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Although most of us will never get to travel to outer space, we (unfortunately) share something with those who have: back pain. The journal of Anesthesiology reports that, along with an increase in commercial space travel, practitioners can expect to see even more patients with back pain. The...
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To help fulfill its mission to champion “the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of digestive disorders, serving as a beacon to guide the delivery of the highest quality, compassionate, and evidence-based patient care,” The American College of Gastroenterology has devoted its October issue of The...
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A study in JAMA Psychiatry reported that psychological treatment for primary chronic back pain may provide pain relief. Participants were randomized to usual care or 4 weeks of pain reprocessing therapy—a telehealth session with a physician and 8 psychological treatment sessions—that instructed...
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The PAINWeek National Conference has presented many courses teaching the benefits of music therapy. A university in Thailand is promoting a music therapy course, and not just to treat those in pain. Music therapy has helped lower blood pressure, soothe patients during dialysis or chemotherapy, or...
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A new study describes patterns of peak chronic migraine severity, day to day and days with perceived stress. The results of an observational prospective longitudinal cohort study, published in the journal of Headache, show that some of those who perceived higher levels of stress had higher peak...
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A new article in the SSM Population Health journal connects the dots between unsecured debt and ill health at midlife. Financial stressors, such as debt unconnected to an asset, can lead to health inequities. Researchers looked at the combination of high cost credit, debt, plus stagnating incomes...
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Researchers in an article published in this month’s BMJ ask, does medical cannabis relieve cancer or noncancer related chronic pain? They examined at around 30 trials with over 5100 patients given oral or topical medical cannabis. Results compared with placebo:
- Noninhaled medical cannabis led to...
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A rose is a rose is a rose. And an emoji of a rose is even easier to “get.” There are over 3500 Unicode Standard emoji, including medical-specific ones such as a pill or a syringe. Newer added emoji include a stethoscope, microbe, and drop of blood. Authors of a JAMA commentary suggest even more...
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Information in a preprint article, as yet not peer reviewed, aims to better understand the brain’s reward system via the nucleus accumbens (NAcc) circuits. Via fMRI, researchers compared healthy controls and patients with fibromyalgia, looking at NAcc medial prefrontal cortexes (MPFC), functional...
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According to an article published in the Journal of Pain Research, “chronic headache is the second leading cause of years lived with disability worldwide.” Researchers report the results of a 10 year study of Veterans and chronic pain. Over 3 million Veterans with at least 1 chronic pain condition...