Understanding advances to control chronic pain

More than 76 million Americans deal with chronic pain every day.

The new issue of Time magazine, an article has some of the most recent advances in the treatment of chronic pain.

On "the early show" Friday, CBS News medical correspondent Dr. Jennifer Ashton pointed out some of these innovations and what it might mean for patients dealing with this type of pain.

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But what exactly is chronic pain?

He explained, "the definition of chronic pain is really pain that continues beyond the normal period of healing. And this can be done by a variety of sources within our anatomy. This effect can be produced by the muscles or joints. This effect can be produced from solid organs such as stomach you or your womb. And this can cause quite degeneration. And because you can't see, you know, it is really so very subjective, it is very difficult to treat. "

Ashton continued, "we will give you a different answer. Approximately 80 percent of people who tell you live with chronic pain is not to say that receive welfare. And part of the reason is there is no test. There is no blood test. There is no scale that is used in medicine in this country to say, you know, this is objectively how much pain do you have to do with. We therefore genuinely for the patient and what says. As we know, everyone has a different pain threshold and pain tolerance. "

Co-Anchor Erica Hill said, "there seems to be the last few years, anyway, one of the main ways of treating it seems to be with prescription drugs. (Standards) have gone about things like OxyContin and Vicodin. "

"You talk about class pricing medication known as opioid drugs," he said. "The use of prescriptions written for these types of medicinal products has been fully uploaded in the past. And there are two issues about this. The largest, by the way you see in the medical Community is that doctors usually treat chronic pain down dramatically. We are afraid to make the patient to an addict. We are afraid of making this class of medications to the patient. When, in fact, the authority for the treatment of chronic pain is to use the correct dose of medication that works. "

He explained, "so, you might think it is a high-dose drugs, but if it works for you, alleviating pain, which is the appropriate dose. Now the flip side of that, when you talk about opioid drugs is that absolutely, can create dependency. When you talk about someone living with chronic pain may be associated with these medication indefinitely. "

Ashton said alternative treatment should also be considered in conjunction with the specifications.

"You've Probably heard of the term functional MRI," he said. "Much will have to do with the theory of brain mapping. We know that there are centres of pain to the brain and the brain releases certain chemicals, called neurotransmitters, in response to pain. Part of the research uses operating MRIs to stimulate not only the pain, but recreational centres, and metekpaideytei some brain to cope with the pain. Then, of course, talk about alternative ways of treating it, things such as massage, acupuncture, yoga, or certain types of exercise can be very, very useful in conjunction with other things. "

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