The NIH’s Solution To The Chronic Pain Crisis(?)

The National Institutes of Health Agenda. Will More Drugs Help Solve (The Pain and) Opiate Crisis?

An excellent article in a recent publication (Dynamic Chiropractic) asks this very good question…

Pain medications (Opiates) have become a huge problem causing a massive amount of suffering in people… men, women, families, and even babies!

Yes, we now have a growing epidemic of opiate addicted babies.

Neonatal abstinence syndrome, which occurs as a result of in utero opioid exposure, affects between 6.0 and 20 newborns per 1000 live US births.

It varies depending on location, but these are very big numbers… 1 is 1 too many though.

The Government Takes Action To Try To Help The Problem

Our government has decided that it should help end this drug crisis by funding additional drug research.

Well, that’s not exactly the extent of it.

Here’s what they’ve set up.

The NIH has set up a partnership with Pharmaceutical Companies and $1.1 Billion to…

• Find medication options to treat opioid use disorders,
• Prevent and reverse overdoses, support long term recovery in patients,
• Develop new drugs and combinations of existing medications to treat opioid use disorder, and to prevent and/or reverse overdose,
• Find new uses for existing or abandoned medications (which is of course cheaper than developing new drugs) that were not effective for other conditions (ie. pharmaceutical companies have these assets already that they’re not able to use so we should throw money at them so they can see if they can market them for pain and addiction problems caused by other drugs),
• Develop new drugs for pain relief that might be safer and non-addictive or non-opioid analgesics,
• Fund new studies to accelerate drug development for patients with high unmet needs for treatment with other drugs,
• Find additional biomarkers in our bodies so that they can discover, develop, and market new medications.

OK.

We probably need to have some research into helping people recover from the devastating effects of the opiate pain relievers and that will necessarily require some medications.

Here’s the problem.

The government believes that people need more drugs to combat the problems caused by other drugs that they are taking for pain.

Adding to this confusing scenario…

$1.1 BILLION to get new medications to help treat and change the problems caused by other medications that the pharmaceutical companies said were safe and effective.

A story in theweek.com details some of how the drug companies really helped create this massive problem. Read the story here.

On the positive side…

The Government Has Also Made The Decision To Fund Some Non-Drug Research…

There is also $81 MILLION dedicated to fund non-drug ways to help people that apparently might include… techniques such as yoga, tai chi, acupuncture, and mindfulness meditation to help patients control and manage pain.

$1,100,000,000 for medications

$81,000,000 for non drug methods

This is 13.58 X the amount to fund drug company research and development versus non-drug solutions to help people.

“The obvious irony is that the drug companies who created the opioid crisis are going to be given over a billion dollars from the NIH to develop drugs to solve this crisis or replace the opioids they are making huge profits on with other drugs that could earn them even more money.” writes Donald M. Petersen of Dynamic Chiropractic.

It’s a bizarre situation, but one that is repeated over and over again.

The government is giving money, tax payer dollars, to pay pharmaceutical companies additional money to come up with a solution that they effectively caused.

They also throw a little, disproportionally small amount of money at non-drug research apparently so they can say that they have a balanced approach.

We, as a society, do need to help those that are suffering because they have been put on opiates.

Most often they were started on the medications because they were suffering and a doctor tried to help them.

It’s this first step that is the biggest problem.

The only way to really help is to take a step back and prevent the problem from occurring.

The real solution to the crisis is to help people suffering with pain without ever going down the road of ever-increasingly strong pain relievers in the first place.

The real crisis here is that people are suffering with pain that can very often be treated and corrected without ever taking the medication in the first place.

Did you know that most non-cancer related opiods are prescribed because of Back Pain?

• Or that 20% of non-cancer patients presenting with pain are prescribed an opiate?
• Those using an opiate for ONE DAY have a 6% chance of being on an opiate one YEAR later.
• This increases to 8% risk if used for 8 days and about 30% risk if used for a month!
• The majority of drug overdoses in the US are due to opiates.
• The vast majority of deaths from prescription drugs every year are due to opiates.

The solution to the Opiate Crisis is clear.

Prevention is clearly better than intervening after people suffering with chronic pain end up suffering more because of prolonged use of a medication.

If a person never starts on the medication, again most non-cancer people start on the medicine for Back Pain, then they will not become another victim.

The real challenge is that people with pain in the vast majority of cases go to their family medical doctor for musculoskeletal pain.

They are most often prescribed pain relievers and told to come back if it doesn’t go away.

If it does not go away on it’s own, then often increasingly stronger pain relievers are used.

Rarely does the family doctor refer to a Chiropractor.

Of course there are some that do refer, but most do not.

It’s simply because the doctor does not know how much a Chiropractor can help.

This is despite the fact that Chiropractic has been shown to be safe and as effective as surgery for even low back disc herniations with nerve problems.

If you live in the Texarkana area and want to see Dr. Hagebusch for back pain or any other neuro-musculoskeletal problem, give us a call at our Texarkana office.

He’s here to help you like he’s helped thousand’s of other Texarkana residents.

 

 

 

 

References
NIH HEAL Initiative. April 4, 2018. U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, National Institutes of Health.
Abbasi J. “Robert Kerns, PhD: Researching Nondrug Approaches to Pain Management.” JAMA, published online March 28, 2018.
“Federal Agencies Partner for Military and Veteran Pain Management Research.” U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, National Institutes of Health, Sept. 20, 2017.

http://www.dynamicchiropractic.com/mpacms/dc/article_d.php?id=58187&nr=t

Association of Psychiatric Comorbidity With Opioid Prescriptions and Long-term Opioid Therapy Among US Adolescents
Michael J. Mason, PhD1
Author Affiliations
JAMA Pediatr. 2018;172(5):413-414. doi:10.1001/jamapediatrics.2017.5811  https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/article-abstract/2674946