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Archive for May 11th, 2010

Throughout our lives we often have to deal with pain in its various forms. It can be a small injury or a serious trauma, it can be a light headache or a strong back pain, it can wear off in minutes and last for years. Pain follows us throughout our lives and never leaves us to be careless about what we are doing. Of course, there’s nothing pleasant about pain but if we were unable to feel pain the world would be much more of a stranger place for us where surviving would be much harder for the whole humankind. Pain simply tells us that something is wrong, whether within our body or outside of it that is dangerous and harmful. Imagine world without pain – yes it would be a very good place for a couple of minutes until you are exposed to something harmful, not feeling it, and simply die. Yes, pain is that important.

However pain can certainly make you wish you were dead, especially when it’s severe and chronic. That is why people throughout centuries have been developing ways of treating pain. From herbs to Tramadol, from cold objects to cognitive therapy there are numerous ways you can manage pain. But before trying to overcome pain, you first have to understand what pain really is. It is not a medical condition by itself, pain is only a symptom, a signal that something is wrong in the body. And if in case of an injury the cause is evident, quite often pain signals that there are underlying health problems that have to be treated, which the person was not aware of. And this is one of the most effective ways to overcome pain – treating the condition causing it. Chronic pain is the type of pain that is most commonly observed in cases of an underlying medical condition. Acute pain usually results from injuries and typically fades away over a short period of time. Chronic pain, as you can guess from the name, persists for longer periods of time, which in some cases spread over days, months and even years.

Having two types of pain means that there are two different approaches. In case of mild or medium acute pain resulted from an injury you can simply use a cold object over the area of impact to calm the pain down. In cases of severe acute pain people usually take strong analgesics such as narcotics that act immediately and are not to be used repetitive.

When you deal with chronic pain, different types of pain management are employed. Suffering from chronic pains makes it impossible for strong narcotic painkillers to be used because of their heavy side-effects that make the remedy worse than the disease. Instead doctors usually prescribe drugs such as Tramadol to help patients cope with pain. Besides, as we already know, chronic pain results from various medical conditions within the body, thus treating them usually leads to pain relief. But in case that doesn’t help, there are numerous drugs and therapies you can use to overcome pain. Make sure to talk about it with your doctor who may recommend you with the most appropriate type of treatment for your case.

In traditional Chinese medicine, acupuncture has been accepted as a safe and effective form of treatment for centuries. The Western medical profession has always been sceptical about the medicinal effectiveness of sticking needles into people. But a recent clinical trial reported in the Archives of Internal Medicine this May, has produced new evidence that may prompt a more general re-evaluation of the technique for the management of pain. In Seatle, the Group Health Center for Health Studies recruited some 640 people suffering from back pain. It is often difficult to make a precise diagnosis of the causes of pain in the back. People report a range of non-specific symptoms. Many doctors are therefore trying a wide range of different therapies to see which produce the best results in relieving pain symptoms. Randomly dividing the recruits into four groups of 160, the volunteers were given genuine acupuncture, simulated acupuncture by pricking the skin with toothpicks in the correct locations, were randomly pricked with real needles, and were given conventional physical therapy. This produces one genuine form of acupuncture, two placebo versions and conventional treatment.

The treatment in all four cases administered ten sessions over a seven week period. There were follow-up interviews to assess each patient’s quality of life at 2, 6 and 12 months after the end of the treatment. About 60% of those who received one of the three versions of acupuncture reported significant improvement in mobility at all three interview. Only 40-50% of those who received a conventional Western form of treatment reported improvement. It seems that prodding someone with a toothpick is just as effective as actually inserting needles. This tends to confirm earlier research findings that social contact with the individuals administering the treatment is just as important as the treatment being administered. If the patient/therapist relationship is good, people derive benefit from the sessions.

This leaves the latest research findings uncertain. There was no clear evidence showing that “real” acupuncture is better than “fake” acupuncture. The way the mind and the body interact to create, send and understand pain messages is complicated. Medical science is making progress but, when it comes to back pain, it seems that both conventional and unconventional therapies can be equally effective because of the placebo effect. In the case of drugs, however, clinical trials have produced very clear evidence that they do work to reduce pain. For moderate to severe pain, the use of tramadol has consistently been shown safe and effective. This has been confirmed by millions of patients around the world. But note the numbers from this latest study: 60% of those who received any version of acupuncture reported a good quality of life after 12 months. No matter how it works, it does reduce the pain and improve the mobility. So alongside the drive to buy tramadol, talk with your doctor about acupuncture or any of the other forms of therapy. While tramadol does work, it is not good to depend on it. Finding an alternative but effective form of treatment is the best long-term solution.

Well, it’s that time of the decade again and the American Psychiatric Association (APA) is going through it ritual of revising the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM). Let’s be clear why this is important. For better of worse, the DSM is like a bible, containing words of wisdom on which clusters of symptoms represent which disorders. The idea is to do away with the zip code lottery of diagnosis. In one US state you might be diagnosed as a bit eccentric. With the same behavior in a different state, you might be considered a danger to the community and committed to care. With the DSM as a guide, you hope to get the same diagnosis no matter who the patient is, where he or she may be found and who the doctor is. Unfortunately, the APA is caught in a terrible conflict of interest.

The majority of its members regularly receive gifts and incentives from the drug manufacturers. This benevolence is designed to encourage the use of the relevant drugs. When these same doctors sit down to discuss diagnoses and which drugs to recommend, they cannot forget all the past generosity. It inevitably influences their decisions. More importantly, if particular drugs receive approval in the DSM, this represents several billion dollars in revenue. The manufacturers therefore spend heavily in trying to ensure their drugs continue to be linked to the relevant disorders. The result is the DSM is full of disorders that are only poorly defined and linked to drugs often little more effective than placebos.

If we go back sixty years, psychiatry in the US was still running in parallel with the European tradition of scientific method. This produced carefully defined diagnoses for general conditions, leaving practitioners with some flexibility to take a common sense view of the individual patient. Hence, the technical term might be a “nervous breakdown” which is a catch-all definition for anyone who has a few problems. But as the pharmaceutical industry used its economic power, these broad definitions were increasingly broken down into separate classes of disorder. As each new batch of disorders was defined, the manufacturers produced drugs specifically targeting each new disorder. In reality, people are still having nervous breakdowns and, truth be told, all the major drugs are interchangeable because the separate disorders are really only one or two basic types.

What prompted this redefinition of terms? Firstly, the introduction of the benzodiazepines. The manufacturers wanted a distinction between anxiety disorders and depression for marketing purposes. Once the APA gave in, it was the slippery slope to the present confused mess. As everyone knows, all depression has elements of anxiety and panic, just as anxiety and panic are indistinguishable from elements in depression. Recent surveys have found doctors routinely prescribing benzodiazepines such as xanax regardless of the diagnosis as anxiety or depression, and finding the same excellent results.

Secondly, the APA wanted to move away from Freudian analysis and to ground diagnosis in observable symptoms. This led to the introduction of “major depression” and “bipolar disorder” which lump different sets of symptoms together in either a stable or unstable form. As the SSRIs came in as treatments for major depression, the pressure to keep inventing new disorders grew. Now all the anxiety and panic disorders are multiplying. Needless to say, xanax remains the most effective treatment no matter what labels are attached to the symptoms. If you are anxious, xanax is the answer. Sadly, the APA will not sympathize with such a simple view of the world.

Until eighteen months ago Jason Ludwick’s life was dominated by what he could not do. He was in and out of hospital and living on a cocktail of expensive drugs to try and keep his failing heart functioning. Then, like hundreds of others he went to Thailand for adult stem cell therapy to get real help for heart disease.

Jason Ludwick aged 34 from West Bloomfield, Michigan, counts himself a lucky man. Born with an atrial septal defect, by the time he was 15 he had a pacemaker; by 21 he was diagnosed as having cardiomyopathy and by 25 he had a defibrillator in place and an ejection fraction of just 8-10 percent. Heart failure dominated and restricted his life until he received adult stem cell therapy. Now he says that with training he could do a triathlon.

While his schoolmates ran and played sports, Jason’s life was dominated by his illness and his failing heart ensured he did not run or play any contact sports. He was in and out of hospital and living on a cocktail of expensive drugs. His kidneys bled, his liver swelled, he suffered from asthma and he found it difficult to throw off a common cold. Despite all this, Jason tried to live as normally as possible although his heart was steadily failing.

His mother searched for help after he was removed from a heart transplant list. He was then left only with medications, some of which had unpleasant side-effects and he felt constantly tired and depressed as he went back and forth to specialists having his medications reviewed. And then his mother read about adult stem cell therapy.

Just one month after his adult stem cell therapy, Jason knew his life was going to change, “My heart was beating better, more rhythmically, and I had more energy,” he said. “After six months I was up and flying, feeling 100 percent different. I could mow the lawns, take walks, ride a bike with my kids, lift weights – do whatever I liked,” he said. “I’m always on the go with our fifth child on the way and always busy as a full-time parent.”

Jason has always enjoyed a huge level of support from his family and friends, but is very happy to spend time advising other cardiomyopathy sufferers of the power of positive thinking. “Always try to be positive,” he counsels. “There is hope. Take care of your diet and help get the word out that adult stem cell therapy is worth getting done. It’s nothing like what you would have thought.”

Hundreds of people suffering from end-stage heart failure, cardiomyopathy or coronary heart disease, who have been amazed at the results of adult stem cells and the clinical outcomes. Those being told they are without any treatment options now have the choice of staying at home to await death or to join the 75-plus percent who will enjoy a longer life characterized by greater energy and far fewer symptoms.

Adult stem cell therapy is proving a lifeline to all those heart patients who are sick of being sick, or who do not wish their lives to be characterized by restricted activity, low energy, pain, cost and brevity. The trend will continue to grow as more and more people become aware that they cannot be harmed by a therapy that uses their own adult stem cells and that the procedures are straightforward, effective and performed in world-class hospitals by skilled, often eminent, heart specialists. Most encouraging clinical outcomes are being supported by research findings as well as by patient report. If Jason gets the time to train and does a triathlon, the world will sit up and take notice.

Jon Bradshaw writes constantly about the next to miraculous effects of adult stem cells. Theravitae’s Vescell adult stem cells the new frontier of regenerative medicine. They offer a return to a more active, longer and healthier life to patients who have heart disease or PAD. They are derived from the patient’s own blood so cannot be rejected by the body.