AP: Pain medicine use has nearly doubled

People in the United States are living in a world of pain and they are popping pills at an alarming rate to cope with it. The amount of five major painkillers sold at retail establishments rose 90 percent between 1997 and 2005, according to an Associated Press analysis of statistics from the Drug Enforcement Administration. More than 200,000 pounds of codeine, morphine, oxycodone, hydrocodone and meperidine were purchased at retail stores during the most recent year represented in the data. That total is enough to give more than 300 milligrams of painkillers to every person in the country.

An Associated Press investigation found these reasons for the increase:

• The population is getting older. As age increases, so does the need for pain medications.
  
• Drugmakers have embarked on unprecedented marketing campaigns. Spending on drug marketing has gone from $11 billion in 1997 to nearly $30 billion in 2005, congressional investigators found.
  
• A major change in pain management philosophy is now in its third decade. Doctors who once advised patients that pain is part of the healing process began reversing course in the early 1980s; most now see pain management as an important ingredient in overcoming illness.
  
• More people are abusing prescription painkillers because the medications are more available. The number of emergency room visits from painkiller abuse has increased more than 160 percent since 1995, according to the government.
  

Steve - this is currently a gargantuan issue and will be for the foreseeable future. Abuse of pain medication is already deeply ingrained in our culture. It's a given that if you have a headache, you take a pain pill. If one morning you wake up with soreness in your knee, you take a pain pill. If you have a chronic illness, pain medication is part of your daily routine. Do you think about addressing the underlying cause of the pain? Not likely.

There is no bigger medical band-aid approach than pain medication. Other than pain-inducing conditions that require surgical procedures to correct, the root of most pain boils down to diet and lifestyle. Being one of the fattest and sickest nations in the world, is it a surprise that we lean so heavily on pain medication?

Whenever you read about pain in the media, it is always about band-aid approaches. Whenever you see a doctor or health professional, the discussion always involves a band-aid approach. Even alternative modalities are band-aid approaches unless diet and lifestyle are addressed.

As we have said so many times, what we eat and the lifestyles we lead can exponentially increase our inflammatory response. INFLAMMATION = PAIN. If you reduce your inflammatory response, you reduce your pain. It is as simple as that. But there is such a disconnect in our thought process about the connection diet and lifestyle has in relation to pain, it is no surprise that our abuse of pain medication is spiraling out of control.

Let's be extremely clear about this. If you are in pain, your body is sending you a message to do something about it! If you consistently muzzle that message, you will only create more layers of physical issues, not to mention side effects from the medication itself. We know deep down that just because you eliminate pain with meds, they do not make the problems go away. One would think that if you are in constant pain you would want to get to the root of the cause; but most often we choose the easy road.

While it is extremely difficult to tell a patient to try changing their diet and lifestyle before prescribing pain medication, this is what health professionals need to do. The bigger problem is the ease with which consumers can purchase over-the-counter pain medication. For this issue, public health campaigns need to publicize the connection between our diet and lifestyle with pain.

Reducing our nation's dependence on pain medication will take a Herculean effort, and at the moment, that effort is non-existent.