Pain Medication: An American Epidemic

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), forty (40) Americans die every day from prescription opioid overdoses. Doctors are overprescribing opioids such as Percocet, OxyContin, Dilaudid, and Vicodin to treat acute and chronic pain. Chronic pain is typically defined as pain lasting longer than three months.

Although many Americans suffer from chronic pain due to injuries, joint pain, and back problems, pain medications should be a last resort. Instead, many patients are given multiple prescriptions to treat pain, before any other modality is attempted. The side effects and addictive nature of these drugs can drastically and unnecessarily cause a myriad of additional ailments and problems for the unsuspecting patient. Side effects include constipation, dizziness, nausea, vomiting, and drowsiness. Individuals susceptible to addiction or substance abuse should seriously consider other options. Patients who become dependent on opioids risk losing financial stability, employment, and possibly life.

Although there are several modalities that can treat pain without medicine including chiropractic, physical therapy, and massage therapy, acupuncture is an extremely effective way to treat both muscular and joint pain. In a recent study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), acupuncture was found to be a “reasonable referral option” for physicians looking to help patients with chronic pain.[i] After pooling 29 randomized controlled trials which included nearly 18,000 patients suffering from back and neck pain, osteoarthritis, chronic headache, and shoulder pain, the experts concluded that the effects of acupuncture when treating pain were clinically significant.[ii] Patients who received acupuncture treatment experienced a greater reduction in pain than those receiving no acupuncture or “sham” acupuncture.[iii]

Acupuncture is a superior treatment method because there are no external medications, virtually no side effects, and, of course, it is non-addictive. Although multiple treatments may be required to treat severe and lasting pain, some patients see results after one treatment. Depending on the cause of the pain, your acupuncturist can fashion a treatment plan best suited to your needs.

[i] http://archinte.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1357513
[ii] http://archinte.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1357513
[iii] http://archinte.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1357513

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