Thought this was great to pass along.  A bit on the dramatic side of Dry Needling... But it does work!!!!!

LOOK: James Harrison willingly stuck dozens of sharp needles in his leg

By John Breech | CBSSports.com

March 25, 2016 9:01 pm ET

Steelers linebacker James Harrison has spent most of his offseason trying to figure out if wants to play another year.

The problem for Harrison is that he's just not sure his 37-year-old body can make it through another punishing NFL season.

Harrison's still trying to recuperate from last season and apparently, part of that recuperation involves sticking dozens of needles in his legs, as you can see below.

(Via Harrison's Instagram)

Although that looks like acupuncture, it's not exactly acupuncture.

According to Harrison, it's "dry needling."

If you've never heard of dry needling, join the club. According to our friends at the American Physical Therapy association, dry needling "is a skilled intervention that uses a thin filiform needle to penetrate the skin and stimulate underlying myofascial trigger points, muscular, and connective tissues for the management of neuromusculoskeletal pain and movement impairments."

Sounds like fun. You probably shouldn't do that to yourself at home though.

Anyway, dry needling isn't the only thing Harrison does to prepare his body for possibly playing another season. He has does normal things, like lifting weights.

Harrison hasn't decided if he's going to play in 2016, and it doesn't sound like Steelers coach Mike Tomlin is going to ask him to rush his decision.

"James is not going to shortchange himself," Tomlin said at the NFL owners meetings this week, via ESPN.com. "James is not going to shortchange the game of football. I believe him when he says he's going through a process to see his overall readiness and potential effectiveness. He knows what he's doing. He;s been doing it a long time. He knows whether or not his body can do what he needs it to do. I respect that mentality."

After one or two or 100 more dry needling sessions, Harrison will probably make up his mind about 2016.

James Harrison loves his dry needling. (USATSI)

Topics: James Harrison, Pittsburgh Steelers, NFL

Sleep is so very important when dealing with pain management !

Fibromyalgia Sufferers Have Difficulty Maintaining Continuous Sleep, Study Says

Posted on March 25, 2016 in Fibromyalgia with 4 Comments

A new study published in the Clinical Journal of Pain concludes that people with fibromyalgia have difficulty maintaining continuous sleep as compared to patients with primary insomnia and patients who do not report disturbed sleep.
“This post hoc analysis demonstrates that the nature of sleep disturbance among patients with fibromyalgia reporting difficulty with sleep can be distinguished from patients with primary insomnia and from controls,” the study’s authors wrote.
“We demonstrate that despite comparable wake time during the night (WASO), fibromyalgia patients can be differentiated from patients with primary insomnia and from controls without sleep difficulties, on the basis of frequency and duration of wake or sleep bout episodes.”
The researchers studied 132 people with fibromyalgia (FM) who have difficulty sleeping, 109 people with primary insomnia (PI), and 52 people without sleep disturbance. FM and PI patients were preselected to meet the sleep disturbance criteria.
People with fibromyalgia and primary insomnia had decreased total sleep time and slow-wave sleep (SWS), and increased latency to persistent sleep (LPS) and wake time after sleep onset (WASO) versus controls (P<0.05 for each). People with fibromyalgia had shorter, but more frequent wake bouts versus people with primary insomnia.  Both groups had shorter sleep bout duration versus controls
“We feel these characteristics, in addition to broadening our understanding of the sleep disturbances in these populations, may have relevance in terms of the pathophysiology of the sleep disturbance as well as differential treatment practices for physicians evaluating and managing disrupted sleep in patients with fibromyalgia or those with primary insomnia,” the authors wrote.
The authors concluded, “That sleep in FM is characterized by an inability to maintain continuous sleep but a greater sleep drive compared with PI.”

New guidelines helping local doctors to avoid opioid over prescribing


By: Nicole Johnson - Email

Home   / Headlines List   / Article


FARGO, N.D. (Valley News Live) - New guidelines for doctors after the CDC reports too many people have become addicted to painkillers.
It's a problem we have seen in our area, and nationally. Opioid over prescribing is a key driver in drug overdose deaths, according to the CDC.
It released voluntary guidelines for primary care doctors, saying go slow, and use less. 40 people overdose on painkillers every day in the United States, and almost 2 million are addicted.
"I would like to say that physicians have had nothing to do with it, but I think we have,” says Sanford's Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Douglas Griffin.
He says the CDC's new recommendations will give more backbone to the fight they have already begun. "This is a difficult position for primary care physicians because people are in pain and they are hurting and you know they have issues these are very tough patients to take care of," says Dr. Griffin.
He says years ago they were encouraged to be liberal with pain medication, which has left patients in a vicious cycle. "They need to have those conversations with their doctor and then look for other alternatives, there are many other medications that can be used," says Dr. Griffin.
Other alternatives, like dry needling. It’s a fairly new practice that's gaining attention. "Basically we are finding an area that seems tight and we are looking for the muscle to twitch a little bit,” says Physical Therapist Drew Zimmerman.
He says people who suffer from chronic pain respond very well to dry needling, saying it could help break a cycle of dependency on medication. "Don't give up, there are lots of different methods out there, there are lots of different practitioners,” says Zimmerman. “Sometimes things get missed just because it doesn't work with one person or one treatment, don't give up."
While the CDC's new guidelines are simply suggestions to doctors, "I think it will make an impact," says Dr. Griffin. He hopes it will create change in this community.

I know sometimes this seems to foreign or hard to do but it just takes practice.!

Mindfulness Meditation Delivers Opioid-Free Pain Relief, Study Says

Posted on March 17, 2016 in Alternative Pain Therapy, Other with 8 Comments

Researchers at the Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center published a study that looked into whether meditation uses natural opioids to reduce pain.
The study, led by author, Fadel Zeidan, Ph.D., assistant professor of neurobiology and anatomy found that mindfulness meditation does not employ the endogenous opioid system to reduce pain.
“Our finding was surprising and could be important for the millions of chronic pain sufferers who are seeking a fast-acting, non-opiate-based therapy to alleviate their pain,” said Dr. Zeidan.
The researchers injected study participants with either naloxone, which chemically blocks opioid receptors, or a saline placebo.

In this randomized, double-blinded study, 78 healthy, pain-free volunteers were divided into four groups for the four-day (20 minutes per day) trial.  The groups consisted of:

• meditation plus naloxone
• non-meditation control plus naloxone
• meditation plus saline placebo
• non-meditation control plus saline placebo.

A thermal probe was used to induce pain by heating a small area of the skin to 102.2 degrees, which is considered very painful by most people.  The participants then rated their pain using a sliding scale.
The authors concluded that pain ratings were reduced 24% from the baseline measurement for the group using meditation and naloxone.  They noted that this is important because the opioid receptors were chemically blocked, while significantly reducing pain.  Pain was also reduced by 21% in the meditation and saline placebo group.
The non-meditation control groups reported increases in pain regardless of whether they got the naloxone or placebo-saline injection.
“Our team has demonstrated across four separate studies that meditation, after a short training period, can reduce experimentally induced pain,” Zeidan said.  “And now this study shows that meditation doesn’t work through the body’s opioid system.”
“This study adds to the growing body of evidence that something unique is happening with how meditation reduces pain.  These findings are especially significant to those who have built up a tolerance to opiate-based drugs and are looking for a non-addictive way to reduce their pain.”
Zeidan’s team hopes to determine how mindfulness meditation can affect a wide range of chronic pain conditions.
“At the very least, we believe that meditation could be used in conjunction with other traditional drug therapies to enhance pain relief without it producing the addictive side effects and other consequences that may arise from opiate drugs,” he said"

Now is a good time to consider safer methods of pain management.  Physical Therapy is such a choice. Please read the following new guidelines coming out this week.

CDC Issues New Guidelines for Opioid Prescribing — Physician’s First Watch

MEDICAL NEWS | 

PHYSICIAN'S FIRST WATCH

March 16, 2016

CDC Issues New Guidelines for Opioid Prescribing

By Kelly Young

Edited by Lorenzo Di Francesco, MD, FACP, FHM

The CDC has issued 12 new recommendations for clinicians prescribing opioids for pain outside of cancer treatment or palliative care. The full guideline is published in MMWR.

Among the recommendations:

• For chronic pain, the first choices of treatment should be nonpharmacologic or nonopioid. Opioids should be an option only if the expected pain and function benefits outweigh the potential risks.
• Patients starting opioids should be prescribed immediate-release opioids at the lowest effective dose, not extended-release/long-acting opioids.
• Individual benefits and risks should be reassessed when increasing the dosage to 50 morphine milligram equivalents (MME) or more per day. Dosages of 90 MME or more should be avoided, or clinicians should "carefully justify a decision" to increase the dosage to that level.
• For acute pain, an opioid prescription for 3 days or fewer will often be enough. More than 1 week is rarely needed.
• Clinicians should regularly evaluate risk factors for opioid-related harms (e.g., history of overdose or substance use disorder) and consider offering naloxone to high-risk patients.
• Concurrent prescriptions of opioids and benzodiazepines should be avoided.

Interesting reading !

4 Symptoms of Chronic Stress That You Shouldn’t Be Ignoring

 Guest Submission  March 7, 2016

Stress can have an effect on us all. You might feel stress when you have a heavy workload, when dealing with kids misbehaving, or if you are going through a challenging time in your relationship. Stress is everywhere – and a small amount of stress is OK, as it can actually be beneficial to keep you motivated.

However, being under too much stress can wear you down both mentally and physically, leading to different conditions such as anxiety and a whole range of physical symptoms. The first step to controlling your stress levels is to understand the symptoms. But, since a lot of us are so used to being stressed, recognizing these symptoms can be difficult and a lot of the time, people don’t realize that they are stressed until they have reached the breaking point of chronic stress.

LOW ENERGY

When you are under a large amount of stress, your body may begin to shut down. Stress is the body’s natural reaction to harmful situations, and when you feel threatened a chemical reaction occurs in the body which allows you to act in a way that prevents injury. Your heart rate and blood pressure increases, your breathing quickens, and muscles tighten. If you are suffering from chronic stress, too much of this reaction will start to wear out and tire your body.

HEADACHES

There are many different types of headaches, all of which can be brought on by stress. Headaches cause pain, and many can come with a range of other unwanted symptoms such as vomiting and nausea. A tension headache is the most common type of headache which can be caused by stress and anxiety. These headaches usually last for around half an hour and can generally be treated with over-the-counter painkillers. However, if you begin to experience tension headaches more frequently and for longer periods of time, it’s a tell-tale sign of chronic stress.

 

VARICOSE VEINS

You may be surprised that varicose veins are also a physical symptom of chronic stress. Chronic stress triggers an endocrine system response in which occurs a release of hormones known as corticosteroids. Since chronic stress is a prolonged emotional pressure suffered over a prolonged period of time, long-term exposure to stress causes a high level of these stress hormones in the body which can lead to issues such as high blood pressure and muscular damage, subsequently resulting in varicose veins. Although not all cases of varicose veins are caused by stress, it’s a good idea to visit a vascular doctor to discuss causes and different treatments.

INSOMNIA

Being unable to sleep at night is one of the sure signs of chronic stress. If you find that you’re wide awake each night and unable to wind down even though you’re feeling tired, it could be a result of the stress hormones in your body provoking the ‘fight or flight’ response that renders you unable to relax or fall asleep. Insomnia can lead to many different problems and can cause your stress to worsen.

There are many more physical symptoms of stress which you could experience. If you feel that your stress is taking a toll on your life, speak to your doctor.

Written by Guest Submitter

Photo by bottled_void