Naltrexone found to relieve chronic pain
A study at Stanford on fibromyalgia patients has found that naltrexone to be very effective in reducing chronic pain. In the double blind study, the drug was found to be effective by an average of 30% over a placebo. This test was only done on women over a 14 week period, but shows great promise for an inexpensive drug that is easily prescribed. More work needs to be done on future studies including adding men and spinal cord injury patients to see how wide the pain relief is depending on the type of injury. An added side effect is that this drug is already used to move patients off of very addictive prescription drugs, so it can be given without the worry of increased addition. Because this drug is very inexpensive, it’s use can help those on Medicare to stay away from Medigap where the government stops paying for prescriptions until the patient pays $1500 of their own money into the system. (Source YourFibro)
This is fantastic news for both those just dealing with pain from a new spine injury or those that are on heavy amounts of opioids. If further trials are as successful as this one, we hope that doctors will use naltrexone more often to keep patients off of the heavy drugs. This study underscores that all chronic pain patients need to keep track of the science so they can help their doctors reduce pain quickly. Most MDs don’t have time to read every study out there, but you can easily keep track of your medical problems using Google or Yahoo search. You are just as big a part of the solution of pain as your doctors are. I just ran into an issue where my chiropractor found out a problem I was having with pain before my other western medicine doctors did. After telling them what the chiro found, they all agreed and are now treating me with drugs that fit the profile I have. If I didn’t do the research and seeked out doctors to help and tell my existing doctors what was going on, I would still be screaming day and night in pain.
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