There is a wonderful idiom, several times used as the title to a movie and offering the comparative warning, “It shouldn’t happen to a dog.” It refers to some proposed act or omission that is so unpleasant to humans, it should not even be wished on a dog (being a mere animal, it might be expected to bear most things, but not this). Human culture has grown up with animals a part of our lives. Whether as pets, living as one of the family in our own homes, or as working beasts, we value them for “who” they are and what they can do for us. This means treating them in much the same way as humans. Read the rest of this entry »

Many people think the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) role is limited to licensing new drugs and medical devices, but it actually has a post-marketing role as well. Doctors and hospitals all round the US are required to report any and all adverse side effects to drugs. It’s not uncommon to find that drugs can pass through clinical trials involving only thousands of participants, but show side effects when millions start taking them. Read the rest of this entry »

Once formed, habits are difficult to break. It always just seems easier to go on as you have before. This can become a serious problem when science gets in the way of the habits. If you look at the world of adverts in print and the media, you will see opioids recommended as the sure-fire drugs to use as painkillers, no matter what the pain. It carries on in the venerable tradition of the slogan, “Beecham’s Pills cure all ills”. The idea of a panacea — one pill to rule them all, as The Dark Lord of Mordor might have said - has been around since the beginning of time. This is fair game for the marketers to use when talking to the public, but the same thinking has entered the training manuals for the medical profession. Sit in lectures for student doctors and you will hear the same story that opioids are the first line of defense when it comes to moderate to severe pain. Once you have the source of the prescriptions in on the group think, the habit is almost impossible to break. Read the rest of this entry »

Pain is the most undesirable feeling people usually experience. And even though no one really wishes to experience it, they just can not escape this feeling. The only thing that brings people to the physicians is pain. Mostly, people visit the doctor for getting relief from pain because of different reasons. Pain might differ from moderate to severe, according to the origin and severity degree of the origin. Read the rest of this entry »

When you suffer from pain you have a variety of drugs to help in overcoming it. But different types of painkillers have different properties and are usually applied in different circumstances. It is important that you know the properties of each analgesics type because the effectiveness of pain treatment can be largely determined by what kind of drug you use. So it’s in your own interest to learn about the difference between various kinds of painkiller medications. Read the rest of this entry »

A recent analysis of the data provided by the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) has shown that the US citizens today are taking more painkillers than ever before throughout the history. The study comprised a ten year period, and since 1997 the was a 90 per cent increase in painkiller medication consumption as reported by hospitals, pharmacies, and individual doctors.

The figures show that in the last year of the study the US population has consumed over 200,000 pounds of such painkillers as codeine, hydrocodone, meperidine, morphine, and oxycodone. If put in per capita perspective that means that every American consumed about 300 milligrams of analgesics.

One of the most used painkillers from that number were those containing oxycodone, which is the active element in the painkiller OxyContin. There was an astronomical increase of 600 per cent in sales in only 8 years of the study. Previously oxycodone was called “hillbilly heroin” because it was primarily traded over the counter in the Appalachia region and used for recreational purposes. However, today it is widely sold in big metropolitan areas from East to West.

Specialists suggest that there is a set of reasons behind such a skyrocketing use of analgesics among US citizens:

• The nation becomes older in age group proportions.
• Drugs have become much wider and more aggressively marketed with almost a triple increase in advertising spendings during the last ten years.
• Painkillers have become the cornerstone of the way the pain is treated and managed nowadays.

The last reason draws up more concerns from the part of professionals. It seems like it’s easier for an individual to take Tramadol pill for example and forget about the pain, rather than address a doctor to see whether there’s a health issue to be concerned with. Not speaking of exercises and improvements in lifestyle. Painkiller pills have become the fast solution for any trouble, but can they stand up with the array of public health issues that may arise in the future due to such tendencies. We’ll see.

Pain is something that all of us has experienced and is fully aware of. But most of the time it is very hard to describe what your pain feels like and what really troubles you. Some people even find it hard to tell someone else that they have pain because of different cultural, individual, psychological and other stereotypes. However, knowing how to report and describe pain is crucial for the concept of pain management – a new set of techniques that was designed to help people overcome pain effectively and efficiently. Read the rest of this entry »

First of all you have to understand what are analgesics. Simply put and analgesic medication is a painkiller, meaning its primary intention and use is to eliminate symptoms of pain. Usually this is achieved in two ways. The first way is to block the pain signals transferred to the brain through the means of the nervous system. And the second one is making the brain interpret pain signals differently from what is common. Generally there are two types of analgesic medications: narcotics and non-narcotics.

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Whoever you ask, they will all tell you the same thing. Everyone knows pain is a warning signal. It’s telling you there’s something wrong with your body and you should get it fixed. That’s conventional wisdom and it’s right. Except, what are you supposed to do when you have received the message and have done what you can to treat the cause? Read the rest of this entry »

When a country is at war, it depends on its soldiers to deliver the goods. If the army is a volunteer force, morale is usually high and the soldiers make commitments above and beyond the call of duty. The usual expression is “walking wounded”. These are the soldiers who have sufficient mobility to carry on the fight despite the injuries. The U.S. has been engaged in military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan for some time now. We are now well into the “surge” in Iraq and the commitment of troops to the NATO command in Afghanistan is being increased. Read the rest of this entry »