Vitality 101 Newsletter
Prince Didn't Need to Die — The Tragic Price of Pain
Hello Reader,
As he did so often in life, Prince is once again offering us the opportunity to heal a problem that desperately needs to be fixed.
It's suspected that Prince is unfortunately one of the 15,000 Americans who die each year with prescribed narcotics being a contributing cause. He had severe hip pain that didn't go away after his hip replacement surgery. To deal with the pain, he took the narcotic Percocet. It helped, but not enough. And so he joined the 33% of Americans who suffer needlessly with pain.
Why do I say needlessly? Because despite modern medicine having many incredible strengths, it's absolutely horrible at treating pain itself. As physicians, we're taught very well on how to treat the kinds of emergencies that show up in hospitals — mainly because that's simply where we're trained. Heart attack? Hot appendix? We're right on top of it. But pain itself?
Except for using a few medications to mask pain, or narcotics for cancer-related pain, physician training for pain management is woefully inadequate. I discovered this first hand when I came down with fibromyalgia in medical school. It forced me to drop out of school and left me homeless for almost a year. It also forced me to learn the basics of pain management — on my own — while experiencing what it was like to be on the other side of the white coat.
Decades later, medicine is still clueless. Sadly, the war on drugs having failed, the government has now declared a war on people in pain, and the pain specialists who use narcotics to treat them. The debate is being framed as "Is it better to leave people in chronic pain suffering, or get them addicted on narcotics?" The whole way the debate is being framed is idiotic. An alternative? If it helps move the national discussion on pain in the direction of asking the right questions, Prince's death may help countless millions of people. So in honor of his memory, here is a much better approach.
Love & blessings,
Dr. T
Research Briefs
Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Can Hit Kids & Teens
A large study by researchers in the U.K. has shown that CFS is not an uncommon illness among children. The study was summarized in a recent report by Rick Nauert, PhD at the website PsychCentral.
Sadly, chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia in children is not a new phenomenon. What is new, is that perhaps it is finally starting to be recognized by their physicians. In the interim, these children are being abused, with the implication given to their parents that they are simply lazy malingerers with psychological disorders. No different than implying to a paraplegic child's parents that their child is only faking their symptoms. This is simply unacceptable. Hopefully it is changing.
Recent Interviews With Dr. T on Health Professional Radio
Iodine and Hypothyroidism
Dr. Teitelbaum talks about hypothyroidism and the role iodine plays in the condition.
Iodine and Health: Supplements — What, When and Why
Dr. Teitelbaum discusses supplementation and getting the right balance of minerals in the diet.
Featured This Week
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Over 1,000 studies show curcumin to be a very promising herb. What really caught my attention was that we were getting some near miraculous reports of pain relief from many people who had suffered for years. It can be taken with other pain meds and supplements.*
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Q&A With Dr. T
How to Wean Off Cymbalta
QUESTION: I have been taking 60 mg Cymbalta for about three years to help with my CFS/fibromyalgia symptoms, especially the fatigue and pain. But because of the unpleasant side effects (headaches, irritability, fatigue, loss of sleep), I want to try to get off of them. I have read that there are terrible withdrawal effects when weaning off Cymbalta. I have read your books and I feel your approach might be a better option for me. What would you suggest I do?
ANSWER: This is something you need to do with your physician. In my patients, the trick with the Cymbalta is to lower the dose very slowly. For example, 40 mg a day for 6-12 weeks, then 30 mg a day for 6-12 weeks, then 20 mg a day. At that point people will have lost most of the side effects yet kept most of the benefit. To taper further, I lower by 5 mg every 6-12 weeks. Unfortunately, the lowest dose pill is 20 mg with big safety warnings not to crush the pill. But here is a trick that a patient of mine who is a pharmacist taught me. If you carefully open the pill, you'll find that there are little pellets inside (either 5 mg or 1 mg depending on the brand name or generic. Divide milligrams by number of pellets to see). These pellets can be taken individually allowing people to decrease the dose much more slowly, and eventually get off the medication.
Cool Stuff
The Scale of the Universe
Watch this video to see just how incredibly small and awesomely large everything in the Universe is when compared with each other.
Jacob Teitelbaum, M.D. is one of the world's leading integrative medical authorities on fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue. He is the lead author of eight research studies on their effective treatments, and has published numerous health & wellness books, including the bestseller on fibromyalgia From Fatigued to Fantastic! and The Fatigue and Fibromyalgia Solution. Dr. Teitelbaum is one of the most frequently quoted fibromyalgia experts in the world and appears often as a guest on news and talk shows nationwide including Good Morning America, The Dr. Oz Show, Oprah & Friends, CNN, and Fox News Health.
