Chronic Pain challenges and opioids abuse

September 30, 2016

Chronic Pain challenges and opioids abuse if not addressed can only lead to more harm to the body

Chronic Pain challenges and opioids abuse: What is chronic pain?

Just as the media is consistently giving space and headlines about opioids and misuse of the drugs, physicians and other medical experts who treat patients with chronic pain are also wrestling with how to deal with opioid dependence. Not long ago, experts at American Psychiatric Association had established that treating patients in pain and are also abusing opioids involves a delicate balance between controlling pain relief and risk of drug abuse. Among chronic pain challenges and opioid abuse is that we are not able to have conclusive estimates of how common it is for chronic pain patients to develop complications with opioid use says doctor Dalal Akoury MD, president and founder of AWAREmed Health and Wellness Resource Center for addiction solutions. Many people with chronic pain do not go on to develop an opioid addiction, but that does not give you the leeway to start abusing opioids. Remember in the first place these are legitimate drugs it is only that when used wrongly, they become bad like any other misused drug.

Chronic Pain challenges and opioids abuse: Potential risk factors

Rates for co-existing chronic pain and opioid addiction vary depending on where you look, Dr. Akoury says. For patients in a pain clinic, addiction rates are relatively low, but in a methadone or buprenorphine population, between 34 to 40 percent will have a chronic pain complaint, she says. Under normal circumstances, physicians who are offering treatment to patients with chronic pain challenges will often look for potential risk factors for substance abuse, such as a personal or family history of other types of substance abuse or psychiatric disorders. In the event that a person has one of these risk factors, they shouldn’t automatically be denied opioids, but they should be informed of the risk of dependence and be monitored for potential abuse.

Finally chronic pain challenges can be described as any pain that lasts much longer than would be expected from the original problem or injury. Up on registering chronic pain in the body, the body is likely to respond in various ways. There are certain facts that we need to understand clearly and from the expert’s opinion at AWAREmed Health and Wellness Resource Center under the able leadership of doctor Dalal Akoury we will be getting those facts right progressively. With that doctor Akoury registers that chronic pain may be characterized by abnormalities in brain hormone, low energy, mood disorders, muscle pain, and impaired mental and physical performance. Chronic pain worsens as neurochemical changes in your body increase your sensitivity to pain and at this point you begin to have pain in other parts of your body that do not normally hurt. Ordinarily nobody would want to be subjected to any kind of pain that is why it is important for you to schedule for an appointment with the expert (doctor Akoury) today for a one on one professional advice on all the concerns you may be having in relation to chronic pain challenges and opioid abuse.

Chronic Pain challenges and opioids abuse: What is chronic pain?

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Challenges in Using Opioids to Treat Pain in Persons With Substance Use Disorders

March 11, 2016

Opioids More often than not, pain and abuse of substance exist together and their co-existence makes treatment of one without the other difficult. In most cases, if the pain is to be addressed, then the substance abuse has to be dealt with first. Opioids are compounds that look like opium in their addictive properties or psychological effects. They are sometimes used as pain relief whenever patients are in severe pains and other pain reliefs seem to be inefficient. Opioids are narcotics and as such are to be used moderately to prevent addiction. This is why when there are cases with patients who are already used to substance abuse, using Opioids tends to just aggravate the problem of substance use. These challenges in using opioids to treat pain in persons with substance use disorders are what this article seeks to talk about.

Pain and Substance use

16 to 24 percent of Americans have been reported to have problems with alcohol abuse. 8% out of the total American population, from 12 years and older, do have a problem with illicit use of substance within a given month. Substance use disorders have been seen to be more significant in medical populations. For instance, 19 to 26% of hospitalized patients have substance use disorders, 40 to 60% are people that have sustained a major trauma, 5 to 67% are those who have been or are being treated for depression. From the above, it can be seen that the treatment of chronic pain poses challenges as the patient may just pick up an appetite which may be hard to shake off, long after their stay in the hospital.

Clinical and Ethical Challenges

Persons who have had a history with substance use are less likely to have an effective pain treatment. It is not as if the pain treatment is not effective but because such people are used to substances which have considerably altered or increased their tolerance and adaptability for such substances, even the most potent pain relief in their right doses will appear ineffective. This is where opioids come in.

Mild to moderate pains can easily be taken care of with physical modalities such as ice, rest and splints but when pains are severe, opioids appear to be one effective way of managing them. Clinicians are however concerned that opioids may be misused by patients. Opioids use in patients with substance use disorders does not only raise complex clinical issues, it also raises ethical issues. This is where the challenge lies. Principles of justice and beneficence demands that all persons have equal access to an effective pain treatment. However tension sets in when such persons are used to substance as the principle of non-maleficence asks that a medical practitioner ‘do no harm’ first when there are concerns about misuse which may cause harmful consequences.

Multidimensional Nature of Pain

Pain is multidimensional in nature. This is another challenge posed to treatment of pain. Pain is subjective, rather than objective, making it hard to actually verify if it exists. Since they are transferred by sensory and emotional experience, one can actually have pains without any physical signs that corroborate this. Therefore, since pain cannot be verified to be existent or not, it is advised that all clinicians attend to all cases of pain seriously. Some patients have the knowledge of this and may often feign pain in order to obtain opioids for non-pain related cases. Also, a patient with addiction who also has pains may not be able to properly coordinate or tell where the pain ends and a craving for opioids begins because actually, it may feel the same way. For instance, pain complaints come with distress calls, and when craving starts as well, the patient may show signs of serious distress. The chronic pain disorders’ spectrum as against addictive disorders is the same for everyone making it hard for actually append treatments accordingly. In patients with no past history of substance abuse, administering opioids is a whole lot easier than when it has to be administered to patients who history of substance abuse because it is very hard to tell when they are actually in need of opioids for pains.

In cases where clinicians are not sure, they have been taught to ask questions such as asking the patient how intense the pain is and asking them to describe their pains on the scale of 0 to 10. Sometimes, this may be useful in knowing the intensity of pain and at other times, some other methods needs to be worked up. In cases where pain seems to be persistent, not only the pain is assessed, the impact it will have on the individual receiving pain treatments will also have to be accessed. Such impacts as how it affects sleep, mood, stress level, work functions and recreational activities.

The challenges in using opioids in treating pains in persons with substance use disorders is high and complex and in most cases, clinician tend to evaluate the results. If the patient seems to get better by the use of Opioids, they should generally not be too concerned about the addiction. What can be done is to supervise the use on a short-term basis.

Fighting opioid addiction compounding pharmacies

February 27, 2016

Fighting opioid addiction compounding pharmacies: Prescription painkillers overdose

Fighting opioid addiction using compounding pharmacies. This can offer an alternative treatment method for all victims.

I believe that at one point of your life you have visited a doctor for help especially when you were having that miserable pain. The doctor on his part was willing to help and he may have prescribed for you some pain killers tabs. And for sure the pain killers worked and you felt better that you were before and so you believed your pains have gone never to come back. One thing that may not be known to you is that of the consequences attached because most of these temporal solutions often lead to drug overdose. When this happens, our problems become more compounded and before we knew it, we are addicted to those drugs and that is why we want to find out how fighting opioid addiction using compounding pharmacies can be of help under such circumstances. Doctor Dalal Akoury and her team of experts from AWAREmed Health and Wellness Resource Center are going to help us unlock the truth about this condition. Stay tune and learn with the experts so that you can take appropriate decision in keeping yourself and loved ones safe.

From experience, doctor Akoury registers that many drugs that causes life devastations to families and communities have actually come from the misuse of official pharmacist and doctor’s prescriptions. The magnitude of this is very worrying across the globe and according to the available statistics in the US alone up to 15,000 people die yearly from overdoses of prescription painkillers. Out of those registered deaths one in ever twenty people of 12 years and above reported using prescription opioids for nonmedical reasons within the last twelve months. Stunningly, enough prescription painkillers were prescribed in the year 2010 to medicate every American adult for 24 hours a day, seven days a week, for an entire month.

Ideally looking at the trend, it may pass as a simple issue of normal over-prescription of painkillers. Nonetheless this in the public health arena the ultimate causes and solutions are just too numerous. That is why the vitality of compounding pharmacies is a unique way in the contribution toward the eradication of this problem says doctor Akoury. They are able to change the medication itself and alter addictive properties through the act of compounding, and hold a vital role in the fight against opioid addiction.

Fighting opioid addiction compounding pharmacies: The vitality of compounding in addiction prevention and treatment

Tackling the global painkiller addiction epidemic requires a well thought approach from all sectors of health care, including but not limited to primary, secondary and tertiary care methods; clinical care approaches and even financiers like insurers working with providers to reduce barriers to addiction treatment that will secure prescription avenues to prevent over-prescription. For compounding pharmacies, more stringent measures to ensure provenance of prescriptions and education for staff to recognize warning signs of addiction, such as filling prescriptions from multiple sources, can be vital in preventing the spread of addiction as well.

When fighting opioid addiction this way, it is important to appreciate that the primary way compounding pharmacies can assist at a patient-level is by applying the tenets of compounding as preventative measures. This (Compounding) is meant to provide a better care for those already struggling with addiction by providing alternative but less-systemic and easier delivery methods tailored to specific individual patient needs. These measures fundamentally reduce the risk of addiction for all patients and will directly benefit individuals with a history of or tendency to opioid painkiller addiction.

Fighting opioid addiction compounding pharmacies: The pill form of opioids

Most of the opiates being abused by addicted patients are in pill form. These are easy to open up, transport, and also provide the brain toxicology-altering high that addicts seek. Experts at AWAREmed Health and Wellness Resource Center are categorical that the easiest ways to fight addiction is to eliminate the reward from the situation entirely. This can be done by compounding oral painkillers into up-to-date creams and gels where possible with this the compounding pharmacies can lower the risk of addiction significantly. The good news about this is that not only do topical compounds deliver more localized pain relief and cause fewer complications due to lower absorption rates, a topical compound does not alter brain state the way oral opioids do when delivering the much needed high by users.

Besides that doctor Akoury registers that compounding pharmacies can also provide alternative options for traditional painkillers which are typically reserved for patients who have allergies to certain medications thereby necessitating the need for compounded alternatives, using a painkiller alternative for Vicodin or Oxycontin that can lower prescriptions for the highly addictive and readily available painkillers. Patients or doctors with patients who are working on overcoming drug addiction can also work with a compounding pharmacy to help with “tapering,” or the act of slowly reducing ingested levels of opioids to safely treat the body’s addiction without abruptly cutting off supply.

Finally according to the information available with the public health sector, it is evident that compounding pharmacies contribute a lot to the fight against opioid addiction on both fronts at the macro level by working with researchers and other health care professionals to understand the broader development of these public health issues; and at the micro level by working with patients and physicians to use compounding to reduce the addictive properties of medications. Owing to the nature of treatment involve with painkillers overdose, this may be difficult for you to understand, nonetheless we have taken it up on ourselves (AWAREmed Health and Wellness Resource Center) to be of help to you in the most professional way you deserve. If you are struggling with any kind of addiction we want to let you know that help is on the way and you can be well again in a very short time at affordable rates. All you need to do is to schedule for an appointment with doctor Dalal Akoury today by calling her on the phone numbers on this site and she will be able to attend to you professionally.

Tag Archives: Opioid addiction