I have no clue whether the allegation is true or not. There was a reference to a recently published study, with lots of other references to it focused on the San Francisco Bay area, where Berserkely is.

The older literature is not very helpful in answering the question. Most of the old results were unfavorable.

How can we ever know whether it is helpful, and for what? The how is easy: do a bunch of medical research on the subject. Getting permission from the FDA to even do such research is a serious obstacle.

Why do we even have an FDA, or laws that restrict access to an array of chemicals that may or may not help us? The idea that adults aren’t smart enough to figure out what is good for them comes out of the Progressive movement of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. That’s why we have the bewildering array of prohibitions and boards and government administrative agencies, designed mostly to spend a lot of tax money while telling our people “no” to a lot of questions.

California, and several other states, are effectively nullifying the federal law by creating their own more liberal laws allowing things that are forbidden under the Federal rules.

Anyone who spends a bunch of time in Egypt will find that Hashish is fairly easy to get, and the authorities spend most their efforts working to not find it and not suppress its use. As a result, there are lots of poor folks spending all they have to get hashish, so they can consume it. They display plainly addictive behavior.

Does this mean that we should ban hashish, or marijuana? I think not.
Why not?

There are some people whose sole function in life is to serve as a horrible example! Their example serves as an effective warning to others to stay away from their self-destructive behaviors.

Another example: Treatment of Cancer with laetrile. In the 1960s I remember stories of people being arrested for smuggling laetrile into the US of A for cancer treatment, because they didn’t like mainstream medical cancer treatment. (I don’t either.)

Finally, enough people wrote about the laetrile to their congresscritters to get the rules against it dropped. It wasn’t legalized, just decriminalized.

Result: Laetrile became widely available, and quickly lost its popularity as a cancer treatment. Decriminalization killed the market for it.

What do I recommend about marijuana for pain. I suggest we just decriminalize the production, possession, use, possession for sale, and use of the weed.

What will happen then? I really don’t know. I think we’ll be happy that we are just a bit freer, and not spending the law enforcement money on suppressing it.

People will figure things out on their own. Americans are smart, and can decide for themselves what is good.

Will I violate the law regarding marijuana? C’mon, do I look that stupid?

I have sad news for the poor soul. Methadone will NOT give him any lasting relief.

Postherpetic Neuralgia is in a category of pain called neuropathic. It is caused by damage to the nerves from the prior condition. When nerves get damaged either by diseases such as shingles, or by severing in an injury, the nervous system connections in the brain and the spinal cord and a changed. These changes frequently maintain pain along after the initial injury.

Treatments early in the course of shingles with nerve blocks will make the postherpetic neuralgia much less likely and generally much less severe.

The same nerve blocks done three years after the shingles are very unlikely to produce any benefit.

There are medicines which may be beneficial. These include antidepressants which inhibit both serotonin and norepinephrine reuptake. Antidepressants which only inhibit serotonin reuptake, the SSRI’s, produce no benefit at all in this condition. The other drugs that are beneficial are anticonvulsants. The antidepressants and anticonvulsants are commonly used together for this problem.

Frequently the drugs produce unacceptable side effects or inadequate relief. There is one other treatment that can give excellent benefit.

A spinal cord stimulator is frequently the most effective treatment available for postherpetic neuralgia. It involves putting a wire or two inside the spinal canal and up into the neck. Electrical pulses through these wires affect the spinal cord and helped to shut down the pain perception.

The chap who has this pain needs to consult an interventional pain treatment specialist. These are the physicians who are skilled in using all loads of treatment for pain and generally are very good at avoiding narcotics.

Most of us physicians who treat postherpetic neuralgia have no understanding of the things that I have just said. They seem to think that, if narcotics don’t relieve the pain, then the patient is crazy. Nothing could be farther from the truth!

I don’t know where this poor soul lives. But, there are interventional pain specialists operating pain clinics in most medium to large cities.

Live well.

Fortunately for me, I found an Interventional Pain Management physician who knew about fibromyalgia; he did the following:
1. Did not call me nuts.
2. Listened to ME.
3. Prescribed exercise, Lyrica 75mg; Cymbalta 20 mg daily. All three have worked together to decrease the Fibromyalgia.

First diagnosed with fibromyalgia, 1992, I suffered bouts of pain with increased intensity for years. Some days I was not able to get out of bed easily; just going to the bathroom was almost too much to bear. I was prescribed Elavil and bed rest. With children ages 18 to 7 I needed to function at a high level. Elavil made me so looped I slept for hours. My complaints were met with a change of medication to Pamelor. The development of a tremor made my home care nursing job impossible to do. Even simple drawing of blood from a patient was too difficult.
I elected to not take any tricyclic antidepressants after that. While the pain was so bad, pain was better than not being able to function mentally and physically. Fortunately the tremor stopped a few weeks after the Pamelor was discontinued! I went back to work in a job that I loved.

Learning to do exercises less stressfully was helpful plus taking 800 mg of ibuprophen 3 times daily helped me get through the days and nights. A move to Okinawa, Japan, proved to be very stressful. The pain index was registering 8 – 10 daily. I became depressed. A psychiatrist prescribed prozac. Immediatedly I started feeling better. Adverse publicity regarding prozac lead me to discontinue it though personally I had no symptoms. Returning to the USA, I sought a new doctor and a different approach to this strange illness that has no known cause, but is aggravated by stress. I went back on Prozac without problems, but was switched to Effexor approximately 2002., and now Cymbalta because they raise serotonin levels better thus promoting pain relief through relieving stress. An interesting aside: I no longer cry even when something is sad. I attribute that to the antidepressant. The adjunct of Lyrica to the mix has helped the pain relief, too. Diet changes, guaifenesin (cough medicine ingredient), narcotics and other modalities used or suggested did not help. I am glad that no one prescribed narcotics for this condition. However I did take narcotics for some surgical procedures. The narcotics did alleviate the surgical pain, but NOT the fibromyalgia pain. This knowledge was great! I never went down the road of getting addicted to pain medications.

Most days now I do not think of pain. I garden, do some minor landscaping, go up and down stairs with much greater ease. Thank you to my interventional pain management specialist.
Thank you for believing and relieving.

Susan Noel

Comment : This lovely lady was truly MISERABLE until she got proper treatment. Now she’s much pleasanter to live with.

I was the first of her pain management physicians, and got things started the right direction.

She’s incorrect on one minor point. The benefit of the antidepressant on pain is due to the Norepinephrine effect, not the serotonin effect.

Yes, she’s my wife. And I’m grateful she is!

Ken Noel, MD

If you suffer from headaches and you are tired of taking potentially detrimental or addictive painkillers, perhaps it’s time you investigated a natural headache treatment approach. There are a lot of natural treatment choices existing that may perhaps be your ticket to headache relief. Taken as a whole, natural headache relief treatment methods will repeatedly be less expensive, safer, and possibly even give superior results to painkillers, especially when you are searching for long term improvement.

There have been research studies showing that lots of times the only thing a person needs to do to obtain relief from their headache pain is to suspend taking more painkillers. Research studies have shown that as much as two out of every three habitual headache sufferers can get relief from discontinuing their ingestion of painkillers. Pain killers will in many cases result in an increase in discomfort and other health troubles, so trying a natural approach will frequently seem reasonable.

What works for one headache sufferer might not work for another person, so if one headache treatment approach doesn’t work another can be tried. In due course you may locate an approach that works for you. It could take awhile, but by being persistent you may well find the help you’re searching for.

One widespread treatment method is chiropractic manipulation. It has shown great success for relieving headaches and neck discomfort. Many headache symptoms are the result of spinal issues and by correcting these spinal issues it’s frequently possible to help reduce the pain. Some research studies have publicized chiropractic to be helpful to more than 80% of headache sufferers.

Another natural technique is biofeedback. This is an education program that can train headache sufferers how to consciously loosen up their muscle tightness and lessen their blood pressure and heart rate. As soon as an individual learns how to generate this effect they can achieve the needed result at whatever time desired. Typically these functions happen automatically by your body, but learning how to be in charge of them willfully is achievable.

There are further methods besides biofeedback to loosen up muscles and help reduce muscle rigidity naturally. The most common form of headache symptoms are tension-type and they can be caused or have their severity increased as a result of tension. Relieving this tension is able to help reduce the pain and suffering. Relaxation in a hot tub can be extremely beneficial. Lying down in a noiseless room with the lights off will usually help reduction of muscle tightness. Rubbing your tense muscles in the head and neck region can enhance the result.

The Soothe-A-Ciser Headache Relief Cushion is yet another widespread option for relaxing the tense neck musculature and in this manner relieve tension and headache pain. Chiropractors have been using it for years to help their patients find relief from their headache pain.

There are numerous other headache causes, and if you can detect the definite origin it can be much easier to eliminate your headaches. Too much salt has been shown to be a cause of headaches. Salt your food a lesser amount to see if it has any valuable benefit.

It is frequently helpful to assemble a headache log. Keeping track of your meals and what you eat, drink, or breathe, and then comparing that to what time you suffer from headaches can help you uncover food sensitivities. Many times headache symptoms are the consequence of ingesting specific foods. By keeping a log it is frequently possible to discover and get rid of the trigger foods.

Natural headache treatments will frequently generate positive results. It may take a good deal of time, but with a little determination it is frequently possible to find the relief that is so desperately wanted.

Article Source: ABC Article Directory

About The Author: Joshua Harding, D.C. has effectively helped headache sufferers obtain pain relief for 25 years. As a headache professional there is nothing he enjoys more than helping people find help from their pain. He provides a free 10-part headache course on his web site that goes into great detail about numerous successful natural headache treatment practices.

Some diseases are easily diagnosed with a simple blood test.  Hypothyroidism is an example of an easily diagnosed disease.  Doctors often order lab tests on female patients who complain of fatigue to determine if the patient has the thyroid disease hypothyroidism. But there is no laboratory test and no easy diagnosis for the syndrome of fibromyalgia.

Medical conditions, diseases and syndromes, are defined by medical experts.  In 1990, the American College of Rheumatology established diagnostic criteria for fibromyalgia and this has been accepted by the National Institutes of Health.  Fibromyalgia is a chronic syndrome considered to be related to arthritis.  It is most common in women. Men can and do get it. The causes of fibromyalgia are unknown. Usually patients visit several doctors over a period of years before finding a doctor that is familiar with the proper diagnosis procedures.

Widespread diffuse body pain is the number one symptom of the person suffering from fibromyalgia.   It may be described as aching pain.  The duration of the pain for three months or more is an important determining factor in diagnosing fibromyalgia.  A doctor might order a lab test to check for vitamin D deficiency because this deficiency causes aches and pains and the doctor would want to rule that out.

Fatigue is a predominant symptom of fibromyalgia.   Fatigue can be a symptom of other diseases such as hypothyroidism or liver disease.  This overlapping of symptoms with other conditions is what frustrates doctors and patients.  Doctors should order lab tests to rule out other possible conditions.   Equally important is obtaining a good patient history.

Poor sleep and morning stiffness top of the list of significant fibromyalgia symptoms.  Additionally, a patient might suffer from headaches, memory problems, sometimes called ‘brain fog’, anxiety, and irritable bowel syndrome, restless leg syndrome, weakness, painful menstrual periods and hypersensitivity to temperature.

Proper diagnosis of fibromyalgia will include an accurate examination based on the American College of Rheumatology criteria.  First, there must be a three month history of pain in all four quadrants of the body (both sides of the body plus above and below the waist).   Second, the examination of 18 pairs of tender points of the body by digital palpitation (pushing on them with fingers) with light pressure.  Tender points are small areas in a muscle that ache.  If 11 out of the 18 tender point sites hurt with pressure the diagnosis of fibromyalgia is confirmed.

There is no cure for fibromyalgia—only treatment of the symptoms. Current information on fibromyalgia is available from the National Institutes of Health where research is being ongoing.  Helpful information is also available at the National Fibromyalgia Association website, www.fmaware.org.

Consider the dedicated law student studying for his final exams. He really wants to pass, so he really spends time with the books. In doing this he is tense because of anxiety, and holds his head in a constant position too long, with too little motion and no breaks for hours at a time.

His neck muscles are used to tonic contraction (holding with little motion) but not as long as he is using them that way. The reward for this is muscle spasms and neck pain.

Spasms of the Neck Muscles

Seemingly innocuous tasks can trigger neck pain. Simple tasks as watching TV, working on a computer, reading a book, staying too long in the thinking pose, or simply dosing on a chair with the head propped on to one side after a hard day of work could cause neck pain. It all depends on how we keep the head while we perform a certain task. Sleeping in a wrong way in the night can make a person wake up with a stiff neck. But as mentioned earlier, fortunately these posture induced neck pain is of minor nature and they go away on their own with proper rest and discontinuation of the pain causing activity. The problem is when it doesn’t go away with rest and persists for days. That’s when something is wrong with the neck.

Exercise, Sports, and Neck Pain

Those that love the gym should be careful while doing work outs. They should be cautious and must avoid putting unaccustomed strain on the neck. It can lead to neck pain instantly. Sports that involve rough body contact or that involve tumbles and falls invariably cause neck pain. Rugby, high jump, pole vault, and boxing are some sports where neck pain is too common. Interestingly, there are certain movement exercises that can reduce neck pain and allow better movement of the neck muscles.

Stress is Another Cause

Some times stress can bring on neck pain. When we get neck pain for no apparent reason stress could be the culprit. Putting ourselves under too much stress will have its effect on the body and the mind. The mind and body connection is real. Body pains may have their roots in the mind.

Accidents, Injuries, and Falls

The whiplash effect in a car accident or caused by braking suddenly may cause severe neck pain. Injuries sustained on the neck while involved in accidents or while participating in sports and games could be serious, and would require detailed examination of the neck to determine the extent and type of the damage done to the neck.

When the head is thrown violently forward and back the ligaments and muscles in the neck suffer tears. The muscles can and usually do heal. The ligaments may heal, but less reliably. There are frequently small fractures, especially in the facet joints, that may not show on x-ray at all. Just because the physician can’t see them doesn’t mean they aren’t there. Young women are more susceptible to these injuries than men, because they have less muscle strength.

Determining the Cause from the Symptoms

It’s essential to have a detailed medical examination as advised by the doctor to determine the cause of neck pain. Usually a doctor would be able to zero on the causes of neck pain going by the symptoms. Sprain and strains of the neck muscle will be characterized by pain and stiffness that spreads to the upper arm, shoulder, or upper back. When a nerve root is pinched or compressed pain will shoot down to the arm and fingers. If shooting pain is felt in both the arms then the neck injury is of a more serious nature and immediate medical advice should be sought.

When neck pain is accompanied by headache, dizziness, or a very uneasy stomach the cause could be a herniated disc. However, a doctor should be consulted to determine the exact cause of neck pain and the line of treatment should be followed basing on the doctor’s advice. These are just information to give a basic idea about neck pain and by no means can replace the advice and diagnosis of a doctor.

Just because pain spreads from the neck to the arm and even the hand does NOT mean a nerve is pinched. The pain may arise from injured and overstretched ligaments.

Neck Pain Due to Medical Conditions

Neck pain often appears not as a main problem but as one of the symptoms of a more severe illness. Certain medical conditions cause neck pain. When such a thing is suspected we need to consult the doctor without the slightest delay. The aim here is not to treat the neck pain alone but to wipe out any disease that the body may be harboring of which the neck pain is just a symptom.

Arthritis: Usually induced by old age, arthritis can create feelings of numbness, tingling sensation, or weakness in the arm and the hand. Arthritis leads to a pinched nerve and is pain is felt on one side of the neck.
Impending Heart Attack: Neck pain accompanied by chest pain could be the sign of an impending heart attack. Timely intervention could avert a major health disaster and possibly save life.

Torticollis: This is a medical condition where the muscles on one side of the neck are severely contracted. This can be congenital or can happen due to spasmodic reasons caused by injury or disease. The chin is tilted to one side and movement to the other side becomes painful.

As mentioned earlier, these are just basic information to help understand the sufferer of neck pain about the possible cause of their condition. They should not replace diagnostic procedure. Only a physician can determine the precise cause of neck pain through physical examination of the patient and carrying out required tests. In that direction, these information would be helpful and encourage a neck pain sufferer not to take all neck pains lightly. Especially, the ones that appear accompanied by other symptoms should not be ignored and expected to go away on their own. Timely medical intervention can help neck pain, and any other serious underlying illness.

Anatomy and Causes of Back Pain

The back comprises of three parts: the spine, the ligaments, and the muscles that are attached to the spine. The back muscles enable the movement of the spine for bending, stretching, or moving sideways. Ligament injuries do not heal well, and can cause long lasting pain. Back pain may result when either the back muscles or the spinal column gets damaged. Usually the causes of back pain are divided into four categories: mechanical problems, injuries, acquired conditions and diseases, and infections.

Figuring out what causes back pain requires careful history taking and physical exam. X-ray and lab studies, and MRI exams frequently help. A careful physical exam after a thorough history is usually enough to diagnose the majority of back complaints.

Back muscle spasms or muscle tension can lead to backache. Any wrong or awkward movement of the body can result in muscle spasms, sometimes severely. Bending or twisting improperly also leads to muscle spasm or tension. Lifting heavy objects, when you’re not used to doing it, is a common cause of backache. Back muscles need regular blood supply like any other muscle in the body. If the blood flow is reduced to the muscles then the muscle will lose functionality and elasticity. This will automatically cause muscle spasm and consequently back pain. When the back muscle gets into a spasm the back may get in to a “lock” making its movement very painful.

The spine has vertebrae joined together by facets on the back side and disks in front. The vertebral bones are separated by soft disks, that provide the needed cushioning effect when we walk or run. If the soft disks are damaged the cushioning effect will be reduced or gone causing the vertebrae bones to grind against each other resulting in backache.

Certain medical conditions and diseases may lead to back pain. They include: every variety of arthritis, spinal Stenosis; and visceral problems such as kidney stones or infections, endometriosis, and fibromyalgia.

Pregnancy, especially near term, is often the cause of back pain for new mothers. Usually this is due to hormonal effects that loosen the ligaments that stabilize the sacroiliac joints. That is a topic for another post all by itself.

Emotional stress can cause backache, usually by producing abnormal tension and very stiff posturing. This can hurt badly.

Different Methods of Prevention

We have seen what causes backache. If we take care and avoid these causes then we can keep backache at bay. The overall idea is to keep the back free from any stress to avoid back pain.

Correct Movement: The first and foremost step in preventing backache is the correct way moving our body for doing various tasks. Our body should be positioned correctly and there shouldn’t be any awkward body movements while performing tasks.

The human body is flexible and capable various simple and complex movements. Depending on our individual fitness levels we should be able move our bodies freely without strain. There shouldn’t be any stressful spinal or back movement. Lifting works best if yo keep your feet, hips, shoulders, and head all in, or very near, a straight line. You need help to do things you haven’t been conditioned to do. Use a ladder, or get help, to do things that you haven’t maintained the strength, or fitness to do.

Exercise for Core Stabilization: “Core stabilization” strengthens the muscles in the trunk and spine. If you’ve watched Dancing With The Stars, you’ve seen the fit abdominal muscles the professional dancers have. That is a marker of a well-toned ‘core’ and resistance to back injury. Core exercises will help you recover from back injury, and prevent future injury.

Exercise for Back Strength: Strength training and aerobic exercises also improve body balance and posture. Regular exercise ensures proper blood flow to the back muscles and keeps them supple. There are specific exercises that tone up the back muscles. Certain yogic postures are very beneficial in improving the health of the back muscles.

Repetition: Certain repetitive body movements can stress the back. Unlike one big impact from one wrong move, tiny impacts add up and present an aching back. The body will send signals when it is put under stress. You need to listen to your body and stop repeating an activity if it is causing the persistent pain. If the pain goes away as soon as you stop the activity, you’re not seriously injured. If the pain comes back the next day, you’ve worked your muscles hard. Focus mostly on stretching and light exercise and the following day you can do more forceful exercise. Pain the day after exercise indicates you’ve made small tears in the muscles, and that promotes healing and strengthening.

Posture: Our sitting, standing, or sleeping postures can determine whether or not we will have back pain. Don’t slouch. Sit straight. It will make you more alert, and your back will feel better. We must sit erect and comfortably. A slouching sitting position puts undue pressure on the lower spinal region. The back must be well supported while we are sitting. Ergonomically designed chairs are good for people with desk jobs.

The ears, shoulders, hands, and knees should be in line with one another when we stand. The body can tolerate mild discomfort for 15 minutes in a posture. Changing sitting or standing positions every 15 minutes to prevent any serious pain is a good rule to follow. We should change our posture every 15 minutes and move, stretch, or relax for 30 seconds before assuming another posture. Get out of your chair about every half hour and stretch some. You’ll fee more alert, and your muscles will thank you.

Those who sleep on their sides should put a pillow between their knees. Those sleeping on their backs should try putting a pillow under their knees. This is done to keep their body in perfect alignment and lifting any undue pressure on the spine.

Lifting Heavy Things: This is one of the most popular causes of back sprain. Many people shift the entire force to the waist and the back while lifting heavy objects. This puts huge pressure on the spine and the back and often results in damage to the both. The correct and injury free way to lift loads is to bring the object close to the body, bend the knees, and lift with the strength of the legs. The maximum pressure should be shifted to the legs. The remaining pressure should go to the hands.

Right Footwear: Athletes know how much difference the shoes they wear can make in their performance. It also makes a difference between getting injured, and not being injured. Wearing the right shoes will reduce shock on the back resulting from all the pounding that sports and games involve. Ladies that have to walk around a lot can reduce injury to their backs if they avoid high-heeled shoes. High heels must have been designed by a misogynist (woman-hater), who wanted to emphasize sexuality and promote back pain.

The Importance of a Healthy Diet: Along with exercise a healthy diet rich with all essential nutrients helps keeping back pain away. Osteoporosis is not a calcium deficiency disease. It is a calcium-wasting condition, and is the topic of another post.

Quitting smoking is a good step in an effort to avoid back pain. I’ve had numerous smokers, mostly men, tell me they were not going to follow my advice to get tobacco out of their lives. I was unable to help very many of them. The only ‘good’ effect of tobacco smoking is that it enriches the cigarette manufacturers and sellers.

Regular Check Up and Early Treatment: Regular physical check ups will detect any disease that could lead to back pain. Immediate treatment will not only cure the disease it will also remove any chances of having back pain.

Tips for New Moms: Back pain is common during pregnancy and should go away after the delivery. But many new mothers find back pain returning after two weeks. This is mostly avoidable. Careful lifting and back exercises can help this a lot.

These steps will not prevent all back pain. Nobody has absolute control over accidents and mishaps. Do your part, and you’ll keep your back healthy.

The causes of back pain are attributed to various factors. Some of the causes are self inflicted as a result of bad health habits such as: a slumped sitting posture, wrong way of lifting heavy objects, and unchecked weight gain. Other causes are injuries or accidents. Infection is also a cause of back pain.

Back Pain Due to Kidney Infection

Most physicians are well schooled on the diagnosis and treatment of kidney infection, and kidney stones. That isn’t what I want to spend my time on here.

Tuberculosis and Back Pain

Tuberculosis is becoming more common again, and this time it is a lot worse. The common strains of TB in America are regularly drug resistant, and extremely hard to treat.

TB bacteria can attack the spinal bones, and it’s called Pott’s disease when the spine is affected. The back pain of Pott’s disease is a result of weakening of the bones by the infection, and the fractures that result from that. This is not something to take lightly, or ignore. It needs attention from infectious disease specialists, and possibly surgeons.

Herpes Virus infection and Back Pain

Nearly fifty to eighty percent of American adults are affected by the herpes simplex virus (HSV). There are two strains of herpes virus: HSV-1 and HSV-2. Of the two types of herpes virus the type two is sexually transmitted and causes genital herpes. Genital herpes is present in nearly 50 million Americans and every year 500,000 young people are affected by the herpes virus. Genital herpes can also be caused by type one herpes virus. The type one herpes virus is responsible for oral sores that appear near the lips after cold and fever.

HSV-1 is nearly universal in Americans, and commonly lies dormant for years in the body. It can infect nerve cells. When it infects nerve cells in the spine it can cause pain spreading from the back, down the leg. If this is occurs in the presence of bulged or ruptured spinal disks, a neurosurgeon may decide the disk is the cause of the pain and operate on the disk. This will not benefit the HSV-1 infection at all, and may make the pain worse.

Good nutrition will help to keep the herpes virus in check, and can suppress an active infection. Lysine and arginine are two amino acids that are most effective in combating the breakouts. The goal is to have more lysine and less of arginine in the diet. Deficient lysine, and relative excess of arginine makes a flare up of HSV-1 more likely. Most fruits and vegetables are rich in lysine and low in arginine. Here is a chart of food items Herpes Diet that can give an idea of how to enrich a diet with nutrients to fight the virus and keep them in check. When the virus in held in check the symptoms of herpes also disappear.

Your physician needs to recognize that HSV-1 infection can cause back pain. He can order the lab tests to confirm whether it is likely the problem, and get you onto the proper diet to suppress the virus. Nutrition is the only real way we have to suppress HSV-1 and get you healthy again.

Rumors, half-truths, lies, and disguised truths seem to swirl around him like flies around manure. In the process of managing his public/private persona Mr. Jackson has created a lot of false impressions and a lot of rumors. Sorting the truth out of this is almost impossible.

Rumors about the causes or potential causes of his death are almost as numerous as the people reporting his death. I consider his death a great tragedy! This is mainly because he didn’t need to die!

At the time of his death, attendants, responding to his every wish, surrounded him. He even had a physician serving him full time. I’ve heard reports of other celebrities doing the same kinds of things. All of these retainers and attendants cost a lot of money. He certainly had access to the money.

Unofficial reports indicate that he had at least 10 different physicians serving him at various times, and a lot of them treated him for back pain.

Reportedly, he injured his back in the fall at a rehearsal. Not wanting to interrupt his practice and performance schedule, he chose to take medicines rather than getting effective and wise treatment for his injury and pain.

The doctors who were treating him either lacked the knowledge or the determination to really figure out what his back problems were, or to treat them effectively and properly.

While investigators carried off large bags of drugs and prescription medication containers from his house after his death, we are left only with allegations and speculations about what he was taking and for what.

I am assuming that there is at least a substantial degree of truth in the reports about what medicines he was taking. The people who know precisely what he was taking aren’t talking; and those who are talking don’t know.

The rumors about his medications include a long list of medicines. These include: Vicodin, a narcotic; OxyContin, a narcotic; Demerol, another narcotic; Soma, a sedative which is metabolized to meprobamate, another sedative; Xanax, a sedative benzodiazepine, commonly used to suppress anxiety. Also on the list are Zoloft and Paxil. These two drugs are antidepressants.

If the reports about these medicines are true, they are evidence of careless prescribing by physicians who really weren’t paying attention to what else he was taking, and were somewhat ignorant of the interactions between the drugs, and the potential complications.

Using OxyContin and Vicodin together is not necessarily bad practice, and in fact may be good. Use of narcotics in this way can sometimes be effective in controlling pain in someone who has chronic pain that cannot be controlled without them. I suspect Mr. Jackson simply wanted to get his pain relieved and get on with his music. I don’t blame him for this particularly. But, this motivation combined with his very large amounts of money, would push the physicians into careless practice. This still does not excuse them.

Using Zoloft and Paxil together, simply doesn’t make sense. Their effects are the same, and increasing the dose of one rather than adding a separate drug with the same effect can achieve the same effect.

People who drive themselves hard frequently use a lot of caffeine to keep themselves going. Because of the caffeine they frequently have difficulty sleeping. The best way to deal with that is to increase exercise and decrease caffeine. I don’t know whether Mr. Jackson was using a lot of caffeine. But, it’s common in people who are using narcotics to relieve pain.

The Xanax really is in a class by itself and has its own particular set of effects. It is anticonvulsant, sedative, and somewhat anti-anxiety.

The Demerol he supposedly was getting, is a problem by itself. Physicians experienced in the treatment of chronic pain rarely prescribe it. The reason is simple. It relieves pain quite effectively, but is metabolized to normeperidine, which tends to slowly accumulate in the body, and causes convulsions. Prior to full-blown convulsions, patients on Demerol usually exhibit increased anxiety and muscle twitching. Xanax will suppress the muscle twitching and anxiety. This allows the normeperidine to accumulate high levels in the body. Then it can cause disturbances of the heart rhythm.

This problem with the metabolite of Demerol is the reason experienced pain physicians almost never prescribe it. It just causes too many problems.

It appears that his physicians were very unwise in the way they attempted to treat his pain. They didn’t seem to understand that pain is not a drug deficiency.

I am saddened by Mr. Jackson’s untimely death; and by the grief his family is suffering. My heart goes out to them. Perhaps he and other entertainers can serve as lessons for all of us. In that way even his death may not be wasted.

He needed to take better care of himself. We also need to be careful to take good care of ourselves.

How do I know about these drugs and problems? Simple, I’m a retired physician pain specialist.

Live well!

Ken Noel, MD