Is Your Psoas Causing Your Lower Back Pain?

This is an article by Anne Keiley. I offer it with the author’s permission for informational purposes. The author and I have no financial involvement.

THE VIEWS EXPRESSED BY THE AUTHOR ARE HER OWN AND DO NOT REPRESENT MY VIEW OR MEDICAL ADVICE.

Photo by Sam Burriss on Unsplash

Is Your Psoas Causing Your Lower Back Pain?

A lot of us sit in the office at desk jobs and don’t think about our posture. Long days spent sitting in front of the screen will slowly but surely take a toll on our lower back, especially if we aren’t educated on good and bad posture.

Former Secretary of State George P. Shultz’s Mea Culpa on the War on Drugs

A Unique Perspective of the War on Drugs

George Shultz has fought the war on drugs. He worked as the Secretary of State during the Reagan Administration when First Lady Nancy Reagan failed to significantly decrease drug abuse with her well-intended, yet overly simplistic, “Just Say No” campaign.

He has a unique perspective on the current drug crisis, since he’s fought in the trenches. Therefore, it’s especially significant that he now admits we have used the wrong tactics and are losing the battle. George P. Shultz and Pedro Aspe provide an accurate and sensible analysis of the current drug crisis in a recent New York Times article.

Gaslighting the Public

To Push a Political Agenda

It’s troubling to think that our thought leaders and government officials could intentionally mislead the public. But I was reminded this week after watching “The Post,” a film about the massive coverup that spanned three decades of secrets and lies about the Vietnam conflict, that our government has indeed intentionally deceived and lied to the American public.

Burying information is one way to further a political agenda. Limiting acceptable words and, as the National Review points out, choosing language specifically to distort the truth is another. You might be far more willing to ingest a meat additive, for example, if detractors hadn’t labeled it as “pink slime.”

Please Send the FDA Your Comments

New Opioid Policy Steering Committee

On September 29 of this year, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) published a notice — Opioid Policy Steering Committee; Establishment of a Public Docket; Request for Comments — in the Federal Register, The Daily Journal of the United States Government.

The FDA is seeking comments from members of the public, including chronic pain patients and their families, healthcare professionals, academic institutions, and industry relative to the FDA’s new Opioid Policy Steering Committee (OPSC).

FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb, M.D. has expressed his commitment to confronting the opioid crisis and reducing the possibility of opioid addiction. He established the OPSC, and charged the committee with seeking input from the public.

What Is a Human Life Worth?

President’s Council of Economic Advisers Calculate the Value of a Human Life

President Trump has declared the opioid crisis to be a national health emergency and appears to be developing the rationale for funding interventions to combat the program. The first step is to update the cost of the opioid crisis.

The President’s Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) recently published a report estimating the cost of the opioid crisis in 2015 to be $504 billion.

For that calculation, the CEA estimated the value of a life to be about $10.1 million.

The DEA Raids the Offices of My Friend and Colleague, Dr. Tennant

DEA Raids Offices of a Prominent Pain Physician

According to Pain News Network, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) has conducted a raid on the offices of Dr. Forest Tennant, “confiscating all of his patient records, appointment books and financial documents.”

A prominent California-based pain physician, Dr. Tennant is a valued friend and colleague. Unfortunately, I know what he is going through. It happened to me, too.

A DEA Raid on Another Pain Specialist’s Offices

I tell the whole story in my book, The Painful Truth, but here’s the abbreviated version. On Friday, August 27, 2010, nine men and women — some carrying guns, and all wearing black jackets emblazoned with either “DEA” or “POLICE” — trooped, unannounced, into the Lifetree Clinic’s offices. It was a raid.

Congratulations to American Scientists Hall, Rosbash, and Young

Jeffrey C. Hall, Michael Rosbash, and Michael W. Young’s Genetic Discovery

Three American scientists, Jeffrey C. Hall, Michael Rosbash, and Michael W. Young, jointly won the 2017 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. They earned the prestigious award for discovering the genes that control circadian rhythms.

The Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institute issued a press release that reads, “Their discoveries explain how plants, animals and humans adapt their biological rhythm so that it is synchronized with the Earth’s revolutions.” In other words, we’ve long known that human beings have biological clocks that are necessary for our good health and survival, but Hall, Rosbash, and Young were able to precisely identify the mechanisms of the “control center” for our internal clock.

Emotional Trauma Affects Boys and Girls Differently: What You Need To Know

Emotional Trauma Affects Boys and Girls Differently

More than a decade ago, I published an article proposing a tool that providers could use to help assess the risk of someone’s developing opioid aberrant drug-related behaviors if prescribed an opioid.

The instrument is commonly called the opioid risk tool, and it is still commonly used today. It can be found here.

As you can see, it is a simple, self-assessment questionnaire that covers five areas:

family history of substance abuse,
personal history of substance abuse,
age,
history of preadolescence sexual abuse,

This is the Reason OIC Is No Joking Matter

Why Joking About OIC Isn’t Funny

According to a recent Washington Post story, six in ten American adults take prescription drugs, and this has created a “vast market for new meds to treat the side effects of the old ones.” The article is titled: “The drug industry’s answer to opioid addiction: More pills.”

The article describes Jonathan Moss’s working on a treatment for “opioid-induced constipation,” or OIC.

You may have seen the controversial Super Bowl ad for Movantik, a drug that’s meant to treat constipation in people who use opioids for pain. Movantik is a new class of medication that reverses OIC.

Will the Opioid Epidemic Ever End? A Closer Look

“Abuse of opioid painkillers and heroin has been spreading throughout the U.S. population, from inner-city youths, jobless rural residents and high school students to wealthy suburbanites, young professionals and pop stars,” according to Peter Katel‘s recent CQ article, “Opioid Crisis: Can recent reforms curb the epidemic?” He continues, “More adults use prescription painkillers than cigarettes, smokeless tobacco or cigars combined, according to a federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration report released in September.”

« Previous Page