May is Mental Health Awareness Month. The month is about realizing how common mental health issues are, supporting each other through them, and removing the stigma about them. A few statistics: 21% of U.S. adults experienced mental illness in 2020 (52.9 million people). This represents 1 in 5 adults. 5.6% of U.S. adults experienced serious mental […]
Hope for Pain Relief
I’ve known of mindfulness practices for several years, and read Full Catastrophe Living: Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain, and Illness by Jon Kabat-Zinn several years ago. It is one of the books I’ve recommended on this blog in the past. I have only recently, though, truly committed myself to […]
Long Term Opiate Use Safe; One Woman’s Experience With Savella
There are two great articles from Karen Lee Richards in HealthCentral’s Chronic Pain Connection newsletter today. The first, Long-Term Opioid Therapy — What Are the Effects?, brings us the results of Dr. Forest Tennant’s ground-breaking study. He evaluated 24 chronic pain patients from 30 to 79 years old who had been using opioids for 10 […]
Do you have chronic myofascial pain (trigger points)?
Trigger points (TrPs) confuse many people. People who suffer from Fibromyalgia Syndrome (FMS) have tender points that are used for diagnosis, not trigger points. TrPs can lead to Chronic Myofascial Pain (CMP). Trying to explain both of them is really beyond me, but Devin Starlanyl does a great job of making all of it clear. […]