Detailed guides to painful problems, treatments & more

Not so “powerful” pain killers

 •  • by Paul Ingraham
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Weekly nuggets of pain science news and insight, usually 100-300 words, with the occasional longer post. The blog is the “director’s commentary” on the core content of PainScience.com: a library of major articles and books about common painful problems and popular treatments. See the blog archives or updates for the whole site.

This got a mention in a post last week, but it needs a little more direct attention: a new JAMA trial has shown that regular pain-killers work just as well as opioids for severe, acute pain. Amazing.

Maybe we all need to stop thinking of opioids as “powerful”? They may be as over-rated as placebo. See Opioids for Chronic Aches & Pains for the devil that is (always) in the details.

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