The deadly effects of untreated or under-treated pain | National Pain Report | Emily Ulrich
Regarding a recent article about opioids in the New England Journal of Medicine. In the latter, Jane Ballantyne, MD, and Mark Sullivan, MD, wrote that reducing pain intensity – pain relief – should not be the primary goal of doctors who treat pain patients. They suggest that patients should learn to accept their pain and move on with their lives.
This statement is nothing short of infuriating to me and I imagine to anyone who has to live with chronic pain.
There are so many things wrong with that ideology, and the “facts” that are being used to support it in the anti-opioid movement, that it’s difficult to know where to begin.
There are years of research that show that pain left untreated or under-treated does in fact kill. It may not happen right away, but it greatly affects our quality of life and kills us slowly in a variety of ways
Most of us know that chronic pain causes depression, anxiety, and even suicidal thoughts. There is also a very long list of comorbidities that often come with chronic pain, including hormonal and metabolic imbalance, impaired immune function, skin rashes, ulcers, incontinence, high blood pressure, and much more — all of which ultimately lead to a decline in quality of life and overall health.
Unrelieved pain can also permanently change the brain and nervous system, preventing the brain from fully resting and developing new cells to repair brain damage.
Research shows that the brains of pain patients can deteriorate over the course of a year at a rate which would take a healthy person’s brain one to two decades.
Staggeringly, none of this seems to have been taken into consideration by the CDC or the doctors who have written this recommended “treatment” approach. One is perplexed by the “sweep it under the rug” mentality of these doctors, and the many who will be influenced by the CDC and the anti-opioid suggestions published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
The facts are this:
Opioid misuse is not epidemic in the U.S.
(opioid overdose is not even in the top 20 causes of death),
but chronic pain is pandemic.The overwhelming majority of pain patients who use opioids do not abuse or divert them. Yet the majority of patients are under-treated or even untreated for chronic pain.
In addition, doctors have an exaggerated fear of addiction. Many fear repercussions from the DEA or their state medical board if they prescribe too many opioids, and there is a general lack of pain education on the part of many doctors.
Most of all, money is running the show.
It seems that the American healthcare system sees us as useless members of society, who can either be eliminated or turned into eternal consumers. Treating us only with drugs that have dangerous side effects requires a whole new set of medications to treat the host of new ailments that their drugs have given us.
Another cog in the “Big Pharma” takeover of chronic pain (where we are offered treatments such as Lyrica, Neurontin, antidepressants, NSAIDs, biologics, etc., instead of inexpensive and proven opioid therapy) is that the CDC consulted with addiction treatment specialists, as well as insurance and drug company influenced “researchers” who have a conflict of interest.
Many of us don’t realize (and some doctors don’t want us to realize) that we have a basic human right to pain care. According to the Journal of American Society of Anesthesiology,
“the unreasonable failure to treat pain is
poor medicine, unethical practice, and
is an abrogation of a fundamental human right.”Doctors and patients must acknowledge that chronic pain is deadly. It can cause countless fatal conditions, not the least of which are heart attack, stroke and brain damage. And while opioids are not the only route to reduced pain, they are very important players in the path to pain relief. For most of us, opioids are part of a multi-modal treatment to lessen our pain, as well as a treatment of last resort.
The “alternative treatments” suggested by the CDC, Ballantyne and Sullivan include therapies most of us have either tried or had fail; or they are already part of our overall pain therapy.
For most of us, a main component of treatment is opioids.
EDS and Chronic Pain News & Info 
“Morgan Thorne 5 days ago
I think starting a social media campaign to bring awareness to this issue is of vital importance. I don’t think that the #painedlivesmatter is an appropriate name for it though. Co-opting the name of another movement, especially one that draws attention to the serious issues that black people face in the US (and Canada) is not cool.
I’m sure if we all put our heads together, a more appropriate name could be found.”
Feel free to use #PainKills2 :)
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“Many of us don’t realize (and some doctors don’t want us to realize) that we have a basic human right to pain care. “
This is the core of the problem. If there is anything such as a basic human right, then the right to relieve our pain must surely be one of them. It is as essential to human existence as the right to life itself. Yet we are denied this right.
We accept without question that an industry with a financial stake in controlling our access to pain relief should have sole authority in determining who does and does not get pain relief. The system was not set up to facilitate the swift and effective treatment of pain, but rather the swift and effective extraction of monopoly rents from desperate people who have no choice but to do as they’re told…or else.
“According to the Journal of American Society of Anesthesiology…”
Much as I respect this author’s powertful article, there is a sad and surely unintended irony here in having to obtain a quote on our right to pain relief from a medical society that profits from controlling and limiting that right. It’s as if our own opinions on the right to pain relief don’t carry enough weight to be quotable, which of course they don’t.
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Well done, Zyp! Seeing a lot of “Conlicts of interest” happening all over the country. Lives are at stake when it happens in Medical Lieterature! This is a great example.
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Thanks, Unhinged! We are currently at the mercy of the ugly side of unrestrained ultra-aggressive capitalism. It sure seems like financial interests should not be involved in every aspect of our healthcare, but money is the only value that motivates powerful people to do anything at all these days.
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