“Chronic pain is a common and complex condition characterised by persistent pain experienced on most days of the week. It affects 1 in 5 Australians aged 45 and over.” And there is a smaller extremely disadvantaged cohort who suffer severe daily, disabling & intractable pain requiring long term pharmaceutical therapy or pain relief, i.e. as … Read more
Reconceptualising pain according to its underlying biology Moseley, G.L. (2007), Physical Therapy Reviews 12: 169-178. This is the BEST one yet! Flat out couldn’t find this study anywhere. Google has let me down! Even Google scholar is bereft of answers. Nothing but studies citing this study. It exists only in theory, but not in practice. … Read more
The title says it all. Why are those people who are living with daily, severe pain excluded from the conversation around pain management? Why are we treated as problems with no solution, difficult, unpleasant and something to be swept under the rug? With “patient centred care” being the new paradigm and the gold standard of … Read more
In Australia, we have seen forced tapers / involuntary deprescribing since the introduction of new regulations around opioid prescribing for chronic pain in June 2020. placeholder page add reference
The idea that action begins with a prescription for an injury or very commonly, a dental procedure, and opioids are SO incredibly addictive and irresistible, through no fault of their own, the person becomes an addict. There is no basis in fact for this narrative, it is in fact “clickbait”. Some addicts advocate for this … Read more
Another exaggerated adverse outcome of long-term opioid therapy is the idea that patients will need ever-increasing doses of opioid pain medications due to developing tolerance. While this does happen to some patients, the majority of people on long-term opioid therapy for chronic non-cancer pain are on stable doses, with no increases, for many years, or … Read more
POlicy makers and the media repeatedly state that opioids are not effective long term and are not recommended for the treatment of chronic pain. Unfortunately the ‘science’ this is based on is very flimsy. In fact back in 2016 when the CDC released their opioid prescribing guidelines and the war on chronic non-cancer pain patients … Read more
Addiction is considered one of the main risks of taking opioid pain medication, but policy-makers and the media have massively inflated that risk. the truth is that addiction is very rare in the chronic pain community. The vast majority of chronic non-cancer pain patients take their opioid pain-relieving medications exactly as directed, and do not … Read more