Archive for the ‘Proven Results’ Category
You May Get relief from chronic pain by walking
If you are suffering from chronic pain from fibromyalgia or another medical condition, you know the frustration that comes with the attempts to control pain. While medication and therapies are a key factor in pain management, exercise can also work to relieve pain and improve quality of life. Inactivity can lead to more pain – the more you move, the less you will feel your pain.
If you are suffering from chronic pain, begin introducing regular walking workouts into your daily routine. Walking is the most basic form of aerobic exercise. There are several benefits of aerobic exercise, including: building stamina, boosting energy and reducing stiffness and pain. Specific health benefits of walking for exercise include:
- Strengthening muscles – By strengthening the muscles in the feet, legs, hips and torso, you will increase stability of the spine. Spinal stability may reduce symptoms of chronic back pain.
- Improves flexibility and range of motion – With improved range of motion, you will be less susceptible to injury due to stiffness or awkward movements.
- Strengthening joints – A low-impact workout such as walking improves strength and flexibility of the joints, as well as muscles and tendons surrounding the joints.
Research has shown that low-impact aerobic exercise is most effective for improving chronic pain symptoms. It provides a means of relaxation for both the body and mind. Exercise in short intervals has been shown to be most successful in relieving chronic pain. For example, rather than going for one 30-minute walk each day, take three short, 10-minute walks instead.
In a study of 52 sedentary patients with chronic lower back pain, Dr. Michal Katz-Leurer and colleague Ilana Shnayderman found that a simple daily walking routine can improve chronic lower back pain symptoms. Katz-Leurer, from Tel Aviv University’s Stanley Steyer School of Health Professions at the Sackler Faculty of Medicine, and Shnayderman, a graduate student at the Department of Physical Therapy and a practicing physiotherapist at Maccabi Health Care, published their findings in the journal Clinical Rehabilitation.
If you suffer from chronic pain, make a point to exercise daily. By exercising, you will help prevent muscle atrophy and decrease joint pain. Start with a simple 30-minutes of exercise each day, gradually increasing if you are able.
Consult with your physician before beginning any exercise routine.
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Painkiller abuse and addiction
Ritalin (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Prescription drug abuse is the use of a medication without a prescription, in a way other than as prescribed, or for the experience or feelings elicited. (www.drugabuse.gov) Many patients are hesitant to take opioid medications and many healthcare providers are hesitant to prescribe them, for fear of the patient becoming addicted. In order to reduce the risk of a patient becoming addicted to painkillers, doctors should screen patients for risk factors of addiction, including family history of drug abuse, abuse, neglect, past trauma or mental illness. Physicians should also monitor patients for signs of painkiller abuse and addiction.
Signs of painkiller abuse or addiction include:
- Frequent requests for refills
- Neglecting responsibilities and/or abandoning hobbies
- Drug use causing problems in relationship
- Built up tolerance to medication
- Taking medication to avoid or relieve withdrawal symptoms
- Loss of control over medication use
- Bloodshot eyes, pupils larger or smaller than usual
- Changes in appetite or sleep patterns
- Sudden weight loss or weight gain
- Mood swings, irritability, lethargy
Preventing prescription painkiller abuse
If your doctor has prescribed painkillers to treat your chronic pain, take steps to ensure you are using the medication appropriately. Always follow the directions for use on the label of the medication, be aware of potential interactions with other drugs you may be taking, and never stop taking or change the dosage of a prescription painkiller without the direction of your physician.
Before you begin taking any medications, inform your doctor of any prescription, over-the-counter medicines, or dietary and herbal supplements you are currently taking.
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San Antonio Spine Surgeon, San Antonio Back Doctor, Mayo Clinic Trained Spine Surgeon, Bexar County Orthopedic Surgeon
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Spine Surgeon Fort Worth Texas, Spine Surgeon Tarrant County, Texas Back Institute, TBI, Shawn Henry DO
Become Pain Free | Pain Specialist in Texas
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Spine Surgeon Dallas, Mayo Clinic Trained Spine Surgeon, Back Doctor, Spine Pain Doctor
https://www.becomepainfree.com/
Become Pain Free | Pain Specialist in Texas
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BecomePainFree.com Treats
- https://www.becomepainfree.com/
Herniated discs - Pinched nerves
- Degenerative spine disease
- Spinal stenosis
- Spondylolisthesis (slipped spine)
- Scoliosis (deformity)
- Low back pain / neck pain
- Spine trauma
- Spine infection
- Osteoporotic fractures
- Spine and spinal cord tumors
- Peripheral nerve injury
- Chiari malformation
- Cavernous malformation
- Vascular malformation
Become Pain Free | Pain Specialist in Texas
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Carpal Tunnel Syndrome, CTS
Carpal tunnel syndrome is a common problem that affects the use of your hand, and is caused by compression of the median nerve at the wrist. It most often occurs when the median nerve in the wrist becomes inflamed after being aggravated by repetitive movements such as typing on a computer keyboard or playing the piano. It also seems to affect professional artists fairly commonly – in particular, sculptors and printmakers.
The “carpal tunnel” is formed by the bones, tendons and ligaments that surround the median nerve. Since the median nerve supplies sensation to the thumb, index and middle finger, and part of the ring finger, and provides motion to the muscles of the thumb and hand, you might notice numbness and weakness in these areas.
Common Symptoms
- Hand and wrist pain
- A burning sensation in the middle and index fingers
- Thumb and finger numbness
- An electric-like shock through the wrist and hand
Thesesymptoms are often exaggerated when the wrist is bent forward. This numbness or pain may be worse at night, and may actually keep you awake. During the day, it may occur more often when you are participating in activities that involve bending of your wrist.
Common Causes of Carpal Tunnel Syndrome
Diseases or conditions that may increase your chances of developing carpal tunnel syndrome include pregnancy, diabetes, menopause, broken or dislocated bones in the wrist, and obesity. Additional causes include repetitive and forceful grasping with the hands, bending of the wrist, and arthritis.
Any repetitive motions that cause significant swelling, thickening or irritation of membranes around the tendons in the carpal tunnel can result in pressure on the median nerve, disrupting transmission of sensations from the hand up to the arm and to the central nervous system.
Diagnosing Carpal Tunnel Syndrome
It is important to seek medical assistance when you first notice persistent symptoms. Do not wait for the pain to become intolerable.
Before your doctor can recommend a course of treatment, he or she will perform a thorough evaluation of your condition, including a medical history, physical examination and diagnostic tests. Your doctor will document your symptoms and ask about the extent to which these symptoms affect your daily living. The physical examination will include an assessment of sensation, strength and reflexes in your hand.
If conservative treatment such as medication or physical therapy does not provide sufficient relief, your doctor may perform diagnostic studies to determine if surgery is an effective option. These diagnostic studies may include:
- X-ray: An x-ray will show the bones of the wrist and determine if any abnormalities may be contributing to carpal tunnel syndrome or another disorder.
- Electromyogram and Nerve Conduction Studies (EMG/NCS): These tests primarily study how the nerves and muscles are working together. They measure the electrical impulse along nerve roots, peripheral nerves and muscle tissue.
Conservative (Nonsurgical) Treatments
The main purpose of conservative treatment is to reduce or eliminate repetitive injury to the median nerve. In some cases, carpal tunnel syndrome can be treated by immobilizing the wrist in a splint to minimize or stop pressure on the nerves. If that does not work, patients are sometimes prescribed anti-inflammatory medications or cortisone injections in the wrist to reduce swelling. Your doctor may suggest specific types of hand and wrist exercises, which may be helpful. Treatment for carpal tunnel syndrome may include rest, the use of a wrist splint during sleep, or physical therapy. Conservative treatment methods may continue for up to eight weeks.
Only a small percentage of patients require surgery. Factors leading to surgery include the presence of persistent neurological symptoms and lack of response to conservative treatment.
If you experience severe pain that cannot be relieved through rest, rehabilitation or nonsurgical treatment, you may be a candidate for one of several surgical procedures that can be performed to relieve pressure on the median nerve. The most common procedure is called carpal tunnel release, which can be performed using an open incision or endoscopic techniques.
The open incision procedure or carpal tunnel release, involves the doctor opening your wrist and cutting the ligament at the bottom of the wrist to relieve pressure. The endoscopic carpal tunnel release procedure involves making a smaller incision and using a miniaturized camera to assist the neurosurgeon in viewing the carpal tunnel. The possibility of nerve injury is slightly higher with endoscopic surgery, but the patient’s recovery and return to work is quicker.
After surgery, a dressing will be applied to your hand. You should leave this secured in place until your first office visit following surgery. You may need bandages on one or both wrists depending on your surgery. If this is the case, you may require extra assistance at home with everyday activities. Your stitches can be removed about 10-14 days after surgery. Make sure you avoid repetitive use of the hand for four weeks after surgery and avoid getting the stitches wet. You will notice that the pain and numbness begins to improve after surgery, but you may have tenderness in the area of the incision for several months.
Recurrence of symptoms after surgery for carpal tunnel syndrome is rare, occurring in less than 5 percent of patients. A majority of patients recover completely. To avoid injuring yourself again, it may help to change the way you perform repetitive movements, the frequency with which you perform the movements, and the amount of time you rest between periods when you must perform these movements.
Become Pain Free | Pain Specialist in Texas
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Adult Stem Cell Therapy to Treat Back Pain, Stem Cell, Spine Stem Cells, Stem Cell Treatment
Adult Stem Cell Therapy that doesn’t require FDA approval to treat lumbar and cervical spine conditions resulting from injury or aging, and is also involved with an FDA clinical trial investigating the use of Adult Stem Cells.
Stem Cell
These stem cells are autologous – they are taken from an adult patient and returned to that same patient in a concentrated form to the damaged area in a 30-minute procedure. This type of adult stem cell therapy does not require FDA approval to administer.
When it comes to stem cells, there is often a lot of mystique surrounding them. We hear from the media that we can create a human being out of a bundle of cells, which is not necessarily true. We also tend to look at embryonic stem cells as being the only type of stem cell. With these types of embryonic stem cells, one idea is to be able to create a liver or kidney in a Petri dish, which is not controllable or feasible at this point, and the work being done by the BecomePainFree.com medical group.
When we look at stem cell types, we have embryonic stem cells on one hand and adult stem cells on the other. The characteristics of each of these are not like other cells. For instance, a liver cell can divide but it will only ever be a liver cell. These stem cells, both embryonic and adult, can turn into different types of cells. The embryonic stem cells can really turn into any cell type, but adult stem cells are limited as far as the cells they can turn into. This depends upon environment or niche and what they are already programmed to become. A lot of people think there is a lot of promise with embryonic stem cells and there is, although we are not quite there yet.
We are still at the forefront of stem cell technology and embryonic stem cells in particular. With those cells, we do not have the ability to control what types of tissue they turn into. For example, we could be trying to manipulate these cells to turn into kidneys, but they might start to develop as pancreatic cells, which is troublesome. Another key with all stem cells is that they can proliferate quite a bit, usually at a higher rate than just a regular somatic cell. Although this sounds good at first glance, the issue with this, particularly with embryonic stem cells, is we cannot control that division. Hence, these cells can keep going and going without dying. In the normal bodily process, cells are programmed to die after a certain time, but these embryonic stem cells can evade that action and continue dividing, which takes on the characteristic of cancer cells. In some animal studies, an issue that keeps arising is development of tumors in some of these animals. It is difficult to predict if tumors are going to form when using some sort of embryonic stem cell treatment. This is still a scary area through which we are still trying to navigate.
However, the focus of the BecomePainFree.com medical group is on adult mesenchymal stem cells. On the whole, the media does not give a lot of attention to these kinds of stem cells, as using them avoids any kind of ethical or controversial issues. There is a great amount of research being done on adult mesenchymal stem cells, however, because they are very powerful.
First off, we can control what cell type they turn into much more easily. For example, the treatment used by the BecomePainFree.com medical group focuses on Mesenchymal precursor cells (MPC). Mesenchymal means these cells are not going to turn into any kind of blood product such as a red blood cell or white blood cell, although they are derived from bone marrow. The fact that they are precursor cells means these MPCs are only going to differentiate into one of a few cell types. They are either going to become bone cells, i.e., osteoblasts, or chondrocytes, i.e., cartilaginous tissue such that we see in intervertebral discs and joints, etc. All of that really depends on the environment in which we place these adult stem cells where it is well suited to do this. For example, we can inject these MPCs into a bone fracture, and because the cells are surrounded by bone tissue, these cells will receive signals from the surrounding cells that tell them to turn into bone. However, the cells we use will be injected into a disc or joint, and the cells composing the disc and joint tissue will signal the stem cells to develop into similar tissue. Again, there is no chance of any sort of pancreatic cell or nerve cell type spontaneously forming because we are using certain adult stem cell types, which are limited and cannot turn into anything like that. In addition, as the tissue surrounding the disc and joint is relatively avascular, there is not really any worry of these cells migrating through the blood stream to somewhere else in the body and causing any sort of problem. As far as the proliferation issue with embryonic stem cells, we have not seen this issue with adult stem cells in terms of dividing exponentially without ceasing. There is almost a preset limit to how many times these adult stem cells will divide.
Become Pain Free | Pain Specialist in Texas
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Adult Stem Cell Therapy, Stem Cell Spine Surgery, Stem Cell Injections, Stem Cell Injection
Contrary to what most people believe, there are two types of stem cells used in the advancement of modern medicine. At Minimally Invasive BecomePainFree.com, we are helping pave the way for the advancement of medicine using the most viable, and ethical method of stem cell healing called Adult Stem Cell Therapy. In living organisms, an adult stem cell is an undifferentiated cell that can produce other cells that eventually make up specialized tissues and organs that they inhabit. Adult stem cells are found in some tissues in the adult body, such as the epidermis of the skin, the lining of the small intestine, and the bone marrow, where they act as natural healers in the regeneration of old or worn tissue.
ADult Stem Cells
Adult Stem Cell Therapy
Adult stem cells move throughout our bodies and have vast potential and limitless capabilities. Although recent advancements in modern medicine have made adult stem cell therapy more widely known, it has been used to successfully treat cancer patients for over 40 years. At Minimally Invasive BecomePainFree.com, we strive to be on the forefront of the advancement of medicine for the sake of our patients. We fully understand the importance of the discovery, and practice, of unlocking the body’s secrets to heal itself, and using the adult stem cell treatment approach allows us to do so.
In this process, called adult (mesenchymal, multipotent) stem cell therapy, we use the patients’ own stem cells to allow for the healing and regenerating process for both minimally invasive surgical and non-invasive procedures for treating the injured, damaged, or painful areas due to aging or degeneration in the spine, knees, hips, shoulders, feet and ankles. Once injected, they function as the building blocks for tissue re-growth and increased blood flow to the ailing areas. The goal of the treatment is to replace damaged cells and to promote the growth of new blood vessels and tissues in order to help the target organ function at a largely improved capacity. The risk of rejection by the patient’s body is virtually non-existent, since the Adult Stem Cells received are directly from the patient. We use a highly advanced method of extracting the adult stem cells from the patient, and recycling them in their own bodies without manipulation during the procedure. This process makes our stem cell treatment safe, ethical, and effective in fulfilling positive medical outcomes. It is important to note that adult stem cell therapy is not controversial because it involves the use of a patient’s own blood and NOT derived from embryos.
General Advantages of Adult Stem Cell Therapy:
- Natural and Ethical: Regenerative solutions replace damaged cells and tissue by making the most of the body’s natural regenerative potential, not just implant a temporary or artificial fix, and does so using the patient’s own stem cells, not taken from an embryo.
- Safe and Effective: Because the Adult Stem Cells are derived directly from the patient’s own blood, there is virtually no possibility for rejection, as compared to donor replacement organs and blood transfusions.
- Positive Side Effects: Stem cells also behave like beacons that alert the body to send its own regenerative resources to the site and reactivate the healing process in situations where the body would not have done so voluntarily.
- Proven Results: Clinical results thus far have proven positive. Remarkably, no patient has responded negatively to the cells and the small percentage of patients who did not respond to treatment showed no negative side effects.
- Another Chance at Life: With no side effects, when conventional methods fail, the risk is considered low, compared to possibilities.
- The Sooner, the Better: Treatment now, is better than treatment later. Just as with other medical treatments, time can make symptoms and complications more advanced and even harder to recover from.
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Become Pain Free, Pain, Back Pain, Spine Pain, Spine Surgery, Chronic Pain 