Tag: pain

Salonpas
Salonpas is an over-the-counter topical NSAID used to treat pain. It's probably safe and might be worth trying for minor pain, but the effect is small and the advertising is more hype than substance.

TENS for Pain Relief: Does It Work?
TENS units are used to relieve pain and for other indications. The evidence is not impressive.

Juvent: Space Age Technology to Achieve Total Health?
Juvent is a small vibrating platform that is advertised to provide all kinds of health benefits for everyone by just standing on it for 10 minutes a day. They have no convincing evidence and the price is exorbitant.

New Regenerative Medicine Center
Neil Riordan donated big bucks to a school of naturopathy for a Center for Regenerative Medicine named after him. Both Riordan and the treatments offered in his new center are questionable.

AAFP Promotes Acupuncture
The AAFP is not following its own standards for CME. Its monograph on Musculoskeletal Therapies devotes 1/4 of its content to acupuncture, dry needling, and cupping; and one of its four "key practice recommendations" is to consider electroacupuncture for fibromyalgia.

It doesn’t have to hurt: Strategies to reduce vaccine pain
To address anti-vaccine views, try to understand the underlying motives for these perspectives. Some reject vaccines because of underlying fears of the pain of vaccination. Several strategies can effectively decrease vaccine pain.

Is the FDA embracing quackery? A draft proposal recommends that doctors learn about acupuncture and chiropractic for pain management.
Chiropractors and acupuncturists have lobbied for a greater role in treating pain. They might well have won it. Last week, the FDA released proposed changes Wednesday to its blueprint on educating health care providers about treating pain, which now recommend that doctors learn about chiropractic care and acupuncture as therapies that might help patients avoid opioids. There's still time to stop this.

In which we are accused of “polarization-based medicine”
A little over a month ago, I wrote about how proponents of “complementary and alternative medicine” (CAM), now more frequently called “integrative medicine,” go to great lengths to claim nonpharmacological treatments for, well, just about anything as somehow being CAM or “integrative.” The example I used was a systematic review article published by several of the bigwigs at that government font of...