Pickles | Comics
http://www.arcamax.com/thefunnies/pickles/s-1460375 (Source: Psychology of Pain)
Source: Psychology of Pain - January 29, 2014 Category: Psychiatrists and Psychologists Source Type: blogs
Pain Medicine News - Neuropathic Pain Trial Results Often Not Publicly Available, Survey Shows
Toronto—One-third of results from registered clinical trials of neuropathic pain treatments are not readily available, according to an extensive survey of neuropathic pain literature.According to Michael Rowbotham, MD, scientific director of the California Pacific Medical Center Research Institute in San Francisco, the unavailability of such a swath of trial results, compounded with selective publication bias, carry significant ethical, research and clinical implications."One problem is that the aggregating of these data tends to inflate treatment effect sizes," said Dr. Rowbotham. "If you overestimate the effect size, y...
Source: Psychology of Pain - January 26, 2014 Category: Psychiatrists and Psychologists Source Type: blogs
International Association for the Study of Pain | Buenos Aires 2014
The International Association for the Study of Pain will hold its 15th World Congress on Pain October 6-11, 2014, in Buenos Aires, Argentina! The Congress will attract more than 6,000 pain specialists from all over the world who will converge on Buenos Aires and present the most up-to-date information on the field of pain, from laboratory science to clinical diagnosis, management, and prevention.The Buenos Aires Scientific Program Committee will organize a program to include plenary sessions, topical workshops, refresher courses, and poster sessions covering every aspect of acute and chronic pain from basic science to clin...
Source: Psychology of Pain - January 25, 2014 Category: Psychiatrists and Psychologists Source Type: blogs
Pain In The Back? Exercise May Help You Learn Not To Feel It : Shots - Health News : NPR
More than 1 in 4 adult Americans say they've recently suffered a bout of low-back pain. It's one of the most common reasons people go to the doctor. And more and more people are being treated for it.
America spends more than $80 billion a year on back pain treatments. But many specialists say less treatment is usually more effective.
In fact, there's evidence that many standard treatments for back pain — surgery, spinal injections and painkillers — are often ineffective and can even worsen and prolong the problem.
Dr. Jerome Groopman agrees with that premise. He suffered back pain for almost 20 years. He...
Source: Psychology of Pain - January 15, 2014 Category: Psychiatrists and Psychologists Source Type: blogs
Half Of A Drug's Power Comes From Thinking It Will Work : Shots - Health News : NPR
When you take a pill, you and your doctor hope it will work — and that helps it work.That's not a new idea. But now researchers say they know just how much of a drug's effect comes from the patient's expectation: at least half.When patients in the midst of a migraine attack took a dummy pill they thought was a widely used migraine drug, it reduced their pain roughly as much as when they took the real drug thinking it was a placebo."There was no difference between the pharmacology of the drug in reducing pain and the placebo dressed up with a nice word," study author Ted Kaptchuk tells Shots. "Basically we show ...
Source: Psychology of Pain - January 14, 2014 Category: Psychiatrists and Psychologists Source Type: blogs
The Brain: Adaptation and Maladaptation in Chronic Pain, June 15-20, 2014, Keystone Resort, Keystone, Colorado, USA
SIGNIFICANCE: The Institutes of Medicine indicate that pain affects more than 100 million Americans and costs more than an estimated $540-630 billion, a number predicted to only increase as our population ages and is influenced by lifestyle. We have few effective treatments for migraine or chronic pain. GOALS: Understanding the complexities of brain circuits involved in pain and migraine headache has been a major challenge in neurobiology that has limited the discovery of new therapies. For decades, the pain and headache communities have separately focused on peripheral mechanisms. INNOVATION: This conference bri...
Source: Psychology of Pain - January 13, 2014 Category: Psychiatrists and Psychologists Source Type: blogs
Pain-Topics News/Research UPDATES: Another Book About Pain; Only Much Better
Of nearly 240 million adults in the United States, more than 4 in 10, or about 100 million, live with chronic pain of some sort. Yet, the professional and popular news media focus more on abuses of pain medications than the dreaded conditions the drugs are intended to treat. Meanwhile, the suffering of untreated or mistreated patients with pain is largely overlooked.
In her new book — A Nation in Pain: Healing Our Biggest Health Problem — author Judy Foreman provides a deeply researched account of today's chronic pain crisis and reasons behind it, and she discusses some solutions that could be within reach. Far mo...
Source: Psychology of Pain - January 6, 2014 Category: Psychiatrists and Psychologists Source Type: blogs
Chronic widespread pain, including fibromyalgia: a pathway for care developed by the British Pain Society
Chronic widespread pain (CWP), including fibromyalgia, is a highly prevalent condition with a range of disabling symptoms, both physical and psychological. The British Pain Society (BPS) is supporting the treatment of this group of patients through a care pathway and this article describes the rationale and discussion points relevant to the CWP and fibromyalgia pathway. There are several aims in producing this pathway: to reduce variation in the standards of care, to reduce delays at all stages of care, and in particular, to enable clinicians to help patients accept a diagnosis of CWP. This diagnosis should be based on the...
Source: Psychology of Pain - January 6, 2014 Category: Psychiatrists and Psychologists Source Type: blogs
Anticipation of pain can be worse than pain itself - health - 22 November 2013 - New Scientist
This study demonstrates that the fear of anticipation is so strong it can reverse the usual pattern of time discounting," says George Loewenstein, a professor of economics and psychology at Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. "It's probably not an exaggeration to say that as much, or more, of the pains of life come from anticipation and memory than from actual experience."The study could well have implications for medicine and health policy, because an understanding of how people judge pain is important for presenting them with options about potentially painful treatments."You should avoid emphasis...
Source: Psychology of Pain - November 24, 2013 Category: Psychiatrists and Psychologists Source Type: blogs
Pain and Relief Signals Muted in Fibromyalgia - MedPage Today
Patients with fibromyalgia showed less activation in brain responses to pain-related "punishment and reward" anticipatory signaling on functional MRI than healthy controls, a small study showed.Compared with patients with fibromyalgia, controls had significant increases in signaling in the right ventral tegmental area (VTA) while anticipating pain (P<0.01) and a trend for greater signal activation while actually experiencing pain (P=0.059), according to Marco L. Loggia, PhD, of Harvard Medical School, and colleagues.Controls also had greater decreases in VTA signaling when anticipating relief from pain (P<0.05),...
Source: Psychology of Pain - November 6, 2013 Category: Psychiatrists and Psychologists Source Type: blogs
Study Finds Blind People Hypersensitive to Pain - National Pain Report - National Pain Report
This study is noteworthy for research on multisensory interactions and plasticity, because it shows a strong link between vision and pain. The next step is to understand the nature of the interaction between visual loss and pain sensitivity. Which aspect of pain processing is involved in the interplay with vision, and what is its neural basis? The hope is that this work will open the door to pain investigations into the world of sensory loss, left unexplained for too long."
Interesting cultural differences also emerged from the study. People in Italy were found to be more emotionally expressive and responsive to pain...
Source: Psychology of Pain - November 6, 2013 Category: Psychiatrists and Psychologists Source Type: blogs
Welcome | Cochrane Pain, Palliative and Supportive Care Group
BackgroundThe PaPaS Review Group was registered with the Collaboration on the 28th January 1998. Exploratory meetings for the PaPaS Review Group were held on the 3rd of June 1996 (Oxford) and the 22nd of June 1997 (Boston). Mr Phil Wiffen was involved in the set-up of the PaPaS Review Group and held the post as Co-ordinating Editor until March 2008 when he stepped down to become an Editor for PaPaS. Chris Eccleston, one of our long standing Editors, then took up the post as Co-ordinating Editor in April 2008.ScopeWe are interested in studies of interventions for • Acute pain arising accidentally or through deli...
Source: Psychology of Pain - November 5, 2013 Category: Psychiatrists and Psychologists Source Type: blogs
Welcome | Cochrane Back Review Group
The Cochrane Back Review Group (CBRG) is one of 53 international Review Groups. The CBRG coordinates the publication of literature reviews of diagnosis, primary and secondary prevention and treatment of neck and back pain and other spinal disorders, excluding inflammatory diseases and fractures.The CBRG is hosted by the Institute for Work & Health (IWH) in Toronto, Canada. The Institute for Work & Health is an independent, not-for-profit organization. Its mission is to conduct and share research that protects and improves the health of working people and is valued by policy-makers, workers ...
Source: Psychology of Pain - November 5, 2013 Category: Psychiatrists and Psychologists Source Type: blogs
Pain Medicine News - American Pain Society President: Budget Cuts Not Only Reason for Underfunded Pain Research
New Orleans—Pain research in the United States is severely underfunded, despite the fact that chronic pain costs the economy more than $600 billion annually in medical expenses and lost productivity. Although the 5% cut to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) budget across the board is partly to blame, it is not the only contributing factor, according to Roger B. Fillingim, PhD, professor, College of Dentistry, University of Florida, Gainesville, and director of the university's Pain Research and Intervention Center of Excellence. Dr. Fillingim, who also is president of the American Pain Society (APS), spoke with ...
Source: Psychology of Pain - October 31, 2013 Category: Psychiatrists and Psychologists Source Type: blogs
The Pain And Interoception Imaging Network (PAIN)
The Pain And Interoception Imaging Network (PAIN) seeks to improve understanding of the brain's role in chronic disease, with a particular emphasis on chronic pain states. PAIN provides an infrastructure for storage of functional and structural brain imaging data and associated behavioral metadata from multiple scanning sites and provides infrastructure for automated analysis of the resulting comprehensive data sets. Through these efforts, PAIN facilitates new discoveries in brain endophenotypes and biomarkers of chronic pain states. http://painrepository.org/ (Source: Psychology of Pain)
Source: Psychology of Pain - October 30, 2013 Category: Psychiatrists and Psychologists Source Type: blogs
