Doctors and pain patients: Conflict and collaboration

It seems more folks are starting to see that our current medical system and its methods have made doctors and patients into adversaries. Both initially assume the other isn’t truthful, is either maximizing (patient) or minimizing (doctors) pain.

It’s become a contest: patients want the pain relief opioids provide and doctors want to avoid prescribing them. Both parties have valid reasons for their views and both have valid reasons to distrust the other, a sorry situation for all fo us.

Doctors and patients in pain: Conflict and collaboration in opioid prescription in primary care – PubMed – free full-text /25261714/ – Dec 2014 

Calcium Fructoborate Decreases Systemic Inflammation

A good friend of mine who does professional dog-walking (daily hilly hikes of 4-8 miles) had recently been suffering from increasing pain in his knee and his hikes were getting shorter and less frequent. The doctor said his knee cartilage had deteriorated until the joint was bone-on-bone.

However,  just one week after starting a supplement (“Move Free” from Schiff), his pain was relieved and he’s walking further than he has in many months. This supplement contained the usual “joint supplement” ingredients of glucosamine, chondroitin, and hyaluronic acid (which I’ve tried and not found helpful for my kind of pain), but also a new one I hadn’t seen before: Calcium Fructoborate.

When I researched it in the NIH Library, I found several studies explaining the effectiveness of this particular molecule for reducing the pain of inflammation, not just in joints, but throughout the body.