Pain Archive

Sales of cannabidiol-infused products are expected to top $2 billion by 2021. But is CBD right for you?

Cannabidiol (CBD) is touted as a natural wonder that can help treat symptoms of everything from anxiety to arthritis pain. The plant extract comes from two varieties of cannabis — hemp and marijuana — and is available in creams, tinctures, oils, patches, gummy bears, capsules, and more. You can even add CBD to a latte if you walk into a coffee shop in some cities.

But is CBD safe for older adults? There haven't been a lot of large studies of CBD's safety, but more traditional medicines for pain and anxiety are not free of adverse effects, either. "I think CBD is likely safer than many other treatments people use for pain, insomnia, or anxiety," says Dr. Peter Grinspoon, a primary care physician with Harvard-affiliated Massachusetts General Hospital. Other physicians don't think we know enough about the safety profile of CBD to be sure.

The "nocebo effect" may explain why some people believe they can't tolerate statins.

For more than 20 years, cholesterol-lowering statin drugs have been a mainstay for preventing and treating heart disease. But up to half of people prescribed these drugs are no longer taking them within a year or two. The reasons vary, but some people experience what they believe to be statin-related side effects — most often muscle pain. Others avoid statins altogether because of worries over side effects.

"Far too any people think they cannot tolerate statins when they actually can," explains Dr. Jorge Plutzky, director of preventive cardiology at Harvard-affiliated Brigham and Women's Hospital. To be clear, muscle problems are a known side effect of statins. However, serious muscle-related complications are extremely rare (see "What is rhabdomyolysis?"). And when people experience the more common — but less worrisome — muscle-related symptoms, those issues usually resolve with a lower statin dose or a change to a different statin, Dr. Plutzky says.

Ask the doctors

Q. My friend insists that her arthritis pain gets worse just before it rains. Is it true that joint pain can intensify based on the weather?

A. Despite what your friend, your grandmother, and generations of people have sworn is the case, experts haven't found consistent evidence that arthritis pain gets worse on rainy days. At best, study results over the years have been mixed, and one large, recent study seems to cast doubt on the theory.

The benefits of meditation go beyond stress reduction.

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Most of us sense instinctively that clutter is unhealthy. Sure, we may joke about a disorganized desk or a teenager's messy room, but we feel that a clean, organized space is a healthier, more soothing environment. What about a cluttered mind — a mind constantly presented with different simultaneous challenges and distractions? Is that unhealthy, and is there a fix?

Uncluttering — or, as is usually said, "emptying" — your mind through meditation has a host of health-related benefits, and maybe that's why more people are taking up the practice. Data from a national survey conducted by the CDC's National Center for Health Statistics, published online by the CDC in November 2018, found that 14% of American adults reported meditating in 2017, compared with just 4% in 2012.

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In the journals

Adults who sleep only six hours per night may have a higher chance of being dehydrated, compared with those who sleep longer, according to recent research published online Nov. 5, 2018, by the journal Sleep. The findings suggest that some of the symptoms of inadequate sleep, such as fatigue, fuzzy thinking, and headache in the morning, may be due to dehydration.

Researchers looked at the risk of dehydration in approximately 20,000 U.S. and Chinese adults. In both populations, people who reported sleeping six or fewer hours had up to a 59% higher risk of dehydration compared with those who slept seven to eight hours on a regular basis. The researchers speculated that the finding may reflect the nightly rhythm of a hormone called vasopressin. During sleep, the pituitary gland in the brain uses vasopressin to signal the kidneys to retain fluid in the body rather than excreting it through urine.

Because addiction to pain pills often starts with an operation, surgeons are shifting to non-opioid approaches for pain control.

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Many people who are struggling with opioid addiction didn't start taking the drugs at a party or at a friend's house. They were introduced to these painkilling medications by their doctor after a surgical procedure.

In the 1990s, the number of opioid prescriptions written for people undergoing surgery or experiencing pain conditions grew — and so did related problems. As a result, "we are in a current opioid epidemic, with 91 substance-related deaths each day, according to the CDC," says Dr. Elizabeth Matzkin, an orthopedic surgeon and assistant professor at Harvard Medical School.

A fundamental goal of healthy aging is to keep walking as long as possible. Barring an injury or disabling disease, most of us think of the ability to walk as a defining capability of the human body. Of course, people who lose their ability to walk can still retain mobility through wheelchairs and assistive devices, and they can have full and happy lives. But there's no reason why most people can't keep walking their whole lives. It's important to stay active in order to maintain this ability—or, if you haven't been active for a while, to start with whatever simple measures it takes to boost your level of activity and start improving mobility.

Staying active with joint pain

It's important to keep joints moving, even if you're dealing with pain from arthritis or an overuse injury. But sometimes you'll need to keep weight off a joint and rest it more than you usually would. Don't let a painful joint prevent you from exercising; try these joint-friendly options instead: