September 11, 2024 by Jennifer Michalowski, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Credit: Current Biology (2024). DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2024.08.004 Placebos are inert treatments, generally not expected to impact biological pathways or improve a person’s physical health. But time and again, some patients report that they feel better after taking a placebo. Increasingly, doctors and scientists are recognizing that...
Marcus A. Banks July 18, 2024 Some degree of pain is inevitable in older individuals, and as people pass 80 years of age, the harms of medications used to control chronic pain increase. Pain-reducing medication use in this age group may cause inflammation, gastric bleeding, kidney damage, or constipation. These risks may lead some clinicians...
JULY 24, 2024 by University of North Carolina Health Care This image shows that the cells in yellow in the pons (left) receive input from the green cells in the cingulate cortex (rACC, right), with subdivisions Cg1 and Cg2. Credit: Scherrer Lab, UNC School of MedicineThe placebo effect is very real. This we’ve known for...
JULY 22, 2024 by Joel Streed, Mayo Clinic Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public DomainThe fluid-filled cushions between the bones in your spine are called disks. They provide flexibility, allow for spine movement like flexion and extension, and act as shock absorbers. Most young people have healthy disks. Each disk is flexible, with fluid-filled collagen fibers that fill...
by Matt Chittum, Virginia Tech Targeting & acoustic modeling. Credit: Pain (2024). DOI: 10.1097/j.pain.0000000000003171You feel a pain, so you pop a couple of ibuprofen or acetaminophen. If the pain is severe or chronic, you might be prescribed something stronger—an opioid pain killer that can be addictive under some circumstances. But what if you could ease pain...
by Kirstie Ganobsik Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain There are more than 100 types of arthritis and related conditions, and they affect at least 54 million adults and 300,000 children in the United States, according to the Arthritis Foundation. Fortunately, there are also many medications, non-medication options, lifestyle changes and surgeries available to help you manage arthritis pain and other...
FRIEDRICH-ALEXANDER-UNIVERSITÄT ERLANGEN-NÜRNBERG New substances that activate adrenalin receptors instead of opioid receptors have a similar pain relieving effect to opiates, but without the negative aspects such as respiratory depression and addiction. This is the result of research carried out by an international team of researchers led by the Chair of Pharmaceutical Chemistry at Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg...
by University of Michigan Data from the National Poll on Healthy Aging about joint pain impacts on older adults. Credit: University of Michigan Popping a pill may bring short-term relief for arthritis-related joint pain, but many older adults may not realize that what they swallow could raise their risk of other health problems, or that other...
Adults who pursued pain relief through mindfulness-focused meditation and hypnosis had better long-term effects than those who received education in pain management, according to one of the largest studies of its kind on nonpharmaceutical pain control and relief. The findings of this joint UW Medicine/Veterans Affairs Puget Sound Health Care System study were published in the medical journal Pain. The researchers tested the...
by University of Arizona The structure of compound 194 (yellow sticks) overlaid on an electrophysiology trace showing reduced sodium currents (yellow vs. black lines) from cells that are treated with compound 194. The structure illustrates the predicted interaction of CRMP2 (pink, PDB 2GSE) with the Nav1.7 channel (cyan, PDB 6J8G). Credit: University of Arizona Health...
