GOOGLE TRANSLATE NOW ANY LANGUAGE ———————————————>
I’ve upgraded WordPress to include a twitter account where we can discuss blog entries. Hope to see you there.. http://twitter.com/painmuse
I hope to be active there this year.
I have a program that tracks where users are from – pain is worldwide:
Thanks admin
One dumbed down rhizotomy - 42 degrees centigrade pulse treatment to the suprascapular nerve going to the shoulder can give long term 50% relief of various forms of chronic shoulder pain. The ease of this effect (only one treatment) makes one wonder just how much chronic shoulder pain is a nerve based disorder. Finding in some knee pains and tennis elbows also suggest nerve basis for continued problems.
The only traumatic cause of Fibromylagia is Motor Vehicle Accidents . see Fibromyalgia Is Only Induced by Motor Vehicle Trauma ?Whiplash Disease
Makes one think whiplash and neck damage are involved in FM. Neurolgical findings of neck spine damage (cervical myelopathy) are not uncommon in FM. So when does one decide to go ahead and have that looked into?
Back in 2006, Janice Montbriand and I wrote a poster about “Often Missed Treatable Co-Morbidities in Patients with Treatment Resistant Chronic Pain”. They included Bipolar disease, B12 and Vitamin D deficiencies, and sleep disorders. Each one of these is still an important issue today.
Rather than using a nerve probe to see if needle is in right position to refer to painful area, ultasound was done. In only 1 case was the right nerve area hit by injecting ilioinguinal and iliohypogastric nerves seen so they assumed nerve blocks of no value… Do others see a problem with this?
Cases of chronic back pain with or without non-radicular leg referrals (in leg but not classic sciatica) were examine clinically, with MRI and by using a “keyhole” scope instrument in the spine called an Epiduroscope. Scoping and probing area during scoping could reproduce spine and leg pains in 87% of cases. MRI concordance was only 3.5% (flip your coin – you’ll be more accurate).
Recent studies have shown a correlation between low Vitamin D levels and sickle pains. Case studies have shown significant relief of sickle pain with Vitamin D supplementation.
In 2006, My Daughter, Janice Montbriand, published a poster called Commonly Missed Factors in Chronic Pain. Vitamin D deficiency was one of them. Since the there have been a variety of confirmatory studies – with some negative ones as well. I will review some of the positive ones.
Two Cases of Cystoscopy proven Interstitial Cystitis (with granulations) attained 100% relief of bladder pain with 3 mls 1% lidocaine and 40 mg kenalog injected caudally. Both had obvious tarlov cysts in sacrum casing sacral nerve irritation but makes one wonder if this would help causes with other forms of low back sciaticas.
I had not researched Cyclosporin A for Interstitial cystitis prior so felt I should..
Got a recent enquiry of what to do if you are an enbrel failure. I will go over what I can.
Various desperately in pain cases have written me wondering how useful it actually is. The answer is not easy and runs like this - “It depends”. Firstly, I feel sick to find that people are being gouged $2,000 – 5,000 dollars for a simple blind paraspinous injection that anyone could give – it spreads so well from paraspinous subcutaneous injection that the relief occurs within 20 minutes. Having said that, since the wild enthusiasm of Tobinick’s initial cases, the enthusiasm of etanercept injections has not taken off in the literature as one would have thought.
Is there anyone who can help me, please???
After causing extreme shortages of drugs in US, the US FDA came to Canada and shut down production of 90% of injectables from a Sandoz site in Quebec. This was not based on any finding of injury; merely because they can and want to adhere to standards that are cosmetically appealing. We are in a war against disease, and being thrust back into 1890′s medicine in Canada by a US agency brings up images of international war crimes. Sandoz then had a fire in their plant that completely halted production – that just sounds fishy to me.
I have published various article on how vitamin C reduced pains for shingles, wrist sugery, and preventing Complex Regional Pain. Now shown to reduce pain after surgery – cut opioid needs.
I had been told that adding local to botulinum toxin might block receptors that pick up the agent and hence decrease its effectiveness. A study using saline only and lidocaine- botulinum combo found no difference.
Rubbing Lateral Shin Acupuncture point SP* 5 minutes clockwise on one leg and 5 minutes counterclockwise on other dropped pains from 6.8/10 to 4.5/10.
Use of MSM (methylsulfonylmethane) for knee arthritis barely reached significance and did not reach clinical usefulness by self – maybe better if combined with NSAID’s?
Press release by A. Shah from Baylor College confirms that ketamine works well for depression. Press release makes a statling comment: “Prozac and other treatments each improve conditions for only about 30 to 40 percent of the patient population, barely outperforming placebos; meanwhile, a single infusion of ketamine washes away the symptoms of 80 to 90 percent of patients who try it, Shah said”
I got a recent piece of spam that said:
God must love stupid people. He made SO many.
(My inner self is telling me I don’t need to go to the gym so I think there is a little of that in everyone…)
Anyway I thought I would start making a list of cynical sayings for no reason than I like them – feel free to contribute to the list…
Omega 3 improved menstural cramp pains and need for ibuprofen after 3 months use.
Transcutaneous Nerve Stimulation (TENS = TNS)with one pad paraspinous and one pad front at level of shingles run 30 min daily – 20-40 hertz and 1-5 milliamps ended up with no pain at 6 months one versus 10% postherpetic neuralgia in drug treated or no treatment groups. Bizarrely, addition of anti-viral drugs to TNS prevented the beneficial effects.
I got a question on what could be done for Glossopharyngeal neuralgia and came across this article on repeated bilateral intraoral glossopharyngeal nerve injections and amitriptyline as an alternative.
In two separate studies, there seemed to be no advantage to using 80 mg steroid over 40 mg. If one stuck to 40 mg, then one could have a shot every 6 weeks, rather than having to wait 3 months for another shot.
With an increased drug sensitivity, subjects with IC/PB do not handle medications very well. Drugs specifically designed for their condiition (like Elmiron and intra-bladder DMSO)) do not work well. The beauty of this therapy was low does of multiple medications that seem to make a difference.
Twin studies have found genetic linkages of IC/painful bladder syndrome with several diseases – Irritable bowel, prior physical abuse, frequent headaches, multiple drug allergies, and self reported bladder infections.