Health Tips for a Better Life

This is one of the “mystery” diseases or disorders. Those that have it report exhaustion and a constant dull ache but, no matter how many tests are performed, your doctor says there’s nothing wrong with you. The tests come back “normal”. This is frustrating and annoying because the traditional view is then to class you as a psych case. Like that’s a constructive response. So let’s start with what we know. No-one knows what triggers it. People say it comes on after both physical injuries and emotional traumas. Some researchers speculate that people can be genetically predisposed to develop it. Others believe it is a viral disease. No matter what its cause, the result is greatly increased sensitivity to pain. It’s as if the brain is overreacting to pain signals.

Once it appears, it’s a chronic condition with long-lasting pain in the muscles, ligaments and tendons. It particularly affects the back of the head, the neck, shoulders and upper chest, and the major joints in the arms, hips and legs. Your body is also likely to develop tender spots where even the slightest of touches causes pain. You lose stamina, feeling exhausted after any form of activity, no matter how trivial. Sleep is disrupted and people wake not feeling properly rested, There seems to be a gender difference with women more likely than men to develop the disorder. Estimates of the number of people who have this set of symptoms varies but the best guess is that it affects about 2% of the adult population in the US.

Because this disorder is associated with depressive conditions, it’s quite common for doctors to prescribe antidepressants. Not only does this sometimes improve the mental attitude to the continuing pain, it can also help people to get more sleep. But the main medication strategies resolve around the use of painkillers and anti-seizure drugs. Depending on the level of pain you experience, the doctor will either start you off with a relatively low-powered NSAID or pick an opioid. With a reduction in the sensitivity to pain, sleep is improved and, as side effect, this relieves the general exhaustion and improves the mood. One or two of the anti-seizure drugs initially approved and used for epilepsy have now been granted FDA approval for use in the treatment of fibromyalgia.

The best hope, however, lies in a combination of physical therapy, counseling and skelaxin. This drug is most useful because it both relaxes the musculature and acts as a sedative. This both relieves the symptoms of ache in the major muscle groups and supports better sleep. But the use of a drug on its own is not enough. A physical therapist should teach basic sets of exercises to stretch the muscles and restore tone. More importantly, a cognitive behavioral therapist should teach you coping strategies. You must learn how to get the most out of your life within the new physical limits. Positive thinking is required to strengthen the belief in your ability to improve and to avoid situations in which there might be stress. Overall, the aim should be to exercise regularly, pace yourself through the day, get enough sleep and reduce the sources of stress in your life. This combination of skelaxin and counseling is now the preferred treatment regime.

In some cultures, the best guess was that the world was flat and that the sun was a kind of torch or fire put there by gods to light the sky and keep us warm. Today, even though scientists have not always had the best of reputations, we have at least managed to prove the world to be roundish and that the Earth orbits the sun. Although this kind of science is interesting in an abstract kind of way, it does not touch individual lives in the same way as, say, medical research. Here concerned scientists may work to understand different diseases or disorders so that more effective treatments can be devised. The work of one team may save the lives of millions over the next decades. It is therefore faintly curious that, for the most part, astronomy is funded by the state and the development of medications is funded by private companies for profit. Common sense should have this the other way round. There is no immediate social benefit from knowing more about the cosmos so what justification is there for spending public money on this research? Equally, there is every benefit for the community at large if more safer and effective treatments are made available. Lives will be saved. The quality of life for those who are injured can be improved. This would seem to be worthy of support out of public funds.

But the current system is to leave it to private interests to decide what to research. If there are only a few people who have this problem or the many are too poor to pay a high retail price, there is no profit to be earned. So no research and development to help them. As a result, millions die from diseases that could be treated. Even when a “good” social purpose is served, the basic research is only done to get the drug or device approved. Once the FDA has given its nod, the spotlight passes on to the next drug in the pipeline. Little is done to follow up on how the drug actually performs once it is let loose into the world. The reason, of course, is that this research could be inconvenient and damage the profitability of the drug. Suppose the research found the drug was killing patients. It would have to be withdrawn and profits would dry up.

It is therefore interesting to see that viagra is probably the most continuously researched drug on the planet. For example, in 2002, there was a piece of meta-research done on 27 sets of clinical trials. This is research which picks the best conducted individual trials and puts all the results together to see if there are any general trends. There have been more than one hundred more trials since then. The conclusion is that viagra is not only safe but also effective in men who suffer erectile dysfunction because of depression, diabetes, heart disease, prostate cancer and spinal cord injuries. It is a shame the same level of interest is not shown in proving other drugs such as Vioxx to be as safe.