Word: chronical
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Studies have shown that patients who use a multidisciplinary program do better than patients who take medications only," says Dr. Pamela Palmer, medical director of the pain-management center at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). "The anxiety, the depression, the hopelessness that come with chronic pain really all have to be addressed"--as do the loss of mobility, hypersensitivity to touch and other effects that can destroy the quality of life. "It's not as if you can just take an anti-inflammatory drug and all those problems go away." To pain specialists like Palmer, the hand wringing...
WHAT CAUSES CHRONIC PAIN...
...With chronic pain, however, the alarm continues to shriek uselessly long after the physical danger has passed. Somewhere along the line--maybe near the initial injury, maybe in the spinal cord or brain--the alarm system has broken down. What researchers have only recently come to understand is that prolonged exposure to this screaming siren actually does its own damage. "Pain causes a fundamental rewiring of the nervous system," says Dr. Sean Mackey, director of research at Stanford University's Pain Management Center. "Each time we feel pain, there are changes that occur that tend to amplify our experience...
...therapies (nerve blocks like epidurals); physical therapy and exercise; and behavioral techniques that include relaxation training, biofeedback and psychotherapy. "If you ask most physicians how they would treat a patient, they would say, 'I use this drug' or 'I use that drug.' But there are many ways of treating chronic conditions that don't involve drugs," says Dr. Allan Gordon, director of the Wasser Center. "You have to look at the whole individual. A multidisciplinary approach is the only answer." A patient who learns to reduce pain with breathing exercises or biofeedback, Gordon notes, can often manage his misery with...
...doing is telling them they have a mental illness and you don't really believe they have a physical problem," says Dr. Scott Fishman, an anesthesiologist, internist and psychiatrist who is chief of pain medicine at U.C. Davis. But the mind is always actively involved in pain, especially in chronic cases. "We know that when you image the brain, the areas that light up when you experience pain include parts of the brain involved in emotions," says Fishman. That is why learning to relieve fear, anxiety and depression related to pain actually helps bring relief, probably by activating the body...