Chronicillness.co Site of United States values innovation, so when a new FDA-approved device comes out, we want our patients to be the first to learn about the possible benefits. You may have heard of a TENS unit, a device our patients have been using for years. A TENS unit is a small device that sends electrical stimulation to the nerves to correct any misfiring nerves and stop them from sending pain signals to the brain. A Quell device is similar to this.
A Quell device looks a little bit like the armbands you wear to the gym that holds your iPod or phone. However, this device is worn on your calf. While it doesn’t hold any iPods, it can actually be controlled from your smartphone! Instead of coming to appointments to have your electrical impulse levels adjusted by a physician, you can control the level you need.
So how does it work? The band is equipped with an electrode or a conductor that sends electricity into the body. By stimulating the nerves in the calf, signals can be sent to the spine and then the brain, so it works for pain in all areas of the body.
After strong evidence that it can help people suffering from chronic pain, it received FDA approval and is available at Chronicillness.co Site of United States. The device offers a nighttime mode and can be worn 24 hours per day, but some people may find it uncomfortable to sleep with, or that they are unable to wear tight-fitting pants while using the device. The nighttime mode can be programmed to go off every other hour to avoid disturbing sleep patterns.
While we believe Quell can be available to patients at a lower cost than some of our implantable electrical devices, the electrodes do need to be replaced about every two weeks, although the battery can be charged and work for up to 30 hours. Our physicians do not see Quell as a permanent fix for chronic pain. Pain relief stops when the device comes off, so we recommend pursuing other treatment options at the same time.
One of the best ways to ease anxiety about a major event, like surgery, is to plan ahead. Conversations about postsurgical pain management need to happen before your procedure, so you can focus on your recovery after surgery is complete.
Here are9 questions you should ask your attending health care professional before having surgery.
Make sure you understand your health care provider’s instructions about eating and drinking. Anesthesia administered during surgery may require you to have an empty stomach.
Preemptive or preventive pain relievers may be given, in addition to general anesthesia or other sedatives before surgery. Local anesthetics may be used during surgery to numb the area and help control pain. These may be placed directly into the surgical site, into or around a nerve (“nerve block“) or close to the spinal cord (“epidural”). Ask your health care provider to walk you through the pain management plan so there are no surprises.
This will depend on the type of procedure you’re having and the pain medications used before, during and after your surgery. Be sure and talk with your health care provider so you will know what to expect and be familiar with all of your options for pain management.
Depending on the type of procedure you’re having, a combination of medications may be used before, during and after surgery to block the various sources and pathways of pain. Essentially, these drugs may work in different areas or in different ways to better address your specific needs. Ask your health care provider about the risks and benefits of each medication being used along the way.
One of the best signs of proper pain management is being able to start moving and resume normal activities. You may also be periodically asked to measure your pain on a scale from 1 to 10 (with 10 being the worst pain and anything above 7 being severe). If you’re taking pain medication, it’s important to stay ahead of your pain and not let your pain levels get out of control.
Sharing information about yourself and your medical history will help your surgeon better understand your treatment needs and tailor a pain management plan that’s right for you. Let your health care provider know if you are:
There are a variety of products your surgeon may give you before and during surgery to minimize your need for narcotics after surgery, including local anesthetics. Local anesthetics are numbing medications that can be used to numb the area where you had surgery from anywhere between a few hours to a few days. These may be placed directly into the surgical site, into or around a nerve (“nerve block”) or close to the spinal cord (epidural). If long-lasting local anesthetics are used during your procedure to numb the surgical site, you may require less narcotic pain medication afterwards.
After surgery, there are several non-narcotic options that may be appropriate for you, including common over-the-counter (OTC) pain relievers like acetaminophen, and nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), such as aspirin, ibuprofen and naproxen. These may be prescribed in higher doses than the OTC dosages. All can help control mild to moderate pain. Aspirin may also help prevent blood clots, while NSAIDs may help reduce swelling and inflammation. Once you’re in the recovery room, your pain medication may be given orally (by mouth) or through an IV (a tube feeding into a vein).
Here is more information about postsurgical pain management options.
The kinds of side effects you may experience will depend on the type of medications used before, during and after your surgery. For example, narcotics may cause constipation, nausea and vomiting, while nerve blocks can cause muscle weakness. Ask your health care provider about the side effects that can be expected with all the pain medications you will receive.
Before you leave the hospital, make sure you feel 100 percent comfortable about how your pain will be managed at home. In most cases, you will be given a prescription for pain medication before or after surgery. You may be able to fill the prescription at the hospital pharmacy or it may be sent in to your local pharmacy for pickup on your way home. Making sure you have your pain medication in hand when you reach home, will help you stay ahead of your pain and not let it get out of control. Before you take your medication, be sure to read the enclosed instructions about how often to take the medication and what side effects to look for. If you have any questions about your pain medication, ask your local pharmacist or your health care professional.
As summer approaches, more families are heading to the pool to cool off. It is also a time when many who suffer from a wide range of pain conditions take advantage of the pool to help ease their pain. But does swimming actually help reduce degenerative disc disease pain? There is a bit of a debate within the chronic pain community about this exact question. Some argue swimming can worsen back pain, while others say swimming is a safe form of exercise for degenerative disc disease.
Our pain management doctors often recommend exercise to help relieve degenerative disc pain. Light and low-impact exercise can help increase blood flow to the spine, strengthen the muscles that support the spine, and even help patients keep off additional weight. High-impact exercises, like running or jumping, may cause a great deal of pain because damaged discs cannot absorb shock as well on hard surfaces. Swimming solves this problem because our spines don’t have to work as hard to support our bodies. The buoyancy of water eliminates the stress that is usually absorbed by the joints during exercise.
For this reason, patients with degenerative disc disease may find pain relief from doing light stretches or exercises in the pool. Backstroke is often recommended because it promotes a neutral spine, and reduces the risk of hyperextension associated with other swim strokes. Those who are not ready for swimming may opt to try water aerobics, which can help strengthen the core and lower back muscles.
In some cases, however, swimming may be harmful to degenerative disc disease and other back or spine conditions. Patients unfamiliar with the breaststroke may accidentally throw the head back too far, and those doing a front stroke requiring them to look to the side for breath may hurt their necks as well. Patients who want to try swimming for degenerative disc pain should first consult with their doctor, and consider working with a certified trainer or physical therapist before trying any of the exercises on their own.
If you are cleared to swim, start with spine-friendly swim techniques and stretches that you are already familiar with – and go slow. Take care to use proper technique, and try to keep your body straight and avoid twisting the spine. Floatation devices can be used to help avoid hyperextension in your back or neck, as you are less tempted to move into an irregular position to stay afloat.
Through activities like swimming and aqua therapy, you can beat the heat and feel better too. If you are experiencing degenerative disc disease pain or other back pain, talk to your physician or a board-certified pain management specialist for more tips to relieve your back pain.
This Mother’s Day, take pity on the woman who cooks, cleans, shops, fusses and worries over you.
Before you overwhelm her with breakfast in bed, let her sleep in.
It’s no secret that women are chronically sleep deprived, and moms, especially working moms, are at the top of that list.
According to a survey conducted by the National Sleep Foundation, almost three out of four American women between the ages of 30 and 60 don’t get the recommended eight hours of sleep a night during the week. The average weeknight’s sleep for women is only about six-and-a-half hours.
“Sleep deprivation is epidemic in the United States,” says Gary Zammit, director of the Sleep Disorders Institute at St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital in New York City. “Most of us need eight hours or more in order to feel refreshed and fully functional during the day. The majority of us are getting less than that.”
“It’s part of the achievement orientation that’s become unbalanced in our society, which results in a lack of respect and attention to rest and relaxation, not to mention play,” adds Dr. Suzanne Griffin, a clinical assistant professor of psychiatry at Georgetown University Medical Center in Washington, D.C.
What are the reasons for the lack of sleep and lack of quality sleep? They can run the gamut from hormonal fluctuations to depression and anxiety to just being a vigilant mom, the experts say.
“The most obvious one is hormonal fluctuations, which, to some extent, defines femaleness, and there are several different times in life when we encounter this,” Griffin says. Menopausal, perimenopausal and postpartum women are most likely to have disturbances in sleep continuity. Also, one quarter to one third of women will experience some sleep disturbance while they have premenstrual syndrome (PMS) at least half the time, Griffin adds.
Women are also more likely to suffer from certain diseases that are associated with sleep disturbances, such as fibromyalgia and depression.
Moms have additional difficulties.
“For many mothers, their brain is set to a level of vigilance and awareness even during sleep that allows them to wake up to small changes in the environment — whimpers, coughs, kids getting up and padding around,” Griffin says. “What happens in particularly sensitive people, once they get that level of arousal going, their brain is trained to wake up, and then they develop a more chronic sleep disturbance.”
There’s also a social aspect related to the increasing number of roles that women are taking on in society.
“As women have occupied more important roles in the workplace, they haven’t necessarily relieved themselves of their traditional roles in the home,” Zammit says. “For women, particularly mothers, they go out and work and then they come home and for the most part they bear the greatest burden in the family of caring for their spouse, cooking, laundry, children and so on. Most of them fit it in by cheating on their sleep.”
“Even a small amount of sleep deprivation — say an hour a night when it occurs chronically over an extended period [of] one or two weeks — that can have an impact that is as significant as staying awake all night long and then trying to function,” Zammit says.
People who don’t get enough sleep are often not at peak performance. Their memory, concentration, cognitive functioning, attention and mood all suffer.
Fatigued people are also at greater risk for accidents and injury, especially motor vehicle accidents. The National Transportation Safety Board reports that 100,000 police-reported crashes each year are the direct result of drowsy driving, resulting in more than 1,550 deaths, 71,000 injuries and $12.5 billion in economic costs.
But don’t lose hope. There are several common-sense things moms and all women can do to try to get their sleep and life back on track. Try these steps:
“The most important thing is learning to say ‘no,’ and the second most important is delegating,” Griffin says. Try setting limits on the amount of time you are willing to devote to particular activities, and determine what your most important priorities are. For Griffin, mothering her children was the clear priority that led her to change her schedule and professional commitments.
Stay away from alcohol and caffeine, both of which can alter your sleep for the worse.
Dedicate the bedroom to sleep and love only, Griffin suggests. If you have trouble sleeping or getting to sleep, don’t read, talk on the phone, watch TV or make lists in bed.
Go to bed and get up at the same time every day.
Relax for an hour before going to bed, Griffin advises. “If you have been busy, busy, busy until the minute you get into bed, it’s going to be difficult to turn off your head,” she explains.
Turn the clock around so, if you are awake, you’re not watching the time.
Try a light snack before you go to bed so your blood sugar doesn’t drop and wake you up in the middle of the night. Avoid snacks with a heavy sugar content, Griffin advises, and go for cheese and crackers or cheese and fruit instead. Don’t have any heavy meals within three hours of going to bed.
Stay away from herbal remedies because in the United States, it’s hard to know what the potency of a compound is. Opt instead for herbal teas such as peppermint, Sleepy Time and chamomile, Griffin says.
“Exercising is really important for promoting good sleep, but it needs to occur more than three hours before bedtime, otherwise it will interfere with getting to sleep,” Griffin says.
If you find you can’t sleep after 15 minutes in bed, get out of bed and go to a quiet, dimly lit place where you can relax until you fall asleep. Don’t get up to do the laundry.
If your sleep disorder persists, visit a sleep-disorders center, but make sure it’s accredited by the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, Zammit says.
“It’s important to realize that better living does not necessarily mean more living. It might mean better quality living,” Zammit says.
“As people think about what life experiences are like going through life fatigued, they’re not really getting the most out of their lives and they’re probably not delivering the most to their families,” he adds. “So, actually saying that, ‘yes, sleep is an essential for me,’ is part of setting the foundation for a good life.”
When you drop something on your foot or slam your finger in a drawer, you know that pain will usually follow. Did you ever wonder why you feel that pain? Feeling pain in response to an injury is a signal that your body has been damaged in some way. Or, if you have an illness, headache, or another type of pain, it’s a signal to your brain that something is not right.
Our nervous system is made up of the brain and the spinal cord, which combine to form the central nervous system; and our sensory and motor nerves, which form the peripheral nervous system. Nerves send information about what is happening in our environment to the brain via the spinal cord. The brain then sends information back to our nerves, helping us to perform actions in response.
There are two major categories of pain: acute pain (short-term) and chronic pain (long-term).
Acute pain is a severe or sudden pain that resolves within an expected amount of time. You might feel acute pain when you experience an injury, have surgery, or are sick. An example of acute pain is when you twist your ankle. The sensory nerves in your ankle respond by firing off, letting the spinal cord instantly know that something is wrong. Your spinal cord delivers the message to the brain. Finally, the brain decides how bad the injury is and what to do next. Your brain is a massive database stored with every incident like this in your life, and it reverts back to other situations when this kind of injury has happened. Then your brain decides whether to invoke tears, increase your heart rate, release adrenaline, or any one of a billion other possible responses.
With chronic pain, however, the initial pain receptors continue to fire after the injury. Chronic pain is defined as pain that lasts three months or more, or longer than the expected healing time for an illness or trauma. Chronic pain can be caused by a disease or condition that continuously causes damage. For example, with arthritis, the joint is in a constant state of disrepair, causing pain signals to travel to the brain with little downtime. Sometimes, there is no longer a physical cause of pain, but the pain response is the same. In these cases, it is difficult to pin down the cause of the chronic pain, and difficult to treat.
Response to pain is individual, and what may be painful to one person can be only slightly uncomfortable to another. Because pain messages pass through the emotional and thinking regions of your brain, your experience of pain is shaped not just by the physical damage or sensation, but by psychological, emotional, and social factors as well. Your memories of past painful experiences, genetics, long-term health problems, coping strategies, and attitude toward pain can all contribute to how you feel pain.
Each year in the United States, millions of prescriptions are written for opioids to relieve chronic pain. When used appropriately, they can be a viable treatment option for some patients. But, there are health risks associated with the use of opioids. Concerns about opioid addiction have led to increased regulation and changes in opioid prescribing guidelines. With the current opioid epidemic in the United States, healthcare providers and their patients are increasingly seeking non-opioid pain relief options.
For non-opioid pain relief, non-prescription medications such as NSAIDs (e.g. naproxen or ibuprofen) or acetaminophen may be all that some patients need. Other patients may work with their physicians to find that prescription-strength NSAIDs, corticosteroids, or muscle relaxants reduce their pain.
Antiseizure medications (anticonvulsants)can also be used as pain medication. They work by inhibiting certain types of nerve transmissions. This can decrease neuropathic pain sensations, such as those caused by trigeminal neuralgia or diabetic neuropathy. Anticonvulsants commonly used as pain medications include gabapentin and pregabalin.
Topical analgesics can also be beneficial for pain relief. Applied to the skin, these medications are available as creams, lotions, or patches. Several can be purchased over the counter, while others need a doctor’s prescription. They work in a few different ways, depending on their active ingredient. Some deliver pain medication through the skin, such as trolamine salicylate. Other topical analgesics contain ingredients that can interfere with pain perception, such as capsaicin.
If you’re suffering from chronic pain and want to avoid taking opioids or other medications altogether, a pain specialist can work with you to develop a pain management plan. Pain specialists can use interventional pain procedures – minimally invasive, outpatient procedures – to manage chronic pain. Joint injections, nerve blocks, and other minimally invasive procedures such as kyphoplasty and spinal cord stimulators are effective treatment options that can deliver significant pain relief. These procedures are often performed in an ambulatory surgery center, and patients are able to return home the same day. Many patients experience relief from their chronic pain symptoms shortly after their procedure.
Patients may choose to work with their healthcare providers to pursue non-drug remedies such as massage, acupuncture, and exercise to relieve chronic pain. Stretching, strengthening exercises, and low-impact activities such as walking and swimming can help reduce pain symptoms. In fact, exercise is often recommended to alleviate pain due to fibromyalgia, and many arthritis sufferers find that light exercise reduces their joint pain.
Regardless of your chronic pain condition, there are options for the management of your pain symptoms that don’t include the use of opioids. To learn more and discuss treatment options that may be right for you, make an appointment with your physician or a board-certified pain specialist.
Fibromyalgia was once dismissed by many traditional medical practitioners as a phantom illness.
But that view is changing rapidly. Not only is fibromyalgia accepted as a diagnosable illness, it is also a syndrome that researchers are finding more complicated as new information emerges.
As recently as a year ago, many physicians still associated some of fibromyalgia’s symptoms with emotional problems, but that’s no longer the case.
A simple description of fibromyalgia is that it is a chronic syndrome characterized by widespread muscle pain and fatigue.
For still unknown reasons, people with fibromyalgia have increased sensitivity to pain that occurs in areas called their “tender points.” Common ones are the front of the knees, the elbows, the hip joints, the neck and spine. People may also experience sleep disturbances, morning stiffness, irritable bowel syndrome, anxiety and other symptoms.
According to the American College of Rheumatology, fibromyalgia affects 3 million to 6 million Americans, 80 percent to 90 percent of whom are women. The condition is most often diagnosed during middle age, but at least one of its symptoms appears earlier in life.
But is there a psychological tie-in strong enough to differentiate fibromyalgia from other similar diseases and conditions? Apparently not.
“Fibromyalgia patients are such a diverse group of patients, they cannot all be the same,” said Dr. Thorsten Giesecke, a University of Michigan research fellow.
Giesecke and his colleagues evaluated 97 fibromyalgia patients, including 85 women and 12 men. The patients underwent a two-day series of tests, answering questions about their coping strategies and personality traits — particularly their emotional well-being. They were also tested for sensitivity to pressure and pain.
“It’s generally been thought that fibromyalgia patients who have higher distress have higher pain sensitivities,” Giesecke said.
In other words, it was believed that those with fibromyalgia who were prone to emotional difficulties such as depression and anxiety were more likely to experience greater physical pain.
But his study didn’t bear that out. In fact, patients in one of the three groups in the study who had the highest pain levels had the lowest anxiety.
The term fibromyalgia comes from the Latin word for fibrous tissue (fibro) and the Greek ones for muscle (myo) and pain (algia). Tender points are specific locations on the body — 18 points on the neck, shoulders, back, hips and upper and lower extremities — where individuals with fibromyalgia feel pain in response to relatively slight pressure.
The U.S. government’s National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases says fibromyalgia patients often experience combinations of many other chronic and frustrating symptoms, including:
cognitive and memory problems, sometimes referred to as “fibro fog.”
Latest research indicates that fibromyalgia is the result of internal biochemical imbalances that cause physical symptoms such as pain, weakness and mental impairment. Because it is a syndrome — a collection of signs and symptoms — rather than a disease, fibromyalgia can’t be diagnosed by an invariable set of specific symptoms or reproducible laboratory findings.
Even with the findings about relatively small psychological influence, practical experience seems to indicate that stress may play a role. Roger H. Murphree, a Birmingham, Ala., chiropractor who specializes in treating patients with fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome, said he has seen a link between stress and the intensity of fibromyalgia.
“Most of us live in a world of stress,” Murphree said. “Something has to give, and it’s usually sleep. Meanwhile, we subsist on junk food, caffeine, alcohol and prescription medications. Such a lifestyle isn’t good for anyone. But for an unlucky few, the toll is severe.”
Dr. Jacob Teitelbaum, whose practice in Annapolis, Md., led him to do research into fibromyalgia and the closely related chronic fatigue syndrome, concluded that the body’s endocrine system could hold the clue to treatment. It’s a matter of how the body’s energy is marshaled, he said.
“Fibromyalgia is like the body blowing a fuse,” he explained. “The hypothalamus serves as humans’ internal fuse box. When the demands of living build up, stress increases and the hypothalamus shuts down. Because the circuit is overtaxed and the fuse is blown, the body simply can’t generate enough energy.”
“That causes muscles to cease functioning in a shortened position, resulting in pain all over the body and a general feeling of fatigue or weariness,” Teitelbaum said.
Murphree’s experience with hundreds of patients confirms Teitelbaum’s analogy. Most, he said, are either “Type A” perfectionists or “Type B” caregivers.
“Type A fibromyalgia patients work and work and work until they burn out,” said Murphree. “Type B patients give and give and give — nurturing their spouses, children, family and friends — until they break down. Anyone whose lifestyle includes very little downtime is at risk.”
Teitelbaum recommends a four–pronged approach to repair the “blown fuse” and turn the body’s current back on:
Restoration of sleep — at a minimum, eight to nine hours every night, using appropriate medications, as needed;
Restoration of a normal hormone balance, including thyroid, adrenal and reproductive hormones;
Appropriate treatment for infections that may be present as a consequence of the body’s depleted immune function;
Nutritional support, particularly with B complex vitamins, magnesium, zinc and malic acid.
Teitelbaum uses the acronym SHIN to summarize his treatment regimen. “S is for sleep, H for hormone balance, I for infection control, and N for nutrition,” he explained. “The important thing is that all four should be implemented in concert with one another for maximum therapeutic effect.”
November is considered International Nerve Pain Awareness Month, or in simpler terms, NERVEmber. It is a time to bring awareness to complexregional pain syndrome (CRPS) and the more than 150 other conditions with nerve pain as a symptom. Several landmarks across the country were lit up on November 5th to Color the World Orange, and members of the pain community will be wearing orange all month long to show support for those suffering from this debilitating condition.
What is Complex Regional Pain Syndrome?
Complex regional pain syndrome (CRPS) may also be known as reflex sympathetic dystrophy or RSD. A chronic and painful condition, CRPS affects more than 75,000 Americans but has no known or determinable cause. It is a chronic pain condition that affects one limb (arm, leg, hand, or foot), usually after a trauma or injury.
CRPS causes an intense burning or “pins and needles” sensation that radiates to a larger area and will cause a severely painful reaction that is not expected with the type of injury sustained. For example, a small cut on the tip of the finger would be considered minor to someone in good health, but for an individual with CRPS, that small cut would radiate a burning pain that traveled up the arm and could be excruciating.
While there is no known cause for CRPS, it is believed that an injury or trauma that did not heal properly may be a contributor, or nerve damage that spread instead of healing may be a cause. However, known cause or not, those with CRPS suffer many difficult days with their painful condition.
Other common symptoms of CRPS include:
continuous pain in the affected region (may be burning or throbbing in nature)
decreased range of motion in the affected region or body part
extreme sensitivity to non-painful stimuli (clothing against the skin, water pressure from the shower, etc.)
Left untreated, CRPS can eventually spread to the other side or another body part. Regardless of cause or severity, treatment of CRPS has far better results if it is begun early in the onset of the condition. Treatment options for CRPS vary by patient and may include rehabilitation and physical therapy to keep the limb moving, improve blood flow to the affected area, and lessen circulatory symptoms. Medications such as antidepressants, corticosteroids, and anticonvulsants have been beneficial in treating CRPS. Nerve blocks to reduce pain signals have also shown benefits in specific cases, as has spinal cord stimulation and other types of neural stimulation.
New research shows that the Chinese treatment known as acupuncture may help control lower back pain without the added side effects of many pain control medications.
An ancient Eastern science that has been steadily gaining popularity in the West, acupuncture uses the relatively painless placement of tiny needles into various nerve pathways on the body to help stimulate the production of natural pain relievers called endorphins.
“Essentially, the acupuncture works somewhat like a pain-relieving drug in the sense that it provides temporary relief,” says study author Dr. Charis Meng, a licensed acupuncturist and rheumatologist at the Integrated and Complementary Care Center of Hospital for Special Surgery in New York City.
Unlike traditional painkillers, which often require increasing amounts to get the same relief, acupuncture has somewhat of a cumulative effect, Meng says. “After a period of time, the number of treatments can be dramatically reduced while still maintaining the same levels of pain control,” she says.
According to rehabilitation medicine expert and licensed acupuncturist Dr. James Dillard, for those who can’t or don’t want to use traditional pain medicines, acupuncture is becoming an accepted way to control chronic pain.
“The study is small but well done and is another entry in the growing body of evidence that shows acupuncture can be an accepted and very effective form of therapy for some people,” says Dillard, clinical advisor to Columbia University’s Richard and Hinda Rosenthal Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine and assistant clinical professor at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons.
In particular, he says, the benefits for the elderly can be extremely important.
“Most elderly people are already taking a number of medications for various health problems, so anytime you can cut down on the number of pills they have to take and still offer pain relief, that’s a good thing,” says Dillard.
Indeed, the six-week study did concentrate on elderly patients, with 40 participants all over the age of 60. Each complained of chronic low back pain for at least 12 weeks, and all had undergone various types of medical imaging to rule out spinal tumor, infection, fracture, as well as certain neurological symptoms. Patients who had previously undergone either acupuncture or lumbar surgery were also excluded.
“The study did include patients who suffered with sciatica or disk problems,” says Meng.
At the start of the study, patients answered questions and took a test that measured the degree of their pain.
The patients were then divided into two groups. One group of 21 patients continued taking standard pain therapy prescribed by their doctors, including non-steroidal anti–inflammatory drugs, muscle relaxants and acetaminophen (Tylenol), as well as back exercises.
The second group of 19 patients also continued taking their traditional therapy, but added twice-weekly acupuncture treatments for five weeks.
Pain scores were repeated two weeks into treatment, again one week later, and three weeks after the treatments ended.
The result, says Meng, was that “patients who underwent acupuncture had significantly less pain and disability in their lower back than patients who took standard traditional therapies alone.”
In addition, she says, results were so impressive that 17 of the 21 patients in the group that were allowed only standard therapy elected to begin a six-week acupuncture regimen when the study ended. They, too, experienced similar pain reduction.
The results were presented at the annual meeting of the American College of Rheumatology, which met earlier this month in San Francisco.
In addition to the lower back pain study, research also presented at the conference found acupuncture provided relief for patients with fibromyalgia, a chronic and painful muscle-related disorder affecting mostly women.
During this 16-week study, conducted by a group of Brazilian researchers, 60 patients received nightly doses of 25 milligrams of amitryptiline, an antidepressant found to offer some pain relief. Additionally, 20 of the 60 patients received a once-weekly acupuncture treatment, while 20 more received a weekly sham acupuncture treatment.
Using various pain diagnostic methods before and after the study began, the doctors concluded that, over the study period, only those patients who completed the acupuncture treatments had a measurable decrease in their pain.
“Fibromyalgia is a devastating problem that is frustrating for both doctor and patient because there are so few treatments that offer significant improvement in symptoms,” says Dillard.
“As with chronic back pain, anything that you can do to help these patients, particularly if it doesn’t require the use of more drugs, becomes an important contribution to their treatment and care,” says Dillard. This study, he says, is an important step in expanding the boundaries of treatment for patients with fibromyalgia.
Back pain affects 80 percent of us at some point in our lives. The good news is that for many people suffering from low back pain, exercises to stretch the hip flexor muscles can help.
The hip flexors are a group of muscles than run from your thighs all the way up to your low back. They include muscles with strange-sounding names such as the ilacus, the psoas, and the rectus femoris. As a group, these muscles let you bend at the waist and bring your knee to your chest.
The problem is that many of us spend our days sitting. When we do that, these muscles are always in a state of contraction. This causes them to shorten and become weaker.
One of the hip flexor muscles, the psoas is attached to your lumbar vertebrae—the five bones that form the spine in your lower back. So you can see why tightness or weakness in this muscle could affect your back.
Stretching the hip flexor muscles can help prevent and treat some causes of lower back pain. If you’re having low back pain and you think it might be a result of tight or weak hip flexors, spending a few minutes a day on some simple stretches could help.
Before you start any exercise program, of course, check with your doctor to make sure you’re in good enough health to perform the exercises without hurting yourself and that there aren’t underlying conditions that need to be treated.
Kneel with your knees and hands on the ground, facing the floor, and your back straight.
Move your right foot forward so that it’s on the outside of your right hand. Make sure the right ankle is slightly in front of the right knee.
Extend your left foot back behind you so that your knee, shin, and foot are touching the floor.
Press your hips forward until you feel a stretch. Hold the stretch for 30 seconds.
Repeat the stretch on the other side of your body.
For more ideas on stretching your hip flexor muscles, check out this Self magazine article or this GuerillaZen Fitness video. You also might find this article on yoga-based stretches helpful.
To be sure you’re doing the exercises correctly, we encourage you to make an appointment with a physical therapist.
