sigmond
Bluelight Crew
- Joined
- Mar 21, 2015
- Messages
- 3,404
by Derek Beres
Much of modern medicine does not consider emotions as a root cause of physical pain. It’s as if humans can divide bodies into psychology and neurology, handled by those respective disciplines, and turn to gastrointestinal specialists, cardiologists, and orthopaedic surgeons for fleshly concerns. While sometimes warranted this persistent division of mind and body is unfortunate.
While the cause of pain is not always apparent it’s also easy to misidentify the problem. Sometimes multiple issues converge in your body, each influencing the others. Instead of implementing a holistic yet scientifically credible approach to healing we remain caught in a hamster wheel of specialization. General physicians purposely overbook to maximize profits while minimizing time with each patient, sending them off to doctors who only treat one specific problem or, worse, whipping out a prescription pad before a proper diagnosis is rendered.
And now, with the promise of smart phone apps removing yet another layer of actual communication with doctors, self-prescription is becoming more prevalent. Since we’re not always adept at diagnosing our problems—“you’re your own best doctor” plays more like an excuse than medicine—and since we’re accustomed to a five minute chat before driving to the pharmacy, it turns out many people are treating emotional pain with opioids. As Olga Khazan reports at the Atlantic,
Relief offered by a temporary decrease in physical pain might lead to chronic problems, such as addiction and deeper depression, as some opioids have antidepressant properties, Khazan writes. On top of the initial problem a whole slew of tragic reactions begin to occur.
This comes during a time when pharmaceutical companies are being sued for misleading advertising. In Ohio, for example, 20 percent of the state’s population was prescribed opioids in 2016; in 2012, 793 million doses were prescribed. The state’s population that year was 11.55 million. Trigger happy is an understatement.
This led the state’s attorney general, Mike DeWine, to file a lawsuit against a number of companies, including Johnson & Johnson and Purdue Pharma, accusing that they “trivialize the risks of opioids while overstating the benefits of using them for chronic pain.” He’s not alone: lawsuits in California and New York make similar claims.
During a time when 23 million Americans may well be kicked off of insurance in the coming months this is not welcome news. The opioid crisis is the result of a perfect storm: increasing anxiety and stress in modern Americans, translating into physical symptoms; doctors maximizing prescription quotas thanks to ties with pharmaceutical companies; pharmaceutical companies extensively advertising products; shorter doctor visits, resulting in an industry in which writing a script is easier than navigating the tricky world of psychology, personalities, and somatic disorders; patients using multiple doctors to keep bottles filled; a thriving black market and an increase in synthetics imported and cooked up in questionable home laboratories.
continued: bigthink
Much of modern medicine does not consider emotions as a root cause of physical pain. It’s as if humans can divide bodies into psychology and neurology, handled by those respective disciplines, and turn to gastrointestinal specialists, cardiologists, and orthopaedic surgeons for fleshly concerns. While sometimes warranted this persistent division of mind and body is unfortunate.
While the cause of pain is not always apparent it’s also easy to misidentify the problem. Sometimes multiple issues converge in your body, each influencing the others. Instead of implementing a holistic yet scientifically credible approach to healing we remain caught in a hamster wheel of specialization. General physicians purposely overbook to maximize profits while minimizing time with each patient, sending them off to doctors who only treat one specific problem or, worse, whipping out a prescription pad before a proper diagnosis is rendered.
And now, with the promise of smart phone apps removing yet another layer of actual communication with doctors, self-prescription is becoming more prevalent. Since we’re not always adept at diagnosing our problems—“you’re your own best doctor” plays more like an excuse than medicine—and since we’re accustomed to a five minute chat before driving to the pharmacy, it turns out many people are treating emotional pain with opioids. As Olga Khazan reports at the Atlantic,
Relief offered by a temporary decrease in physical pain might lead to chronic problems, such as addiction and deeper depression, as some opioids have antidepressant properties, Khazan writes. On top of the initial problem a whole slew of tragic reactions begin to occur.
This comes during a time when pharmaceutical companies are being sued for misleading advertising. In Ohio, for example, 20 percent of the state’s population was prescribed opioids in 2016; in 2012, 793 million doses were prescribed. The state’s population that year was 11.55 million. Trigger happy is an understatement.
This led the state’s attorney general, Mike DeWine, to file a lawsuit against a number of companies, including Johnson & Johnson and Purdue Pharma, accusing that they “trivialize the risks of opioids while overstating the benefits of using them for chronic pain.” He’s not alone: lawsuits in California and New York make similar claims.
During a time when 23 million Americans may well be kicked off of insurance in the coming months this is not welcome news. The opioid crisis is the result of a perfect storm: increasing anxiety and stress in modern Americans, translating into physical symptoms; doctors maximizing prescription quotas thanks to ties with pharmaceutical companies; pharmaceutical companies extensively advertising products; shorter doctor visits, resulting in an industry in which writing a script is easier than navigating the tricky world of psychology, personalities, and somatic disorders; patients using multiple doctors to keep bottles filled; a thriving black market and an increase in synthetics imported and cooked up in questionable home laboratories.
continued: bigthink
