Showing posts with label pain. Show all posts
Showing posts with label pain. Show all posts

Vaccine for Rheumatoid Arthritis

Rheumatoid arthritis is a widespread complaint. It is usually a malady of the elderly, but the young can succumb to it too. About the only treatment available is replacement of joints with artificial ones and analgesics.
Rheumatoid arthritis treatment vaccine
A team at the University of Queensland has taken a new approach. They have developed a vaccine. Many diseases are caused by the body attacking its own tissue. Arthritis is one of these. If the immune response is suppressed, inflammation decreases. This is how the new vaccine works.

All Westerners have high inflammation levels. This may be a good thing to fight injuries. However, continued long term inflammation does damage to the body. Once switched on and the immediate danger solved it needs to be turned off.

The new method involves taking a sample of the patient's immune cells which are then modified in the lab. This is injected back into the patient. The immune system no longer sees the modified peptide as foreign.

Other problematic diseases due to a lingering immune response would seem to be future candidates for similar vaccines.
✴ Health by Ty Buchanan ✴
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Drug Companies and Pharmacists Want More Regulation

It is always a worry when drug manufacturers and pharmacists force themselves on decision-making bodies. Self interest rules both groups. Drug manufacturers want to increase sells and raise prices by "hook or by crook". Pharmacists want to hold onto their monopoly provided first by a piece of paper provided by a college and secondly by the government paymaster.

Pharmacists are like real estate agents - there is one on every street corner. In a competitive market this shouldn't be the case. Skills learned at university in chemistry is never used. Everything today is prepackaged. An unskilled person could do the job. They even want to do the work of doctors extending prescription repeats.

The Victorian Pharmaceutical Misuse Summit includes the Pharmaceutical Society of Australia. They want to bring in a medication monitoring system to reduce the number of drug overdoses. Being cynical, confiscation would be an ideal tact to increase sales. But aren't overdoses mainly taken by those intending to take their own lives? Surely, they are "barking up the wrong tree". More treatment facilities for mental illness are what is needed not medication controls.

We do not need another level of costly bureaucracy that clearly will not have any benefits. Obstructing patients from getting morphine based pain killers will only drive them into the illegal market. More regulation and policing of this "industry" has had not impact whatsoever over the years. In the US they have arrested so many drug dealing people it has become a nation of prisons, Do we want that here?

In Australia, GPs make a joke to patients when they have to phone up with the patient's details and get a prescription number in order to prescribe strong painkillers. Even doctors see it as an unwanted bureaucratic process. A doctor decides to write the prescription before he makes the phone call and the request is never turned down.
Health by Ty Buchanan
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Calls for Change in Pain Relief May Not Be Possible

When you go into hospital for an operation you either get a "feel good" pain clinician who believes that no one should be in pain when medications are available, or you get an "ethical" physician who gives pain relief when he/she deems it to be "right". The problem is moral judgement differs from person to person.

Another issue is - Can pain be a disease in itself? Some calculate the failure to treat pain in working days lost. The problem is, taking analgesics will reduce some pain from the flu, for example, but you are still too sick to work. Furthermore, taking high levels of analgesics can make for a euphoric state where one does not want to work. Looking at it in terms of days lost is questionable.

Specialists are also calling for pain relieving medications to be shipped in large amounts to poorer countries where medical treatment is not widely available. Considering the drug problem in virtually all countries, this may not be a good thing to do. In Africa UN staff have to give some provisions to rebels in order to operate in particular regions. Would these controlling parties want analgesics? Common sense would indicate that they would.

Physicians who specialise in pain relief may be drawn to the profession because they have strong ethics in this area, but they need to look at the big picture. Some illnesses are just so bad that even strong doses of pain relievers have little effect. To fully remove the pain a high dose causing death would be needed. Long term use of such medications leads to resistance. In other words, pain is no longer reduced, and certainly for drug addicts there are no more highs. Distribution of analgesics need to be dealt with on a national basis. Change in this areas may seem necessary - it may not be possible.
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Tree Grows Inside a Man

A man had severe pains in his chest and began coughing up blood. Doctor Vladimir Kamashev x-rayed the man's chest and had a big shock. He had to call his assistant for a second opinion. The assistant confirmed the doctor's diagnosis. The man had a fir tree growing inside him.

Fungus can grow inside a human body but it was not believed that plants could take root and grow there. Surgeons removed a young five-centimeter fir tree from the man's chest. Needles from the plant dug into the capillaries and caused bleeding. The man consequently coughed up blood.

Obviously a small "cutting" from a fir tree was inhaled. It found sustenance inside body tissue. What is surprising is that a biopsy of the plant showed the fir needles to be green, so the tree somehow got enough sunlight to survive. Parts of the plant have been preserved for further study.
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Blaming Rewiring of the Brain for Chronic Pain is Too Simplistic

What a cop out, medical "professionals" are now saying chronic pain is caused by a mixed-up brain. This cannot be the case when you have an open wound and it really hurts. They are saying we should not feel any pain at all. People with leprosy feel no pain and look what damage they do to themselves.

Pain is functional. It stops one using a limb when there is damage to it. Otherwise, it wouldn't heal properly. Most back pain is caused by damage to the spine that cannot be detected with current technology and knowledge.

Those "in the know" are now saying the brain rewires itself when there is an injury so that when the damage is repaired pain still continues. If this is the case then it is very selective. Why doesn't this happen when you cut your finger? We know if a limb is lost pain can continue, but saying the brain rewires itself after an injury is far too simplistic.
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