Archives for May 2017

Can Francis Collins Help Solve the Opioid Crisis?

The problem of opioid addiction is more complex than lawmakers, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), and the media would have us believe.

Pressuring doctors who treat pain patients to prescribe fewer opioids may reduce the amount of opioids prescribed. While that doesn’t decrease the need for opioids, it may drive people who need pain medication to the streets to find relief.

Today, opioids are the only effective, affordable treatment for some chronic pain conditions. They certainly are an imperfect medication associated with significant risks for some patients. But they are the best tools doctors have for delivering compassionate treatment to many people with intractable pain.

Open Letter to Secretary Tom Price

Mother Jones reports, “On a listening tour about the opioid epidemic in West Virginia on Tuesday, Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price stressed the urgency of tackling the staggering overdose problem, saying ‘we’re losing people every single day across the nation, so we don’t have time to wait.’ ”

Secretary Tom Price’s View Reflects a Misunderstanding

Secretary Price was right about that. However, “when it came time to discuss solutions, Price contradicted guidance from his own agency by asserting that medications to treat opioid addiction are ‘just substituting one opioid for another.'” As NPR says, his remarks were “unscientific and damaging.”

The Backlash of Government’s Efforts to Curb Opioid Prescribing

Turn the Tide Campaign Brings Unintended Consequences

It began just about a year ago, when the CDC Guideline for Prescribing Opioids for Chronic Pain provided “recommendations for primary care clinicians who were prescribing opioids for chronic pain outside of active cancer treatment, palliative care, and end-of-life care.” The emphasis is mine. The goal, as the CDC’s web site stated, was to improve “… the way opioids are prescribed through clinical practice guidelines” and to “ensure patients have access to safer, more effective chronic pain treatment while reducing the number of people who misuse, abuse, or overdose from these drugs.”

Cortisol and Your Body – What You Should Know

Jessica Hegg is the content manager at ViveHealth.com. Interested in all things related to living a healthy lifestyle, she works to share valuable information aimed at overcoming obstacles and improving the quality of life for others.

I hope you’ll find her article helpful. — Lynn R. Webster, MD

Ever wonder what’s really happening in your body when you are stressed? Stress, anxiety, feelings of frustration — these can all manifest with physical and mental effects including back pain, muscle tension, headaches, and mental fog, just to name a few. But what causes these bodily responses? Introducing our primary agent, cortisol – the stress hormone.