Sleep and Caffeine May Play Key Role In Controlling Chronic Pain

May 9, 2017 / Thomas Cohn, MD

New research out of Boston suggests that sleep and caffeine may play integral roles in controlling chronic pain flareups.

It’s probably not a huge surprise that sleep is beneficial for controlling chronic pain, as we’ve talked about the restorative benefits of sleep on our blog many times before, but the part about caffeine is interesting. Here’s what the researchers had to say.

Benefits of Sleep and Caffeine

For their study, researchers looked at the effects of sleep (or lack thereof) and caffeine on mice and their pain sensitivity. Researchers began by tracking normal sleep cycles and measuring brain activity, then they began to disrupt this healthy sleep cycle by giving mice toys and activities that entertained them and kept them awake (much like Netflix or our iPads do for humans).

“Mice love nesting, so when they started to get sleepy (as seen by their EEG/EMG pattern) we would give them nesting materials like a wipe or cotton ball,” says Dr. Alban Latremoliere, PhD and pain expert at Boston Children’s Hospital. “Rodents also like chewing, so we introduced a lot of activities based around chewing, for example, having to chew through something to get to a cotton ball.”

Researchers kept mice awake for up to 12 hours in one night or for six hours five nights in a row. They examined that fatigue, stress and pain sensitivity all increased during this time.

“We found that five consecutive days of moderate sleep deprivation can significantly exacerbate pain sensitivity over time in otherwise healthy mice,” says Dr. Chloe Alexandre, a sleep physiologist.

Caffeine’s Role

According to researchers, common painkillers did not help mice combat pain, and morphine was less effective in sleep-deprived mice, meaning chronic pain patients who are tired may have to up their morphine dose in order for it to be effective. However, researchers found that caffeine helped to block pain sensitivity.

This led researchers to conclude that a good night’s sleep combined with caffeine during the day (along with other good habits like regular exercise and a healthy diet) may be more effective for managing chronic pain than simply relaying on analgesic medications.

“Many patients with chronic pain suffer from poor sleep and daytime fatigue, and some pain medications themselves can contribute to these co-morbidities,” Dr. Kiran Maski, M.D. at Boston Children’s hospital who studies sleep disorders. “This study suggests a novel approach to pain management that would be relatively easy to implement in clinical care.”

4 Key Components For Combating Chronic Pain

April 25, 2017 / Thomas Cohn, MD

Battling chronic pain is no easy task, but it gets easier if you know the best way to tackle the condition. Today, we share four ways to help combat chronic pain, and we explain how these factors can help you conquer your daily discomfort.

The 4 Keys To Conquering Chronic Pain

There is no magic pill that will get rid of your chronic pain. If you want to reduce your daily pain, focus on these for areas.

1. Exercise – If there’s one thing we can recommend when it comes to conquering chronic pain, it’s regular exercise. As someone who struggles with back pain, I find that it is best controlled when I’m actively working on strengthening the area. We know that chronic pain can make it difficult to exercise, but try to find an activity that works for you, whether it be running, cycling, walking or swimming!

2. Mindfulness – A recent article published on Medscape suggests that mindfulness probably won’t help you with back pain. It’s true that mindfulness alone won’t magically cure your back pain, but we’ve found that patients who try to eliminate stress in their life and who focus on putting pain behind them instead of feeling sorry for themselves seem to respond better to treatment. Mindfulness isn’t something you can just achieve, but there are a number of activities you can participate in to help push pain out of your mind. From speaking with a therapist, to taking a Tai Chi class, to simply making it a point to get out of bed and not let pain slow you down, treating your mental health is just as important as your physical health when it comes to conquering chronic pain.

3. Diet – Your diet also plays an important role in chronic pain expression. A number of chronic pain flare ups are caused by inflammation, and that inflammation can be triggered by certain foods in our diet. Try to eat a wide range of fruits, vegetables, proteins and fish, and stay away from the sugars and saturated fats. Sometimes a diet change is all you really need.

4. Professional Assistance – Finally, don’t try to take on your chronic pain on your own. Medical professionals can help you get to the bottom of your condition and devise a number of different treatment methods to suit your needs. You wouldn’t try to fix your own cavity or fill your own taxes (Okay – some of you are probably brave enough to do your own taxes, but I prefer to hand it all over to a professional), so don’t try to combat your chronic pain all alone. We’ve studied this stuff for decades, let us help!

Understanding Opioids, Addiction and Naloxone

April 17, 2017 / Thomas Cohn, MD

Chronic pain patients have a multitude of possible treatments available for the management of symptoms. Strategies often include exercise, physical therapy, chiropractic care, massage, injections and medications. One of the more frowned upon treatments is opioids, but sometimes they are used successfully. With the current opioid crisis, many pain patients fear using them and want to be safe if they have them in their possession.

Opioid Safety

The most important rule with regards to use of any medication, especially opioids, is to never take more than what has been prescribed. Opioids can build up in the body and suddenly become deadly if too much is taken. Running out early can cause opioid withdrawal syndrome and while it is uncomfortable, it is not dangerous to your health. If you are taking opioids, expect your doctor to closely monitor your medication and behavior while taking these drugs. Since they are highly addictive and abused, most doctors will tightly control prescriptions and refills. Drug testing, opioid contracts, behavior screenings, depression screenings and monitoring of other medications are standard. Mixing of medications like sedatives, anti-anxiety treatments like benzodiazepines, and using any street drugs often will lead to ending a prescriptions for opioids, and often there is zero tolerance of any safety rules due to the extreme danger inherent with opioid misuse.

Mixing Street Drugs and Opioids

The latest step in opioid safety is the prescribing of naloxone in addition to the opioid. Naloxone is a drug that can block the opioid receptors for most opioid-type drugs, and it can prevent an accidental or purposeful overdose. In Minnesota it can be obtained at most pharmacies even without a prescription, and can be given effectively as either an injection or as an intranasal spray. Anyone who is routinely taking an opioid or has opioid medications in the home should likely have naloxone too, in case they accidentally or purposefully take too much, or someone else takes their medications. If you are on these medications, ask your doctor about having a safety prescription for naloxone.

Using street drugs for an addiction to opioids or for pain is high-risk behavior. The singer Prince was using Percocet obtained from street sources to control his hip joint pain. The Percocet he obtained had allegedly been mixed with fentanyl, which is an extremely potent opioid and caused his overdose death. If you are addicted to opioids, are using them to get high, use heroin, or have family or friends that is misusing opioids, you can obtain naloxone and this may save someone from an overdose death.

Successful Opioid Treatment

Opioids can be helpful in treating pain, but they are extremely difficult to use due their limited safety. More physicians are very reluctant to prescribe these medications and their long-term efficacy and safety is limited. More information has become available on how opioids actually tend to increase pain over time versus being helpful. Pain management specialists will work with patients to find alternative strategies to these dangerous medications.

One last issue with regards to all medications, especially opioids, is how to dispose of unused or outdated prescriptions. In the past, medications were often flushed down the toilet or thrown out in the trash. The environment does not do well with those methods, and it tends to lead to contamination of our waterways and ground water. Freshwater fish are starting to show significant levels of some commonly disposed medications. The best way to get rid of unwanted medications is to bring them to your local police or sheriff’s department where they have disposal lock boxes. These medications then are handled as hazardous waste and usually incinerated at high temperatures to completely destroy them and turn it to relatively safe ash.

If you’re struggling with an opioid addiction or want a doctor to help get to the bottom of your pain, contact Dr. Cohn today.

How Unregulated Opioid Use Can Lead To Heroin Addiction

April 12, 2017 / Thomas Cohn, MD

In the 1960s, the drug culture was known for psychedelics, LSD and marijuana. Eventually, some of those users sought a stronger high, and that led them down the path to heroin. At least that was the message pushed by the government in its fight against drugs.

Heroin was actually not that common and it was often a drug of addiction found in Vietnam veterans due to its availability in that region. Intense drug programs and interventions to rid production significantly reduced heroin use in the U.S. from the 1970’s through about 2000. In the 1990’s, the era of everyone needing opioid pain management began and along came Oxycontin. The quick and easy option for most doctors to treat pain was to write a prescription for the magical opioid pill. For the last ten years, we now have discovered the rising tide of opioid addiction and now deaths from overdoses is catching up to the number from auto accidents.

Link Between Pills and Heroin

Oxycontin first came on the market in the 1990’s and was extensively marketed as a safe drug for management of pain. The manufacturer would fly physicians to resorts, wine and dine them, and then try to hire them to lecture other doctors on the wonder of their drug. By about 2005, some of the problems with addiction were becoming evident. The government convinced the manufacturer to develop a formulation that would deter abuse by making anti-crush pills, and these came on the market around 2010. It was still a potent drug, but it was not as fun to take and the pills became expensive on the black market. However, the damage had been done and now the main way to treat pain was with opioids, any many people had become addicted to the powerful medication.

A study recently done by the University of Pennsylvania and the Rand Corporation explains why heroin has now become a problem. The development of the new formulation of Oxycontin made this drug more expensive and harder to abuse. Heroin has become cheap, more pure, and once you’re hooked on opioids, it is now easier and less expensive to obtain. So once a person is addicted to pain pills, the cheaper route to get high and prevent drug withdrawal is to use heroin.

Now the latest trick for those with an opioid addiction to get high is to use heroin or oxycodone that is mixed with another synthetic opioid like fentanyl or cor-fentanyl which are a hundred to over a thousand times stronger. These drugs are often been manufactured in China or India, and they can be easily mailed anonymously without much suspicion into the U.S. If mixed wrong, these newer synthetic opioids are often deadly.

Takeaway Points

The message from the opioid crisis is that pain has many ways to be treated, and left unregulated the use of opioids is often more dangerous then helpful. Addiction is a disease; without treatment, some resort to the use of heroin since it is cheap, and many cut that drug with other potent drugs that are deadly.

Stopping the opioid crisis will take time and effort. Treating pain is not just about taking opioids – that has led to the addiction crisis. Money needs to be spent on pain research and the development of better pain management strategies. A third of the population has issues with pain, making it more prevalent than heart disease, cancer and diabetes combined. To solve the problem of pain and drug abuse, a concerted government investment into pain research and better medical management is needed.

Shared Reading Helpful For Chronic Pain Patients

March 9, 2017 / Thomas Cohn, MD

New research suggests that shared reading may help ease discomfort and provide cognitive benefits for individuals battling chronic pain.

Shared reading, as the researchers defined, was the act of of gathering with others and reading short stories, poetry or other literature out loud. Researchers said by reading literature that triggers memories of experiences throughout life, like happy childhood memories or relationships, patients can experience benefits similar to or that outweigh the effectiveness of cognitive behavioral therapy for chronic pain.

Shared Reading And Chronic Pain

There are hundreds of different treatment options for chronic pain, because chronic pain is unique to the individual. Some people experience pulsing pain in their lower back, others battle waves and waves of headaches, while others have nerve damage that sends pain signals to the brain when their is no painful stimulus present. What works for one person will not always work for another, and unfortunately that’s the problem that many pain sufferers are running in to. In turn, they are looking into alternative options, one of which is shared reading.

For their study, researchers compared the benefits of shared reading to cognitive behavioral therapy, which is a technique that aims to change the way people think and behave in order to better manage physical and mental issues related to chronic pain. To do this, patients with severe chronic pain were asked to participate in either five weeks of CBT or 22 weeks of shared reading. At the conclusion of the five weeks of CBT, individuals in that group joined the shared reading group for the remainder of the 22 weeks. The shared reading sessions incorporated literature that was designed to prompt memories of family, relationship, work experiences or other happy memories throughout their lifetime. Participants were required to report their pain severity and emotions before and after each session, and they were asked to record their pain and emotions twice a day in a personal journal.

Study Results

At the end of the study, researchers wrote:

While CBT helped to manage a person’s emotions, shared reading appeared to help patients address the painful emotions that might be contributing to chronic pain.

Pain severity and mood improved for up to two days after shared reading sessions.

“Our study indicated that shared reading could potentially be an alternative to CBT in bringing into conscious awareness areas of emotional pain otherwise passively suffered by chronic pain patients,” researchers wrote. “The encouragement of greater confrontation and tolerance of emotional difficulty that sharing reading provides makes it valuable as a longer-term follow-up or adjunct to CBT’s concentration on short-term management of emotion.”

Researchers want to conduct future studies with larger sample sizes, but it’s an interesting approach to treating chronic pain. We’ll certainly keep tabs on shared reading as a potential treatment option.