In a groundbreaking departure from conventional medical wisdom and past practice, the American College of Physicians released new guidelines for the treatment of chronic back pain, including a recommendation of proper exercise before turning to medication, as reported by the online news site Vox.
As part of these new guidelines the American College of Physicians also strongly discourages opioids – such as morphine, oxycodone, and fentanyl – in treating chonic back pain, as these drugs are only modestly effective for back pain and carry serious risks, including overdose and addiction.
Finally, the medical profession is removing their decades-old blinders and catching up.
Catching up to the diagnostic and treatment realities of chronic back pain. And focusing ever more precisely on understanding cause, before relying on the “magic pill” solution in which too many doctors, and patients, place their misguided faith in hopes of achieving relief.
As back pain expert Dr. Sean Wheeler has been advocating for years.
For example, Dr. Wheeler advocates that opioid use is no more effective than using aspirin in the treatment of low back pain.
More importantly, notwithstanding that many in the medical profession and healthcare media claim that doctors don’t know what causes back pain, the answer to the causation question has indeed been found. Says sports medicine and pain expert Sean Wheeler, M.D.:
The answer to the causation question has been found, with the needed shift in thinking about cause of chronic back pain maddeningly small and intuitive. Recognition of this change is what spins the entire discussion of low back pain on its ear. We should all be challenging the status quo of accepted back pain treatment practice.
The answer?
The answer resides within the Bracing Muscles of the body, as discussed on the pages of this site and in Dr. Wheeler’s book, UPRISE, where he systematically identifies and challenges the manner and methodology of how the medical profession has misunderstood and treated back pain over the past 40 years.
And how to prevent the onset of chronic low back pain.
As Dr. Sean Wheeler advocates:
The solution to the broken system of treating back pain is not better, more expensive treatments. Lack of treatments isn’t our problem. The solution is to engage in a revolution in how we think about chronic back pain and pain management. We need a revolution in the way both patients and healthcare providers, as well as medical researchers, approach chronic back pain. Patients and doctors need to come together to make chronic back pain diagnosis, cause-identification, and effective treatment a reality.
And the answers are literally staring us in the face. We need simply to act.”
