Posts Tagged ‘Dr. Lynn R. Webster’
Can Fun Help Overcome Pain?
Can good, old-fashioned fun help people overcome chronic pain? Sometimes. It all depends what we mean by “fun.” One person’s fun is another person’s work For example, therapists have been recommending coloring books to their adult patients for years. The benefits of using crayons (and markers and colored pencils), the theory goes, extends beyond…
Read MoreCan Environment Be Responsible for Opioid Addiction?
For more than fifteen years, I have lectured that addiction is determined by one’s genetic vulnerability and environment. Exposure to a drug is necessary, but not sufficient by itself, to cause the disease of addiction–any addiction. Genetics is more of a factor for opioid addiction than it is for most other forms of addiction, but…
Read MoreIs It Possible For Young Children To Misuse Opioids?
Author’s note: “Emily” is a pseudonym, and she’s someone I know. I’ve changed just enough details of her story to protect her family’s privacy. Four-year-old Emily had a rare form of cancer. She had received chemotherapy every week for about three months. She also had to bear frequent painful procedures. Emily’s mother, Sally, vicariously experienced…
Read MoreIs Marijuana the Holy Grail for Pain Medication? by @LynnRWebsterMD
Is marijuana the holy grail for pain medication? You might think so by reading the popular press. An ideal drug therapy is one that is highly effective for a multitude of pain disorders and has low to no toxicity regardless of duration of exposure. Marijuana flirts with this profile—but it is a Trojan horse. Depending…
Read MoreHow Effective is Acupuncture in Treating Chronic Pain?
Studies show conflicting results about whether or not acupuncture can help people with chronic pain, but there is evidence that acupuncture works for some people and some types of pain. Even if, as some studies have found, the benefits of acupuncture are all in the head, those benefits could still be worth pursuing. After all,…
Read MoreEmpathy: An Overdue Prescription
Last week I discussed the phenomenon that, though more women experience pain than men, they are chronically undertreated. Ethnic minorities, including African Americans, are known to be undertreated as well. Not surprisingly, low-income patients experience the same disparity. One could point to subtle gender, class, and racial biases as the reason why such disparities exist.…
Read MoreWomen in Pain: What We Need to Know
As I put it in my book The Painful Truth, “Pain is an unbidden guest, humanity’s shadow companion down through the ages. It is an interloper, a despoiler of dreams, a thief.” The “thief,” however, does not treat all persons equally. Chronic pain affects one group of people more frequently than any other—women. A study…
Read MoreWhat’s Massachusetts Thinking?
What’s Massachusetts thinking? The newest twist in the painkiller abuse debate is that Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker has proposed legislation that has me in dejected disbelief. The bill would restrict both doctors and dentists from prescribing more than 72 hours of medication to patients upon initial injury or surgery. I understand the thought but it…
Read MorePendulums and Painkillers
Carl Jung once remarked, “The pendulum of the mind alternates between sense and nonsense, not between right and wrong.” When I think about the nation’s patchwork quilt policy toward opioids, I’m reminded of how right he was. In my book “The Painful Truth,” I devoted some space to outline a brief history of opioids, and…
Read MoreConfronting Mental Illness and Guns: What Should We Do?
In my column in Pain Medicine News this month, I talked about a tragic dual suicide attempt of a married couple I knew, both of whom suffered from chronic pain. From one standpoint, a story like this is as shocking as it is incomprehensible. From another perspective, it’s becoming another sad milepost in society–not unlike the rash…
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