It recently came to my attention that drug companies are developing new painkillers designed to be even more powerful and addictive than such drugs have ever been before. These new drugs will contain pure hydrocodone—in doses up to ten times higher than in current medications. Most medications, including Percocet and Vicodin, are combined with acetaminophen, which is extremely toxic to the liver when taken in high doses. It is possible to prescribe higher doses of hydrocodone in its pure form because it is not mixed with acetaminophen.
When it comes to painkillers, drug addiction has the ability to affect every type of person from all backgrounds. Let’s remember that drug deaths are now exceeding auto accident fatalities and gun deaths in this country. This part of the world has a serious prescription drug abuse problem that transcends all borders and socioeconomic factors.
The Good News: New Jersey Pain Management
It’s actually a really amazing time in the history of pain management—and not because of today’s drugs. In fact, we should get excited that we don’t need to rely on painkilling medications for relief.
To be clear, Monmouth Pain’s stance on drugs is to provide short-term relief through medication in cases where it is absolutely necessary. Please understand that doctors who are too quick to prescribe serious narcotic painkillers should be avoided. Even if we forget for a minute that painkillers use can be seriously addictive and potentially fatal, even normal use can cause damage to the body. We want to relieve your pain and fix what’s causing suffering while boosting the health of your body, not degrading it.
Pain management and rehabilitation should be undertaken thoughtfully, deliberately, and as a coordinated effort between healthcare practitioners. When done correctly, patients should not require long-term drug use for pain relief. In fact, using painkillers for long periods of time represents a failure of the pain management/rehabilitation system.
If you are in pain for any reason—injury, illness, age, etc.—Monmouth Pain offers a system of care that you may not have tried before. We believe in addressing the causes of pain (for example, treating a disc injury that may be causing back pain and/or sciatica) while also treating any other issues within the body that may or may not be related to your initial complaint. For example, we know that your neck injury and lower back pain could quite possibly be interrelated issues. There’s no point in treating one while ignoring the other.
We take extreme pride in our compassionate, multi-disciplinary system of care that offers all of the following healthcare modalities in one location:
- Medical Pain Management (including Interventional Pain Management techniques such as Epidural Steroid Injections);
- Physical Therapy;
- Chiropractors; and
- Acupuncture.
How It Works: Red Bank Pain Management
Let’s talk about how the rehabilitation and pain management system works in our office. Using the above-mentioned example, let’s say a patient came to us with sciatica symptoms. Sciatica is the term we use to describe the painful and disabling set of symptoms related to the irritation of the sciatic nerve. In many cases, sciatica is caused by issues with the spinal discs in the lower back.
For some patients, chiropractic care and physical therapy for a disc injury might be enough to correct the issue and put an end to pain, immobility, and other symptoms. Additional pain management can also be provided through acupuncture.
For other patients, the pain/symptoms may be too great to bear and it’s just not possible to rely on chiropractors or physical therapists for care. What happens now? Where do you go?
Here’s where a lot of problems occur. The next step taken may be a drastic and unnecessary move. Do you need surgery? Most likely, the answer is no. In fact, so many unnecessary and failed surgeries are performed each year that the medical community has coined the term ‘Failed Back Surgery Syndrome.’ Estimates for needed surgeries are wildly lower than the actual number of surgeries performed every year.
Fortunately, we offer a different ‘next step.’ In the case of sciatica, this would likely be an Epidural Steroid Injection, which brings localized pain relief without the risk of addiction. This action will make it possible for you to use our rehabilitation practices—physical therapy and chiropractic—in order to fix the cause of your pain. Among a number of other interventional procedures, we perform Epidural Steroid Injections right in our Red Bank office.
If you are living with any type of pain, disability, injury, illness, etc., we can help. Contact us and together we’ll discover drug-free, healthy, and effective treatment plans.
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