Mind (#1- Mindbody Training)

I did a Google search for ‘meditation and pain management’ and got about 500,000 results. In itself this doesn’t really prove that meditation works but it shows a huge interest. A search for ‘magnet therapy for pain’ yielded over 130,000 results, even though magnet therapy has been almost completely discredited by scientific testing. A search [...]

A Drug User’s Guide (#7-Drugs)

Using drugs is like using doctors. When done correctly, you can benefit, sometimes greatly. Done poorly, you’ll just add to your problems. Be rational. Act wisely. At the beginning of this series, I listed 3 questions I ask myself about drugs (see Thinking About Drugs): What does the drug do? How is it used? What [...]

Using Drugs (#6-Drugs)

If you want to be a carpenter, you’d better learn how to use a hammer and saw. If you’re going to be a doctor, pharmacist, nurse, naturopath or other health care provider, you’d better learn how to prescribe, dispense or administer a drug. Without adequate training the chance of causing serious problems is great. There [...]

Opioids – Threat or Menace? (#5-Drugs)

Please forgive me for paraphrasing the title of an article about drug use published in the humor magazine the National Lampoon more than 30 years ago. I couldn’t resist the temptation. Opioids are a class of drugs that are either derived from opium or synthesized to be chemically similar to it (see Drug Therapy). These [...]

Risk and Benefit (#4-Drugs)

What if there was a drug that could completely relieve your pain but carried a 1 in a hundred thousand chance of killing you? Would you try it? What if the chances of death were 1 in a million or 1 in 10,000? Regardless of what you decide, your decision would likely be based on [...]

Testing (#3-Drugs)

There are really only two main ways to determine if a drug does what it is supposed to do. One way is to give the drug to people and observe what happens. This method has been used for as long as we have taken drugs. Naturopathy and practices such as traditional Chinese and Ayurvedic medicine [...]

Molecules (#2-Drugs)

I’ve already defined as a drug, anything you swallow, inject, inhale or absorb through body tissue to modify some mental or physical function. (See Drug Therapy). Drugs work at the molecular level. Regardless of whether a drug has been synthesized in a factory or picked from a plant, it is made up of molecules. A [...]

Thinking About Drugs (#1-Drugs)

The very word drug, immediately conjures a multitude of connotations that reflect our many views of the pharmaceutical and herbal substances we ingest. We characterize drugs as hard, soft, performance enhancing, mind expanding, toxic, synthetic, natural, addictive, dangerous and miraculous. Personal experience and exposure to information about drugs colour the way all of us (including [...]

Wanted: Chronic Pain Doctors (#9-Using Doctors)

The ideal chronic pain physician is the one who satisfies all your needs and wants with respect to your chronic pain. However, doctors are trained to manage problems, not satisfy needs and wants. Therefore you need to see that there are two sides to looking for a chronic pain doctor. Please understand that the following [...]