neurobiology may explain why cognitive behavioral interventions can be effective in chronic pain patients,” said Dr. Joseph Pergolizzi, who suggested that patients with chronic pain should be evaluated for other helpful treatments, like cognitive behavioral therapy or mental health counseling. They recommended that mental health assessments during the diagnosis and treatment of chronic pain could be clinically important for reducing the risk of suicide or self-harm in this patient population.

Getting The Help You Need

As someone who is prone to chronic back pain from an injury I suffered back in college, I know how frustrating chronic pain management can be. It can take forever to find a solution that works, and there’s no guarantee that it will work the next day. You’re fighting an uphill battle, but it’s important that you try to stay positive. Remember that you can only control what you can control. You can’t always control your pain, but you can:

  • Get regular exercise
  • Eat a healthy diet
  • Partake in physical therapy
  • Seek a second opinion
  • Get involved a chronic pain group
  • Try new treatment alternatives
  • Share your experiences with others online
  • Take time to focus on your mental and physical health

Pain may play a role in your life, but you should never feel like it is controlling your life. If you’ve found that it’s harder to get out of bed or you just haven’t been the same lately, reach out to a Pain Management specialist. We can take another look at your pain and figure out the best way to help you manage it. We can also set you up with wonderful programs to ensure that your mental health remains positive while you’re tackling your chronic pain issue.

Nobody knows exactly what you’re going through, but that doesn’t mean we’re not willing to learn or to help. Please, if you’re struggling with chronic pain or depression, make a call to our office or to a pain specialist in your area. We’ll do everything in our power to help reduce you pain levels and find something that works for you. We can’t promise solutions, but we can promise that we will try our hardest to find a treatment option that makes your day a little brighter. Contact us today.

The Landscape of Addiction in 2017

/ Thomas Cohn, MD

addiction opioidsOne of my favorite activities is reading. I read a wide variety of things, some of the most interesting things come from magazines that are not medical. Time magazine regularly has interesting stories of health.  Science, a bi-weekly publication, routinely has articles on a wide range of subjects that challenge the core of what one thought was fact. National Geographic regularly throws in medical stories. A couple years ago they had a great summary on marijuana, and recently now they had a great article on addiction. Medical journals are often a somewhat dry and boring read, but they do allow one to keep up-to-date with current research. Sometimes these other magazines have extremely valuable information as well.

The September 2017 National Geographic lead story is on The Science of Addiction. The problem is more than just opioids, it is a vast variety of problems from smoking to gambling and including all kinds of drugs. Addiction is a very complex process in the brain, and is definitely a disease and not a moral failing. Different types of addictions may affect a variety of brain regions. The processes involve disruptions in pathways responsible for learning, emotion, desire, regulation, and cognition among many neural events. It can change chemical, hormonal, and electrical paths in the brain. Addiction becomes abnormal learning in the brain with the reward being the addictive activity.

Addiction And Our Brains

All addiction has its roots in the primitive regions of the brain. They have to do with our need to survive, and they all involve our senses like sight, smell and taste. Critical in addiction is the neurotransmitter dopamine and that stimulates brain motivation. Those lacking dopamine often are depressed. Further, Parkinson’s disease has a lack of dopamine, and when given to some patients, it causes problems with an addiction like gambling. When something is addictive, it stimulates the dopamine pathways in the brain and is a very positive reward. The dopamine reward is so strong in the brain, people lose the control of impulses and the ability to inhibit behavior even if it is self-destructive.  

Since there are many things that are now considered true addictions, it is likely there are many different strategies to treat them. For drugs, often there are medications that can block the pleasure from the drug and prevent withdrawals. For alcohol, there are drugs that make drinking nauseating. There are also numerous counseling strategies and psychological-type interventions to deal with the behavioral components of addiction. There are also some new novel strategies including electrical and magnetic stimulation of specific areas of the brain to treat addiction.

The problem of drug addiction or any type of addictive behavior is caused by abnormal function and rewards in the brain. Pain and the problems associated with the medications taken can cause addiction, but this isn’t always the case. Taking opioid medications does lead to dependence and tolerance of the drugs that cause them to lose effectiveness. Opioids can also change a person’s sensitivity to pain and make a person perceive pain sensations more intensively. Therefore, in general, opioid medications have many downsides.

Lastly, opioids can be addictive and cause typical addiction issues in pain patients, but it is in only in a small percentage, somewhere between 5-20%. In most chronic pain patients, addiction and problems with opioids are generally not a typical problem. Treatment in pain patients is the same as with any other person who has opioid problems, and is often best handled by a pain care specialist.  If you are a pain patient on opioids, and taking your medication has become the focus of your life, then it is probably time for one to be treated for addiction and be off of these medications.

Understanding Chronic Pain in Children

/ Thomas Cohn, MD

chronic pain childrenPreventing chronic pain is a daily battle for many adults, and the symptoms can be even tougher to control in children and teens. Interestingly, new research published in Health Psychology suggests that adolescent pain may be linked to previous experiences with pain, and if we can improve these initial experiences, children may be less likely to experience future pain.

It may sound complicated, but the research wanted to see if there was a link between a previous pain experience and how pain is felt and managed in the future. To do this, researchers examined children who had undergone a major surgery, as these experiences, even if they go as expected, may be traumatic to the child and are likely accompanied with some pain or discomfort.

“This is not to say that every child who has chronic pain had a surgery that led to it,” said study author Melanie Noel. “Rather, it’s that surgery is the only context where we can catch these kids before they develop chronic pain. We know that 15 to 20 per cent of children who undergo these major surgeries will develop chronic pain. So, if we can catch them early and begin to understand the factors leading to their chronic pain, maybe we can prevent it from happening in the first place.”

At the conclusion of the study, researchers found that a child’s memories of pain following major surgery actually influenced their recovery and was associated with an increased risk of the development of chronic pain down the road.

“We’ve discovered that the way children are remembering their pain is an underlying factor in the development of chronic pain,” Noel explained. “It’s not the pain they actually experience so much as the way they process those memories of the pain which is driving whether or not they’re improving, right around the time that pain can transition into chronic pain. At a certain point, these children should be feeling better but those who develop chronic pain are not.”

Managing Adolescent Chronic Pain

The study, which was conducted in Canada, suggests that anywhere from 15-40 percent of Canadian children experience chronic pain at some point during their childhood. Moreover, 60 percent of these children eventually develop chronic pain in adulthood, so it’s important to control chronic pain while kids are young to prevent it from becoming a problem when they’re older.

Researchers believe the findings can help point doctors and parents towards solutions. They believe that psychological and language-based interventions may be able to help kids better cope with post-surgical pain, which will help re-frame their memories of the pain and in turn decrease their likelihood of developing chronic pain in adulthood.

“We can teach kids how to reminisce and talk about their pain experiences in a way that emphasizes anything positive about it,” said Noel. “Maybe the child coped with something well, maybe there was a really friendly nurse. It’s getting them to talk about things that aren’t just focused on the awful after effects of the surgery. It’s a way of catching it, a talk-based intervention that can possibly re-frame the memories. This may actually alter the pain trajectory. It’s one thing we can do to make the recovery and future experiences of pain better.”

This is fascinating research, and I hope the findings are considered by pain professionals when helping children get to the bottom of their chronic pain.

September Is Pain Awareness Month

/ Thomas Cohn, MD

pain management awarenessIf you don’t deal with pain on a regular basis, odds are you don’t realize how big of a problem pain is in our society. That being said, there’s a good chance you do deal with pain, because roughly one in three adults is the United States is battling a pain condition. Whether it’s from arthritis of the hips, carpal tunnel in the wrist or another painful conditional, pain is very prevalent here in America.

To help bring awareness to the pain problem, September has officially been declared Pain Awareness Month. Today, we hope to share some facts about pain and bring attention to the problem so that we can work towards a solution.

Everyone’s Pain Is Different

Pain is unique to the individual. Even though you may share a diagnosis with thousands of other people, your pain is going to be unique to you, so it should come as no surprise that treatments can differ greatly even if two people are diagnosed with the same pain condition. For some, physical therapy, exercise and a diet change can help keep pain at bay, while others will find relief with acupuncture, yoga and anti-inflammatory medications.

The key to treating pain is to treat the underlying condition, not the symptoms. Some passive treatment techniques like opioids or pain injections help to decrease pain levels in the short term, but they do nothing to treat the underlying problem, which means these patients will never truly be rid of pain. Pain specialists are great at finding the underlying cause and developing treatment strategies to fix the true source of pain. It’s not always going to be easy, but trust us when we say it will be worth it in the long run.

Treating pain also needs to be a two-way street. There is no magic pill to cure your of your pain, so while a doctor can help diagnose your pain and suggest treatment options, we can’t force you to take part in therapy or eat a healthier diet. The desire to get rid of daily pain needs to come from the patient. We will do everything possible to help you on your journey, but we can’t do it for you. Meeting with a pain specialist is a great way to set and manage expectation between doctor and patient.

Facts About Pain

To better explain just how prevalent chronic and acute pain is in today’s society, check out some of the facts about pain below.

  • Over 75 million Americans deal with a pain condition, more than those diagnosed with cancer and diabetes combined.
  • 30 percent of adults between the ages of 45-64 experience pain that lasts longer than 24 hours.
  • The estimated annual cost of chronic pain in the US is more than $100 billion.
  • 1 in 5 people experience pain that disrupts their ability to sleep.
  • Back pain is the leading cause of disability for people under the age of 45.
  • Less than half of pain sufferers feel like they have control over their pain.
  • More than 75 percent of individuals with chronic pain say they suffer from depressive thoughts or anxiety.
  • Headaches were the most common type of pain that led to lost productivity in the workplace.
  • Only 15 percent of people with a pain condition go to a pain specialist. Most prefer their primary care doctor.

If you are dealing with a pain condition, consider setting up an appointment with a pain specialist. Your doctor has a wide range of medical knowledge, but they lack the depth of knowledge about specific pain conditions that a specialist has. If you want to set up an appointment, reach out to Dr. Cohn’s office today.

Let’s Focus On The Pain Epidemic, Not The Opioid Epidemic

/ Thomas Cohn, MD

pain opioid epidemicA recent article in the Star-Tribune noted that every three weeks, the death toll from opioid overdoses matches the death toll from the attacks on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. Not only is this a concerning number, but trends show that the death toll from opioid overdoses is continuing to skyrocket. The government and even President Trump have stated that the opioid epidemic is a problem that needs to be solved, but are they looking at the problem in the right way?

The opioid crisis is a huge issue, but it’s only a symptom of a larger problem, which is the pain epidemic in America. More people are turning to opioids in the United States because more of them are fighting a losing battle against pain. We need to be finding solutions to the pain problem, because the opioid crisis is a symptom of the problem of pain.

Stopping Pain

Think of it this way. Let’s say you’re in your house and you see smoke. You run to the kitchen and notice a fire behind the stove. You quickly fill up some water from the sink and douse the flames with water, stopping the fire in its tracks. It’s great that you stopped the fire, but you wouldn’t just go back into your living room without investigating what caused the fire to start in the first place. If you don’t fix the faulty wiring that caused the fire, you’re prone to another fire in the future.

In the above instance, throwing water on the fire is like trying to treat the opioid epidemic. It is a problem that needs to be addressed, but unless we also focus on the root problem, which is pain (or faulty wiring in this case), then the problem is only going to continue to be cyclical. Eliminating opioids may reduce the number of overdose deaths, but it will also hurt patients who use them responsibly to manage their pain, and severely cutting back on opioids will do NOTHING to solve the pain problem.

What We Need To Do

Enough about what’s wrong with the current system – here’s a definitive list of what we as a nation need to do in order to fix the opioid crisis and the pain problem in America.

  • We need to educate both patients and doctors about how opioids work in conjunction with a multi-faceted approach to pain management.
  • Opioids can play a role in pain care, but they can’t be the only treatment option. They can help manage pain, but they are not a long term solution to treat pain. Anybody who is only taking pain medications for their condition is at a high risk for dependency and has a low chance of ever recovering from their pain.
  • We need to open up insurance coverage to other non-traditional methods of pain management. Let’s get creative with pain management, because what works for some will not work for others.
  • We have to pound home the message that there is no magic pill for pain, but tangible solutions are within your reach.
  • Doctors need to do a better job of pushing people towards tangible solutions instead of quick fixes. Things like physical therapy, aqua therapy, cognitive behavioral therapy, yoga, etc. over writing a quick prescription.
  • We need to invest research funding into pain treatments, whether it’s medical marijuana or new diagnostic tools, we need to spend money on solving the problem of pain. Invest in pain solutions like we’re investing in treating cancer or diabetes.

If we can check off all the items on this list, I’m confident we can find new ways to treat pain, and in turn combat the opioid crisis in America.