Health Expert Karen Lee Richards shares health management news and commentary at HealthCentral.com. HealthCentral.com is one of the top health destinations on the Web, with more than 35 condition-specific, wellness and general health Web properties. http://www.healthcentral.com/profiles/c/5949/index http://www.healthcentral.com/profiles/c/5949/rss self application/xml en-us 15 120 19 http://www.healthcentral.com/images/hc_logo_sm.gif http://www.healthcentral.com/profiles/c/5949/index http://www.healthcentral.com/chronic-pain/c/5949/149904/relationships Tue, 31 Jan 2012 19:45:00 -0500 Karen Lee Richards Relationships are often one of the biggest casualties of chronic pain.  A recent news story got me to thinking about the toll any kind of illness, particularly a chronic illness, takes on relationships.  (Note:  I have no idea whether or not this story is true.  Since the story broke on ESPN a day or so ago, it has gone viral.  Now apparently there is some question of the man's veracity.  Some people think it is a... http://www.healthcentral.com/chronic-pain/c/5949/149904/relationships http://www.healthcentral.com/chronic-pain/c/5949/149876/canniabis Mon, 30 Jan 2012 23:33:00 -0500 Karen Lee Richards A new study, published in the December issue of Clinical Pharmacology & Therapeutics, suggests that adding a cannabinoid to opioid therapy may result in greater relief of chronic pain at lower opioid doses.  Study Design and ResultsTwenty-one individuals with chronic pain, who took twice-daily doses of sustained-release morphine or oxycodone, were enrolled in the study and admitted for a five-day inpatient stay.  The chronic pain... http://www.healthcentral.com/chronic-pain/c/5949/149876/canniabis http://www.healthcentral.com/chronic-pain/c/5949/149664/intensely-men Wed, 25 Jan 2012 13:37:00 -0500 Karen Lee Richards According to a new study, published online Jan. 23 in the Journal of Pain, women report more intense pain than men in virtually every disease category.  Study Design and ResultsUsing electronic medical records from a large hospital database, researchers analyzed the pain scores of more than 11,000 individual adult patients in 47 separate diagnostic categories.  Pain was evaluated based on the standard 0-to-10 pain scale in which zero... http://www.healthcentral.com/chronic-pain/c/5949/149664/intensely-men http://www.healthcentral.com/chronic-pain/c/5949/149404/helping-ruts Wed, 18 Jan 2012 13:29:00 -0500 Karen Lee Richards In my New Year's Eve post, Starting a Fresh New Year Despite the Same Old Chronic Pain, I talked about being in a rut and trying to look at various areas of my life from a different perspective.  One new community member who commeted on my post said that, although they had been bedridden for the last four to five years, they, too, were ready to make some changes and start trying to get up, do more and get out of their rut. One of the... http://www.healthcentral.com/chronic-pain/c/5949/149404/helping-ruts http://www.healthcentral.com/chronic-pain/c/5949/149400/fibromyalgia Wed, 18 Jan 2012 11:50:00 -0500 Karen Lee Richards A new study, to be published in the journal Pain Medicine, found that people with fibromyalgia tended to be deficient in vitamin D.  The results also indicated that treatment with high-dose vitamin D3 resulted in significant improvement of most fibromyalgia symptoms.  Study Design and ResultsThis Saudi Arabian study looked at 30 female patients with an average age of 34.5 who were diagnosed with fibromyalgia according to the new... http://www.healthcentral.com/chronic-pain/c/5949/149400/fibromyalgia http://www.healthcentral.com/chronic-pain/c/5949/149183/pain-reynolds Wed, 11 Jan 2012 01:21:00 -0500 Karen Lee Richards Over the holidays, we lost a fierce advocate and tireless activist who devoted the last decade of her life to fighting for chronic pain patients and the doctors who try to treat them.  On Christmas Eve, Siobhan Reynolds, 50, founder of the Pain Relief Network, died in a plane crash in Ohio.  Reynolds' passion to help the chronic pain community was born from seeing her husband suffer with and later die from complications of a congenital... http://www.healthcentral.com/chronic-pain/c/5949/149183/pain-reynolds http://www.healthcentral.com/chronic-pain/c/5949/149152/alert-chronic Tue, 10 Jan 2012 06:38:00 -0500 Karen Lee Richards If you take prescription opioid medications for your chronic pain, please read this alert.The FDA is advising patients and health care professionals of a potential safety risk with opioids manufactured for Endo Pharmaceuticals by Novartis Consumer Health at their plant in Lincoln, Nebraska.  Due to a problem with the packaging machinary, tablets of one type of medication may have been packaged with another medication.   The drugs... http://www.healthcentral.com/chronic-pain/c/5949/149152/alert-chronic http://www.healthcentral.com/chronic-pain/c/5949/148814/starting-year Sat, 31 Dec 2011 23:58:00 -0500 Karen Lee Richards The start of a new year should be a positive time, full of hope for the coming year.  But if you're living with the same chronic pain you've had for years, it can sometimes be hard to grab on to that spirit of hopefulness. Over the past few days, I've been thinking about this upcoming new year and how I wanted to approach it.  I knew I didn't want to make a bunch of stale resolutions that I'd never keep.  Yet I couldn't shake... http://www.healthcentral.com/chronic-pain/c/5949/148814/starting-year http://www.healthcentral.com/chronic-pain/c/5949/148802/fibromyalgia Sat, 31 Dec 2011 16:42:00 -0500 Karen Lee Richards Alcohol intolerance is a feature of both fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS) that we rarely see in symptoms lists.  Yet most people who have FM or ME/CFS find that they can no longer drink much, if any, alcohol.  While a few are able to occasionally have one or two drinks with only minimal problems, for others even a very small alcoholic beverage can trigger a severe flare or relapse that may last for days, weeks or... http://www.healthcentral.com/chronic-pain/c/5949/148802/fibromyalgia http://www.healthcentral.com/chronic-pain/c/5949/148808/transmucosal Sat, 31 Dec 2011 13:10:00 -0500 Karen Lee Richards Since 2007, the FDA has been discussing and debating the development of Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategies (REMS) for opioid medications.  The purpose of these REMS is to make access to opioid drugs more difficult for drug abusers while still giving chronic pain patients the ability to fill their prescriptions without undue problems.  Of course, that is more easily said than done.Needless to say, since the idea of REMS was first... http://www.healthcentral.com/chronic-pain/c/5949/148808/transmucosal