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	<title>Health &#38; FamilyCategory: Pain &#124; Health &#38; Family &#124; TIME.com</title>
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	<description>A healthy balance of the mind, body and spirit</description>
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		<title>Health &#38; FamilyCategory: Pain &#124; Health &#38; Family &#124; TIME.com</title>
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		<title>Strep Throat? Don&#8217;t Toss The Toothbrush</title>
		<link>http://healthland.time.com/2013/05/06/strep-throat-dont-toss-the-toothbrush/</link>
		<comments>http://healthland.time.com/2013/05/06/strep-throat-dont-toss-the-toothbrush/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 06 May 2013 18:22:54 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Alexandra Sifferlin</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Medicine]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Pain]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[sore throat]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[strep throat]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[toothbrushes]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://healthland.time.com/?p=86160</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Parents often toss their child&#8217;s toothbrush after a bout of strep throat, but new research indicates that&#8217;s probably a waste of good bristles. (MORE: Are Cavities Really Contagious?) To test whether the recommendation is needless, Dr. Judith Rowen, an associate professor of pediatrics at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston and her colleagues grew the bacteria that causes strep throat, called group A Streptococcus, on toothbrushes that were unused by kids but were exposed to the bacteria in the laboratory. For 48 hours the bacteria grew on the brushes in the lab. The investigators then studied the toothbrushes used by 14 kids with strep throat to see if the bacteria would also grow on their brushes. The children brushed their teeth for a minute before the researchers put their brushes into a sterile environment to watch for potential bacteria growth. The researchers compared the bacteria growth on these toothbrushes to brushes used by 13 patients who had sore throats, but not strep, and toothbrushes used by 27 healthy participants ages 2 to 20. (MORE: Is More Sugar Worse for Your Teeth? Not Necessarily) Although the toothbrushes all grew common mouth bacteria, the strep bacteria only grew on one of the toothbrushes, and it was from a participant who did not have strep throat. “This study supports that it is probably unnecessary to throw away your toothbrush after a diagnosis of strep throat,” said Rowen in a statement. The results call for more research into whether disposing of toothbrushes is really a necessary step to prevent the spread of the sickness. Using antibiotics like penicillin remain a clinically recommended treatment method, as well as taking medication for pain relief. These may be more important methods in preventing transmission and getting healthy faster. The findings were presented at the Pediatric Academic Societies annual meeting in Washington, D.C.<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=healthland.time.com&#038;blog=8684427&#038;post=86160&#038;subd=timewellness&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Pain</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://healthland.time.com/category/medicine/pain/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timewellness.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/165932947.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">asifferlin</media:title>
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	</item>
		<item>
		<title>New Test Distinguishes Physical From Emotional Pain in Brain for First Time</title>
		<link>http://healthland.time.com/2013/05/06/a-pain-detector-for-the-brain/</link>
		<comments>http://healthland.time.com/2013/05/06/a-pain-detector-for-the-brain/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 06 May 2013 16:00:46 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Maia Szalavitz</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Pain]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Addiction]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[chronic pain]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[emotional pain]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[pain detection]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[physical pain]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[rejection]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[social pain]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[social rejection]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://healthland.time.com/?p=85862</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[New research suggests physical pain may have a distinct brain “signature” that distinguishes it from emotional hurt. In the brain, the pain from broken leg and the anguish of a broken heart share much of same circuitry. But the latest evidence points to distinct ways that the brain processes each type of pain and could lead to a greater understanding of how to detect and treat them. “Of all the things I’ve observed in the brain, nothing is more similar to physical pain than social pain,” says lead author Tor Wager, associate professor of neuroscience at the University of Colorado in Boulder, “What we’ve done in the latest paper is to develop something that predicts physical pain at a much more fine-grained level.” (MORE: Can Doctors Feel Their Patients&#8217; Pain?) The research, which was published in the New England Journal of Medicine, included 114 young adults who participated in several different experiments. The first test involved scanning the brains of 20 people while they experienced varying degrees of warmth or painful heat on their left forearms. These were calibrated to the individual to be either not painful or mild, moderately or severely painful—but they were not harmful. The second experiment included another 33 people, also exposed to varying levels of painful heat or mild warmth. Using data from the brain activity in the first participants, the researchers developed a program to predict whether people in the second experiment were experiencing pain. The model accurately determined whether they had been subjected to pain or to just warmth 93% of the time. The third study, however, provided the most revelatory information about how physical and emotional pain may differ. In that experiment, 40 people who had recently been dropped by their romantic partners underwent the same type of physical pain testing while their brains were scanned. They were also scanned while viewing either an image of a close friend or a picture of the person whom they still loved, but had lost. What Wager wanted to know, he says, is “Does this physical<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=healthland.time.com&#038;blog=8684427&#038;post=85862&#038;subd=timewellness&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://healthland.time.com/2013/05/06/a-pain-detector-for-the-brain/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>1</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Pain</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://healthland.time.com/category/medicine/pain/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timewellness.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/119991384a.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">119991384a</media:title>
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		<media:content url="http://0.gravatar.com/avatar/0a5ac57e99124922fa628492ad3db6b2?s=96&#38;d=http%3A%2F%2Fs0.wp.com%2Fi%2Fmu.gif&#38;r=G" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">MaiaSzalavitz</media:title>
		</media:content>
	</item>
		<item>
		<title>Needle This: Study Hints at How Acupuncture Works to Relieve Stress</title>
		<link>http://healthland.time.com/2013/03/15/needle-this-study-hints-at-how-acupuncture-works-to-relieve-stress/</link>
		<comments>http://healthland.time.com/2013/03/15/needle-this-study-hints-at-how-acupuncture-works-to-relieve-stress/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 15 Mar 2013 11:01:49 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Alice Park</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Medicine]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Pain]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Stress]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[acupuncture]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Alternative Medicine]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[anxiety]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[chronic stress]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://healthland.time.com/?p=82365</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Needles may not seem like the best tool for treating stress, but acupuncture could be tapping into basic biological systems that keep stress under control. Reporting in the Journal of Endocrinology, researchers led by Ladan Eshkevari, assistant program director of the nurse anesthesia program at Georgetown University School of Nursing and Health Studies, mimicked chronic stress in a rat model and documented how stimulating certain body points with acupuncture can alter stress hormones. The body’s stress response is triggered by two main pathways, one of which involves the HPA axis, or hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal axis, in which these areas of the brain are activated to release peptides and proteins such as corticotropin-releasing hormone (CRH). They, in turn, launch the production of other hormones such as cortisol and norepinephrine that rev up the anxiety meter. Once activated, the system causes the heart to beat faster and the senses to go on alert. It also diverts the body’s energy away from background operations such as digestion to prime and fuel the muscles into a state of readiness. MORE: The Two Faces of Anxiety All of this is normal and necessary for protecting mammals, including us, from potential threats. But when stress becomes chronic, beating us down hour after hour and day after day, it’s no longer helpful and can become harmful. “People under chronic stress don’t handle acute stress very well,” says Eshkevari. “In chronic stress, the cortisol levels are elevated and never come back down to baseline, so people end up with insomnia or depressed or anxious because of the constant ramping up of this system.” When Eshkevari, who is a nurse anesthetist, noticed that many of her patients who used acupuncture to treat pain reported sleeping better and feeling better able to cope with their pain, even if the needling did not relieve the pain itself, she wondered whether acupuncture might help to reduce stress. MORE: Work Stress Linked to More Heart Attacks There weren’t many studies documenting how acupuncture could affect physiologic stress pathways, however, so she designed one using rats<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=healthland.time.com&#038;blog=8684427&#038;post=82365&#038;subd=timewellness&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://healthland.time.com/2013/03/15/needle-this-study-hints-at-how-acupuncture-works-to-relieve-stress/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>1</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Stress</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://healthland.time.com/category/mental-health/stress/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timewellness.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/137539371.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">137539371</media:title>
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		<media:content url="http://0.gravatar.com/avatar/69fc92d1c4598c5b98d03fde16cdfa74?s=96&#38;d=http%3A%2F%2Fs0.wp.com%2Fi%2Fmu.gif&#38;r=G" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">apark7</media:title>
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	</item>
		<item>
		<title>Can Doctors Feel Their Patients&#8217; Pain?</title>
		<link>http://healthland.time.com/2013/01/30/can-doctors-feel-their-patients-pain/</link>
		<comments>http://healthland.time.com/2013/01/30/can-doctors-feel-their-patients-pain/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 30 Jan 2013 13:00:15 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Alexandra Sifferlin</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Doctors & Nurses]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Medicine]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Pain]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[bedside manner]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[doctor-patient relationship]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[empathy]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://healthland.time.com/?p=79078</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[A study shows physicians may care more than you think about their patients&#8217; pain.In spite of studies showing that the relationship between a doctor and patient can influence healing, the interaction isn&#8217;t known for its expressions of outward empathy. But a new study takes a closer look at the biology of the exchange and found some revealing surprises. Using brain scans, researchers from Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and the Program in Placebo Studies and Therapeutic Encounter (PiPS) at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center/Harvard Medical School showed that that when doctors believe they are treating patients, they can feel their pain and also empathize with their patients&#8217; relief after the treatment. In the study, published in the journal Molecular Psychiatry, 18 doctors simulated treating a patient while in a functional MRI (fMRI) scan. They used what they believed to be an electric pain-relieving device on two female actors pretending to be patients. (MORE: White Coats, White Lies: How Honest Is Your Doctor?) To convince the doctors that they were relieving the patients&#8217; pain, the study authors gave each doctor a dose of &#8220;heat pain&#8221; to their forearms and then simply reduced the amount of heat when they touched them with the fake pain relieving device, therefore simulating treatment. While they were being tested, the researchers scanned the doctors&#8217; brains to see which regions reacted to the heat pain stimulation. Each doctor was then introduced to one of the patients, and performed a standard clinical examination. The doctor and patient then moved into a room with the scanner where the doctors were provided with a remote control that could activate the pain relief device. The room contained mirrors so the doctor could maintain eye contact with the patient, who was hooked up to both the heat pain stimulator and the pain relief device. The doctors, who were in the fMRI machine, were then instructed to either treat the patient&#8217;s pain or press a control button that provided no relief. The doctors watched the facial reactions of their patients as they &#8220;felt&#8221; pain and when they felt relief.<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=healthland.time.com&#038;blog=8684427&#038;post=79078&#038;subd=timewellness&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Pain</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://healthland.time.com/category/medicine/pain/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timewellness.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/97612971.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">97612971</media:title>
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		<media:content url="http://1.gravatar.com/avatar/dd9dc95ff828efb70c16a5a509a75150?s=96&#38;d=http%3A%2F%2Fs0.wp.com%2Fi%2Fmu.gif&#38;r=G" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">asifferlin</media:title>
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	</item>
		<item>
		<title>Migraines Linked to Brain Lesions in Women</title>
		<link>http://healthland.time.com/2012/11/14/migraines-linked-to-brain-lesions-in-women/</link>
		<comments>http://healthland.time.com/2012/11/14/migraines-linked-to-brain-lesions-in-women/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 14 Nov 2012 13:00:27 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Laura Blue</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Brain]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Brain Injury]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Pain]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Women's Health]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[brain lesions]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[dementia]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[migraine]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[migraine headaches]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[MRI]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[stroke]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://healthland.time.com/?p=73663</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[While it&#8217;s not clear what causes migraines, one of their lasting effects may be brain lesions triggered by poor blood flow. Researchers report in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) that women, who are three times as likely as men to experience migraines, may suffer from other consequences of the painful headaches apart from the common symptoms of nausea, vomiting and sensitivity to light. Women who have migraines are twice as likely as non-sufferers to show structural changes, or lesions, due to inadequate blood flow in certain parts of the brain. The role that these lesions may play in health, however, still aren&#8217;t obvious. &#8220;Patients should not live with the idea that each migraine attack is potentially &#8216;damaging&#8217; their brains,&#8221; corresponding study author Mark Kruit says in an email to TIME discussing the results. &#8220;Patients should know that the [volume] of changes is small, and that they are not related to worse cognitive function. [T]here is no need for changes in the way migraine patients are treated, based on the study results.&#8221; (MORE: Study: Migraines May Raise the Risk of Depression in Women) Previous MRI brain scans of migraine patients found unusual &#8220;hyperintensities&#8221; — bright areas suggesting areas of poor blood flow. But those studies could not determine which came first — whether people with migraines tend to develop brain lesions, or whether the brain lesions trigger migraines. Those studies also could not track whether each successive migraine would expand the size of the brain lesions, leading to worsening symptoms. So Kruit, a radiologist and neurologist working in Leiden in the Netherlands, joined with a Dutch team of doctors to study migraine in nearly 300 adults living in that country. Most of the participants suffered from migraines, but some did not. Researchers scanned the brains of all of the participants at the start of the study, in 2000, and again in 2009. By comparing the images taken in the same year, Kruit and his colleagues could measure differences in brain lesions between the migraine patients and those who did<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=healthland.time.com&#038;blog=8684427&#038;post=73663&#038;subd=timewellness&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Brain</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://healthland.time.com/category/mental-health/brain/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timewellness.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/1500_brain.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">Brain</media:title>
		</media:content>

		<media:content url="http://1.gravatar.com/avatar/a069e8b4ff0dc386def0882f71bbfee6?s=96&#38;d=http%3A%2F%2Fs0.wp.com%2Fi%2Fmu.gif&#38;r=G" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">Laura Blue</media:title>
		</media:content>
	</item>
		<item>
		<title>A Better Bandage: No More Ouch</title>
		<link>http://healthland.time.com/2012/10/30/a-better-bandage-newly-designed-medical-tape-peels-off-painlessly/</link>
		<comments>http://healthland.time.com/2012/10/30/a-better-bandage-newly-designed-medical-tape-peels-off-painlessly/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 30 Oct 2012 16:20:32 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Laura Blue</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Hospitals]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Infancy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Medicine]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Pain]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Recovery]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Band-Aid]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[bandage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[medical tape]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[neonatal care]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://healthland.time.com/?p=72771</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Hate the way bandages hurt when you take them off? There&#8217;s a new &#8220;quick release&#8221; medical tape that could take the pain out of keeping wounds covered. Biomedical engineers from MIT and Brigham and Women&#8217;s Hospital in Boston have created the ultimate medical tape &#8212; one that will stick but still peel apart easily, without yanking skin or body hair off along with it. It doesn&#8217;t matter how you take off bandages &#8212; quickly or slowly, they hurt. And it&#8217;s not just a matter of a little discomfort. Taking tape off improperly can cause serious injury among patients with weak skin &#8212; including babies born prematurely who are hooked up to tubes and other monitors secured to their skin. Conventional tape is designed to break apart at the point where the tape adhesive meets the skin, the researchers say. But a preterm baby&#8217;s skin will often rip more easily than the tape, so the tape itself stays together while the skin tears apart. In some cases, skin damage from tape removal can cause lifelong scarring. &#8220;This is one of the biggest problems faced in the neonatal units, where the patients are helpless and repeatedly wrapped in medical tapes designed for adult skin,&#8221; says Bryan Laulicht, who worked on the new medical tape. He and his colleagues outline their invention this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Their quick-release tape works with a unique three-layer design, which includes a newly created way to connect the tape&#8217;s adhesive layer to the tape itself. The interface substance is designed to be strong when pulled in almost any direction that a bandage might experience force, but to peel apart easily when the tape is pulled up and off. The inspiration for the idea came from nature, where this property, in which a material is much stronger along one axis than it is along another, is called anisotropy. Just as it&#8217;s easier to split a piece of wood along the grain than against it, the new medical tape requires only<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=healthland.time.com&#038;blog=8684427&#038;post=72771&#038;subd=timewellness&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Research</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://healthland.time.com/category/medicine/research-medicine/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timewellness.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/tape.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">tape</media:title>
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		<media:content url="http://1.gravatar.com/avatar/a069e8b4ff0dc386def0882f71bbfee6?s=96&#38;d=http%3A%2F%2Fs0.wp.com%2Fi%2Fmu.gif&#38;r=G" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">Laura Blue</media:title>
		</media:content>
	</item>
		<item>
		<title>How a Deadly Snake&#8217;s Venom Could Mean Pain Relief</title>
		<link>http://healthland.time.com/2012/10/05/how-a-deadly-snakes-venom-could-mean-pain-relief/</link>
		<comments>http://healthland.time.com/2012/10/05/how-a-deadly-snakes-venom-could-mean-pain-relief/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 05 Oct 2012 12:00:02 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Veronique Greenwood</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Medicine]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Pain]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[analgesic]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[black mamba snake]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[mambalgin]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[morphine]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[pain relief]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[proteins]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[toxins]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[venom]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ziconotide]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://healthland.time.com/?p=70840</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[At first you might feel a slight sting as the fangs enter. Then, a tingling will spread throughout your limbs. But within minutes your central nervous system will start shutting down, culminating in convulsions, paralysis, and a suffocating death. The venom of the black mamba snake, one of the world’s deadliest poisons administered by one of the world&#8217;s deadliest reptiles, can kill you within half an hour. Untreated bites have a mortality rate of 100%. Hidden in the grim cocktail the snake carries, though, are a couple of proteins with a remarkably different effect. Research published this week in Nature has revealed two molecules in mamba venom that can eliminate pain with as much potency as morphine, suggesting an unusual new source for painkillers. Sylvie Diochot, an engineer at France’s Institute of Pharmocologie Moleculaire and Cellulaire and first author of the paper, has always had a yen for the venomous. Fascinated by the destructive power of black widow bites, she studied venomous arthropods and was on familiar terms with her specimens. “Sometimes, I had several spiders and scorpions at home, in breeding, but I have children at home, so I prefer to observe them in nature (photos), or sometimes in our laboratory,” she wrote in an e-mail. Her research involved purifying the toxin molecules that make venom so deadly and then applying them to neurons and other cells to study how they send the body into catastrophic failure. (MORE: The Strange World of Drug Origins: Nuns&#8217; Urine, Yew Trees and Rooster Combs) The conclusion that venom investigators like Diochot have reached is that the things that make animal venoms so deadly are often proteins that work by jamming open or closed the channels that let ions flow across the membranes of neurons. Chemical cross-chatter into and out of the cells is what allows neurons to send messages to the brain and elsewhere. Disrupt that communications feed and the whole system can come crashing down. But not all the information neurons transmit is good. Pain, after all, is a neuronal signal<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=healthland.time.com&#038;blog=8684427&#038;post=70840&#038;subd=timewellness&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Pain</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://healthland.time.com/category/medicine/pain/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timewellness.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/982202401.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">98220240</media:title>
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		<media:content url="http://0.gravatar.com/avatar/f2cdfe953fad799c6100332224e6ecb9?s=96&#38;d=http%3A%2F%2Fs0.wp.com%2Fi%2Fmu.gif&#38;r=G" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">jkluger</media:title>
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		<title>Acupuncture May Offer Real Relief for Chronic Pain</title>
		<link>http://healthland.time.com/2012/09/11/acupuncture-may-help-reduce-chronic-pain-after-all/</link>
		<comments>http://healthland.time.com/2012/09/11/acupuncture-may-help-reduce-chronic-pain-after-all/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 11 Sep 2012 13:00:28 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Alice Park</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Arthritis]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Body & Mind]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Medicine]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Mental Health]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Pain]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[acupuncture]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[arthritis]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[back pain]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[chronic pain]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[fake acupuncture]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[headache]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[osteoarthritis]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[placebo]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[sham acupuncture]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://healthland.time.com/?p=68363</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Some people swear that regular sessions of acupuncture help relieve their back pain and headaches. And now there’s evidence they may be right. In a study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine, researchers led by Andrew Vickers, an epidemiologist and biostatistician at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, report that acupuncture is effective in reducing people’s chronic pain  — more so than standard pain treatment and slightly better than using sham needles, suggesting that the benefits of real acupuncture are due to something more than the placebo effect. The findings counter those of the last large study on the subject, which found that the needle technique was no better than a fake acupuncture treatment — using random pricking with toothpicks — in reducing people’s pain. But Vickers says his meta-analysis of the data, in which researchers reviewed 29 previous studies involving 17,922 participants, does a few things the previous studies did not. For one, he and his colleagues began by looking at only the most rigorous trials involving acupuncture and pain relief — those that directly compared acupuncture treatment with some type of sham needle therapy in which needles were either inserted only superficially or placed in locations that are not known by acupuncture standards to be key treatment points in the body. The authors of the analysis contacted each of the researchers on the previous studies to discuss with them how they separated the two treatment groups. By limiting their review to the most robust studies published, the authors could assess with more confidence acupuncture&#8217;s true effect on participants&#8217; reports of pain before and after treatment. Next, rather than simply summing up the total effect of acupuncture reported by researchers in previous studies, Vickers’ team asked for their raw data on individual participants’ self-reports of pain. Not all scientists use the same scale for reporting results, which makes it difficult to compare and consider such measurements of pain as a whole. With the raw data, Vickers and his team were able to standardize the participants&#8217; responses and compare them<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=healthland.time.com&#038;blog=8684427&#038;post=68363&#038;subd=timewellness&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Pain</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://healthland.time.com/category/medicine/pain/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timewellness.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/97538838acupuncturecropjpg.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">Acupuncture needles on woman&#039;s back</media:title>
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		<media:content url="http://0.gravatar.com/avatar/69fc92d1c4598c5b98d03fde16cdfa74?s=96&#38;d=http%3A%2F%2Fs0.wp.com%2Fi%2Fmu.gif&#38;r=G" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">apark7</media:title>
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		<title>Could an Addiction-Proof Painkiller Finally Be on the Horizon?</title>
		<link>http://healthland.time.com/2012/08/24/could-an-addiction-proof-painkiller-finally-be-on-the-horizon/</link>
		<comments>http://healthland.time.com/2012/08/24/could-an-addiction-proof-painkiller-finally-be-on-the-horizon/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 24 Aug 2012 12:00:03 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Maia Szalavitz</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Addiction]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Medicine]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Mental Health]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Pain]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[chronic pain]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[drug dependence]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[naloxone]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[opioid]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[opioid addiction]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[painkillers]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[plus naloxone]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[prescription drug abuse]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[prescription drug misuse]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[prescription painkillers]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://healthland.time.com/?p=67272</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[A drug that enhances the effectiveness of prescription painkillers, while reducing their addictiveness and cutting chronic pain may be on the horizon, if a new line of animal research pans out. A recent study, published in the Journal of Neuroscience, found that when rodents were given a drug called (+)-naloxone — which is a mirror-image molecule of the drug naloxone, an overdose antidote — along with opioid drugs like morphine they did not display the typical signs of addiction, such as self-administering the drug or developing a preference for the place that they received it. Such behaviors typically occur when rats and mice are exposed to the same kinds of drugs that people tend to enjoy that have a potential for addiction. When these behaviors don&#8217;t manifest, it suggests that the animals aren&#8217;t feeling pleasure from the drugs. Most surprisingly, while (+)-naloxone blocked the high from opioids, it enhanced the drugs&#8217; pain-relieving effect. Many previous attempts to dissociate these characteristics of opioids in the brain have failed, leading researchers to believe it wasn&#8217;t possible. But the new research suggests it is — it&#8217;s just that until now, scientists may have been looking at the wrong pathways in the brain. The new study indicates that the high and most of the negative effects of opioids, such as tolerance and withdrawal, are actually caused by immune cells in the brain — not the neurons involved in pleasure and pain. “This is a paradigm shift in how one views drug reward,” says lead author Linda Watkins of the University of Colorado, Boulder. “All prior concepts of why drugs like opioids are rewarding, why drugs become abused, have focused exclusively on neurons.” While cautioning that the overall significance of the findings cannot yet be assessed, pioneering opioid researcher Dr. Gavril Pasternak of New York’s Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center said that the new work “opens a new area of study and potential insights that are important.” He was not associated with the research. (MORE: The Prescription Painkiller Experience: Less than a Third Say They Like It)<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=healthland.time.com&#038;blog=8684427&#038;post=67272&#038;subd=timewellness&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Pain</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://healthland.time.com/category/medicine/pain/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timewellness.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/73092391.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
		<media:thumbnail url="http://timewellness.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/73092391.jpg?w=240" />
		<media:content url="http://timewellness.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/73092391.jpg?w=240" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">Pills</media:title>
		</media:content>

		<media:content url="http://0.gravatar.com/avatar/0a5ac57e99124922fa628492ad3db6b2?s=96&#38;d=http%3A%2F%2Fs0.wp.com%2Fi%2Fmu.gif&#38;r=G" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">MaiaSzalavitz</media:title>
		</media:content>
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		<title>Methadone: A Major Driver of Prescription Painkiller Overdose Deaths</title>
		<link>http://healthland.time.com/2012/07/03/methadone-a-major-driver-of-prescription-painkiller-overdose-deaths/</link>
		<comments>http://healthland.time.com/2012/07/03/methadone-a-major-driver-of-prescription-painkiller-overdose-deaths/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 03 Jul 2012 20:11:11 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Maia Szalavitz</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Medicine]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Pain]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[CDC]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[methadone]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[methadone overdoses]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[overdose]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[pain treatment]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[painkillers]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://healthland.time.com/?p=63273</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Methadone accounts for nearly 1 in 3 prescription painkiller overdose deaths in the U.S., even though only 2% of prescriptions for opioid painkillers are for this drug, according to a new report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The report also found that six times as many people died of methadone-related overdoses in 2009, compared with a decade earlier. The research showed further that about 4 million methadone prescriptions for pain are written annually and the drug causes about 5,000 overdose deaths each year. While most overdoses involve mixtures of drugs, methadone accounted for 40% of deaths involving a single drug in 2009, twice as many as for any other prescription opioid. “Deaths from opioid overdose have increased fourfold in the past decade, and methadone now accounts for nearly a third of opioid-associated deaths,” said CDC director Dr. Thomas R. Frieden in a statement. For the report, the CDC analyzed national data on prescription sales and overdose death rates from 1999 to 2010, as well as 2009 data on deaths from methadone and other opioids, such as Oxycontin, Vicodin and heroin, from 13 states covered by the Drug Abuse Warning Network. (MORE: Government Considers Overdose Antidote, Naloxone, to Fight Prescription Drug Misuse) Methadone is best known for its use in addiction treatment, but the deaths included in the CDC report are not associated with these programs. “We&#8217;re not talking about methadone maintenance treatment in this data,” said Frieden in a press teleconference on Tuesday. “All of the evidence suggests that the increase in methadone related deaths is related to increased use of methadone to treat pain.” The drug has been used safely to treat addiction since the 1960s, but in recent years prescriptions for pain relief have increased. In Nov. 2006, federal health officials warned against using methadone as a first-choice pain reliever, because it&#8217;s so tricky to prescribe safely, but prescriptions haven&#8217;t declined much. So, in tandem, rates of nonmedical use of methadone and fatal overdoses have risen; the drugs involved in these cases are typically<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=healthland.time.com&#038;blog=8684427&#038;post=63273&#038;subd=timewellness&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Pain</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://healthland.time.com/category/medicine/pain/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timewellness.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/2100_hl_painkillers_0703.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">2100_hl_painkillers_0703</media:title>
		</media:content>

		<media:content url="http://0.gravatar.com/avatar/0a5ac57e99124922fa628492ad3db6b2?s=96&#38;d=http%3A%2F%2Fs0.wp.com%2Fi%2Fmu.gif&#38;r=G" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">MaiaSzalavitz</media:title>
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		<title>Can Aspirin Help Ward Off Skin Cancer?</title>
		<link>http://healthland.time.com/2012/05/29/can-aspirin-help-ward-off-skin-cancer/</link>
		<comments>http://healthland.time.com/2012/05/29/can-aspirin-help-ward-off-skin-cancer/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 29 May 2012 12:55:54 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Alice Park</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Cancer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Medicine]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Pain]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[aspirin]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[cox-2 inhibitors]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[melanoma]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[NSAIDs]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[skin cancer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[vioxx]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://healthland.time.com/?p=60476</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[An aspirin a day could keep skin cancer away, according to a new report in the journal Cancer. Researchers in Denmark and the U.S. found that people taking common painkillers like aspirin and ibuprofen were less likely to develop skin cancer — including squamous cell carcinoma and malignant melanoma — especially when they took the drugs for at least seven years or used them at least twice a week. It&#8217;s not the first study to show a potential anticancer effect of aspirin and other similar painkillers — a class of medications known and nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, or NSAIDs. Previous studies have found that aspirin users enjoyed a lower risk of colon cancer; a trial published earlier this year concluded that people who take a daily aspirin have as much as a 46% lower risk of colon, lung and prostate cancers, compared with non-users. In the current trial, researchers looked at all cancer cases in the Danish Cancer Registry from 1991 to 2009 and compared this data against that of a prescription-drug database that recorded patients&#8217; histories of using aspirin, NSAIDs or COX-2 inhibitors, drugs that all work in similar ways to reduce inflammation and dull pain. (MORE: Will an Aspirin Prolong Your Life? It Depends) Overall, 18,532 cases of skin cancer were included in the study. Each case was compared to 10 matched controls who did not develop the disease. Over the study period, people who filled more than two prescriptions for aspirin, NSAIDS or COX-2 inhibitors had a 13% lower risk of melanoma and a 15% lower risk of squamous cell carcinoma than those who filled fewer prescriptions, the researchers found. The longer people took the drugs, and the higher the dose, the greater the anticancer benefit. Longer, higher-intensity use, for example, led to a 46% lower risk of melanoma, a 35% lower risk of squamous cell carcinoma and a 17% lower risk of basal cell carcinoma, the most common form of skin cancer in the U.S. The relationship held even after the researchers adjusted for potential confounders that<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=healthland.time.com&#038;blog=8684427&#038;post=60476&#038;subd=timewellness&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Cancer</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://healthland.time.com/category/medicine/cancer/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timewellness.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/71085908aspirincrop.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">Aspirin</media:title>
		</media:content>

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			<media:title type="html">apark7</media:title>
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		<title>Can Brain Freeze Solve the Mystery of Migraines?</title>
		<link>http://healthland.time.com/2012/04/23/can-brain-freeze-solve-the-mystery-of-migraines/</link>
		<comments>http://healthland.time.com/2012/04/23/can-brain-freeze-solve-the-mystery-of-migraines/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 23 Apr 2012 16:00:15 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Alexandra Sifferlin</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Medicine]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Pain]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[anterior cerebral artery]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[brain freeze]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[headaches]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[migraines]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://healthland.time.com/?p=58047</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Researchers say they&#8217;ve figured out what causes brain freeze — the mind-numbingly painful headache you get while eating ice cream or some other cold food. The finding may shed light on treatments for more severe headaches like migraines, the researchers suggest. In a presentation on Sunday at the Experimental Biology 2012 meeting in San Francisco, a meeting bringing together researchers from six scientific societies, a U.S. team announced that brain freeze appears to be triggered by a sudden change in the flow of blood in the brain&#8217;s anterior cerebral artery. The pain comes on when blood flow increases, and subsides as soon as the artery constricts. (MORE: Study: Migraines May Raise the Risk of Depression in Women) To study the phenomenon, the researchers recruited 13 healthy adults to drink cold water through a straw aimed at the roof of the mouth. The participants raised their hands when they felt brain freeze and again when the pain disappeared. Meanwhile, the researchers tracked blood flow in their brains and found that the pain was linked to the swelling and constricting of the anterior cerebral artery. Because the skull is a closed structure, the rapid blood flow could raise pressure and induce pain, the authors explained. The quick contraction that follows may be the brain&#8217;s method of bringing down the pressure before it reaches dangerous levels. “The brain is one of the relatively important organs in the body, and it needs to be working all the time. It’s fairly sensitive to temperature, so [expanding arteries] might be moving warm blood inside tissue to make sure the brain stays warm,” said lead researcher Jorge Serrador of Harvard Medical School and the War Related Illness and Injury Study Center of the Veterans Affairs New Jersey Health Care System in a statement. (MORE: A Genetic Link Between Migraines and Depression?) According to the researchers, brain freeze is an ideal event to study, since it&#8217;s simple to trigger and lasts only briefly. Scientists can easily study the event from beginning to end. The team believes similar blood flow changes could be at play<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=healthland.time.com&#038;blog=8684427&#038;post=58047&#038;subd=timewellness&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Pain</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://healthland.time.com/category/medicine/pain/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timewellness.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/109756126.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">109756126</media:title>
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		<media:content url="http://1.gravatar.com/avatar/dd9dc95ff828efb70c16a5a509a75150?s=96&#38;d=http%3A%2F%2Fs0.wp.com%2Fi%2Fmu.gif&#38;r=G" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">asifferlin</media:title>
		</media:content>
	</item>
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		<title>Are Over-the-Counter Bug Bite Treatments Useless?</title>
		<link>http://healthland.time.com/2012/04/12/are-over-the-counter-bug-bite-treatments-useless/</link>
		<comments>http://healthland.time.com/2012/04/12/are-over-the-counter-bug-bite-treatments-useless/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 12 Apr 2012 10:45:21 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Alexandra Sifferlin</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Medicine]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Pain]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[bug bites]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[treatment]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://healthland.time.com/?p=57124</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Mosquitoes, chiggers, fleas — oh my! As warmer days approach, so do the biting bugs, which means plenty of itching and irritation to go around. Most people use over-the-counter creams or antihistamine pills to relieve their discomfort, but a new report questions whether such salves do as much good as we think. The Drug and Therapeutics Bulletin (DTB) released a report on Wednesday finding that after reviewing the evidence, there was little support for the use of over-the-counter remedies for bug bites. “We didn&#8217;t find much published evidence for the various medicines that are used to treat simple insect bites,” says David Phizackerley, the deputy editor of the DTB. &#8220;Guidance on the management of simple insect bites is based on expert opinion rather than direct evidence from clinical trials.” Further, the authors concluded that in many cases the symptoms from bug bites are self-limiting and no treatment may be needed. (MORE: With Bed Bugs, the Cure May Be Worse Than the Disease) The DTB looked at popular remedies including antihistamine tablets, oral and topical steroids, creams containing painkillers and anesthetics such as lidocaine and benzocaine, or combined with antihistamines and antiseptics, and the prescription anti-itch lotion Crotamiton. Antihistamine tablets are widely recommended to stop itching, but the DTB says there is little evidence to support their use. The researchers claim that topical antihistamines are also &#8220;only marginally effective, occasionally cause sensitization, and&#8230;use for longer than three days is not recommended.&#8221; Oral and topical steroids, which are often used to treat the inflammation that accompanies bug bites, also lack supporting evidence, the DTB says. They warn that steroid creams should not be used on broken skin — which is hard to avoid after so much itching and scratching — and recommend them only for the treatment of with eczema. Patients won&#8217;t feel much relief from Crotamiton either. The report says there is “no hard evidence” for its use and cites the opinion of the British National Formulary — a medical and pharmaceutical reference book — that it is “of uncertain value.” (PHOTOS: Bed Bugs: The Beauty<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=healthland.time.com&#038;blog=8684427&#038;post=57124&#038;subd=timewellness&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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	<primary_category>Pain</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://healthland.time.com/category/medicine/pain/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timewellness.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/83463355.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">83463355</media:title>
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			<media:title type="html">asifferlin</media:title>
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		<title>For Sinus Infection, Don&#8217;t Bother with Antibiotics</title>
		<link>http://healthland.time.com/2012/02/15/have-a-sinus-infection-dont-bother-with-antibiotics/</link>
		<comments>http://healthland.time.com/2012/02/15/have-a-sinus-infection-dont-bother-with-antibiotics/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 15 Feb 2012 18:45:02 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Alexandra Sifferlin</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Medicine]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Pain]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[antibiotics]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[sinus infection]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://healthland.time.com/?p=53501</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Sinus infections are drippy and painful — an all-around headache, quite literally. When symptoms arise, patients often rush to the doctor for a prescription, usually an antibiotic, to put an end to the suffering. But it turns out you’d do just as well to take a sugar pill and treat yourself with standard drugstore remedies. According to a new study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association by researchers at Washington University’s School of Medicine in St. Louis, the antibiotics typically prescribed by doctors work no better than placebo for reducing symptoms of infection. “Patients don’t get better faster or have fewer symptoms when they get antibiotics,” Jay F. Piccirillo, professor of otolaryngology and the study’s senior author, said in a statement. “Our results show that antibiotics aren’t necessary for a basic sinus infection — most people get better on their own.” The researchers studied 166 adults with acute sinus infection symptoms. Patients were randomly assigned to receive a 10-day course of either amoxicillin or placebo, and nearly all patients also got acetaminophen for pain- and fever-relief, a decongestant, an over-the-counter cough medicine and a saline nasal spray. Most participants used at least some of these. MORE: Surgery May Help Relieve Chronic Sinus Infection Doctors assessed the patients&#8217; symptoms on Day 3, 7 and 10 of the study, and again 28 days later. The researchers didn&#8217;t expect to see a difference between the two groups at the later assessments — since sinus infections tend to resolve themselves on their own over time — but they were surprised to find no difference at Day 3. It turned out that patients using antibiotics did not report milder or fewer symptoms than patients on placebo. (Incidentally, doctors gauged patients&#8217; symptoms through a self-reported questionnaire called the Sinonasal Outcome Test-16, or SNOT-16 for short.) The takeaway for patients is that they should skip the antibiotics for the treatment of sinus infections. Currently, 1 in 5 antibiotic prescriptions in the U.S. are written for sinus infections — not only are the drugs failing<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=healthland.time.com&#038;blog=8684427&#038;post=53501&#038;subd=timewellness&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Pain</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://healthland.time.com/category/medicine/pain/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timewellness.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/sinus-infection.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">sinus infection</media:title>
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			<media:title type="html">asifferlin</media:title>
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		<title>How Massage Helps Heal Muscles and Relieve Pain</title>
		<link>http://healthland.time.com/2012/02/02/how-massage-helps-heal-muscles-and-relieve-pain/</link>
		<comments>http://healthland.time.com/2012/02/02/how-massage-helps-heal-muscles-and-relieve-pain/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 02 Feb 2012 14:50:01 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Maia Szalavitz</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Medicine]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Pain]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[massage]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://healthland.time.com/?p=52807</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The word massage alone elicits deep relaxation and stress relief, and now a new study sheds light on how deep touch works to ease pain and promote healing in sore muscles. Researchers at McMaster University in Canada found that massage affects the activity of certain genes, directly reducing inflammation in muscles — the same result you&#8217;d get by taking aspirin or ibuprofen — and boosting their ability to recover from exercise. The study involved 11 young men who were willing to engage in what the researchers described as “exhaustive aerobic exercise” — the equivalent of an intense spinning class. The men rode stationary bikes to the point of exhaustion. After the workout, each man received a 10-minute Swedish-style massage on only one leg; the other leg served as the control. They also had biopsies taken from their leg muscles before and after exercise, immediately after massage and then again two and a half hours later. MORE: Aching Back? Try Massage for Chronic Pain Researchers found that massage set off a series of molecular events in muscles that helped reverse discomfort related to exercise. Massage dampened the activity of proteins known as inflammatory cytokines, which cause inflammation and pain. It also increased levels of proteins that signal the muscles to produce more mitochondria, the cell structures that produce energy and help muscles recover from activity. Tiffany Field, a leading researcher on the effects of massage and director of the Touch Research Institute at the University of Miami Medical School, says she found the results “very believable.” She was not associated with the new research. (Field notes that her group is planning to study the effect of massage on some of the same inflammatory cytokines in HIV-positive pregnant women.) Massage basically has the same pain-relieving effect as drugs like aspirin, ibuprofen (Advil) and naproxen (Aleve), says Field. Known as NSAIDS, for nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, these medications work by reducing levels of substances called prostaglandins that increase levels of inflammatory cytokines. “By reducing the inflammation — or the pro-inflammatory cytokines, to be specific<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=healthland.time.com&#038;blog=8684427&#038;post=52807&#038;subd=timewellness&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>2</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Pain</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://healthland.time.com/category/medicine/pain/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timewellness.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/massage1.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">massage</media:title>
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			<media:title type="html">MaiaSzalavitz</media:title>
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		<title>Men vs. Women on Pain: Who Hurts More?</title>
		<link>http://healthland.time.com/2012/01/23/men-vs-women-on-pain-who-hurts-more/</link>
		<comments>http://healthland.time.com/2012/01/23/men-vs-women-on-pain-who-hurts-more/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 23 Jan 2012 12:10:00 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Alice Park</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Medicine]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Pain]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[gender differences]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://healthland.time.com/?p=52008</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Women feel pain more intensely than men, according to a new study of 11,000 men and women who were patients at the Stanford Hospital and Clinics. Researchers analyzed electronic medical records of patients’ reports of pain across a range of different diseases, and found a distinct gender-driven difference in how much discomfort patients say they felt. The study included 47 disorders — from cancer to back conditions and infectious diseases — and more than 161,000 patient-reported pain scores. The patients were all asked by nurses or other health personnel to rate their pain on an 11-point scale, with 0 representing &#8220;no pain&#8221; and 11 signifying the &#8220;worst pain imaginable.&#8221; VIDEO: Tricking the Brain to Feel No Pain: It&#8217;s Done With Mirrors Not surprisingly, most responses clustered around either the two extremes of very little pain or extreme pain or the middle score of 5. But overall, women were more likely to indicate higher pain levels than men, says lead author Dr. Atul Butte, chief of systems medicine in the department of pediatrics at Stanford University School of Medicine. And that was true across almost all of the different diseases. “That was the most surprising finding,” says Butte. “We completely wouldn’t have expected such a difference across almost all disorders, where women were reporting a whole pain point higher on the 0-to-10 scale than men.” Of course, self-reports can’t account for the fact that people may define tolerable and intolerable pain in vastly different ways, says Butte, but the fact that a gender difference emerged from such a large number of patients suggests that the effect is real. MORE: Healing the Hurt What accounts for the gender gap? Hormones may explain some of the difference — studies have shown that estrogen in women can help dampen the activity of pain receptors, helping them to tolerate higher levels of pain. That means, however, that they may become more sensitive to pain during low-estrogen parts of the menstrual cycle. There may also be explanations that have nothing to do with biology. Men, for<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=healthland.time.com&#038;blog=8684427&#038;post=52008&#038;subd=timewellness&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Pain</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://healthland.time.com/category/medicine/pain/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timewellness.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/pain.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">pain</media:title>
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			<media:title type="html">apark7</media:title>
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		<title>Birth Control Pills Provide Real Relief from Menstrual Pain</title>
		<link>http://healthland.time.com/2012/01/20/birth-control-pills-provide-real-relief-from-menstrual-pain/</link>
		<comments>http://healthland.time.com/2012/01/20/birth-control-pills-provide-real-relief-from-menstrual-pain/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 20 Jan 2012 22:46:47 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Maia Szalavitz</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Pain]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Birth Control]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[contraception]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[menstrual pain]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[menstruation]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[oral contraceptives]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[painful periods]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[the pill]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://healthland.time.com/?p=51956</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[For decades, doctors have prescribed birth-control pills in the hopes of easing women&#8217;s menstrual pain, and now a new study finds that it really does serve the purpose: using oral birth control pills helped relieve cramps, bloating and other pain in a 30-year study of Swedish women. That&#8217;s good news for the more than half of all teen girls and young women who suffer from painful periods. About 15% are so severely affected that they regularly miss school or work as a result. In the U.S. alone, this absenteeism is associated with $2 billion in lost productivity. Despite some previous research and much anecdotal evidence that oral contraceptives help women&#8217;s menstrual pain, a 2009 review of the literature conducted by the independent Cochrane Collaboration, which does stringent reviews to help guide evidence-based medical practices, found little evidence that the pill was effective. Researchers could not determine from the existing data whether improvements in pain were due to the pill or simply to the fact that the women were aging — menstrual pain is known to ease with age. The new study addressed that problem. The research included about 1,400 women living in the Swedish city of Gothenberg who were born in 1962, 1972 or 1982. Researchers surveyed the women first at age 19, then again at 24, with questionnaires about their period pain, use of various types of contraception, whether or not they&#8217;d had children, and their height and weight. Only women taking combined oral contraceptives, which contain both estrogen and progestin, were included — not those taking progestin-only pills. MORE: New Research on the Antidepressant-vs.-Placebo Debate The study found that use of birth-control pills cut women&#8217;s pain significantly, reducing it on average one step on a scale of pain — for example, going from severe to moderate — for 1 in 3 women. Women on the pill also needed less pain medication during their periods. As expected, advancing age was also associated with less pain — but it didn&#8217;t make nearly as much difference as the pill did. Giving<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=healthland.time.com&#038;blog=8684427&#038;post=51956&#038;subd=timewellness&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Pain</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://healthland.time.com/category/medicine/pain/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timewellness.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/birth-control-pills.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">birth control pills</media:title>
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			<media:title type="html">MaiaSzalavitz</media:title>
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		<title>Super-Duper Hydrocodone? An Open Letter to Big Pharma</title>
		<link>http://healthland.time.com/2011/12/28/super-duper-hydrocodone-an-open-letter-to-big-pharma/</link>
		<comments>http://healthland.time.com/2011/12/28/super-duper-hydrocodone-an-open-letter-to-big-pharma/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 28 Dec 2011 22:01:38 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Jeffrey Kluger</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Addiction]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Drugs]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Medicine]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Mental Health]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Overdose]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Pain]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Pharmaceuticals]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[hydrocodone]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[opioids]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[overdose]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[oxycodone]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[oxycontin]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[vicodin]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://healthland.time.com/?p=50249</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Dear Giant Multinational Pharmaceutical Companies: First, a little love. In a lot of ways, you guys are just the best. Your products cure infections, prevent diseases, control blood pressure, lower cholesterol, lift moods, bust clots, manage chronic diseases and treat thousands of often obscure ills with thousands of ingenious preparations. In a world in which it would be a lot easier to manufacture cigarettes or handguns or pork rinds, you produce medicine. So thanks. All that said, recent reports also make it fair to ask: Are you nuts? Just this week, the Associated Press revealed that four of you Big Pharma boys — and I&#8217;m looking principally at you, San Diego-based Zogenix — are hoping to release a super-duper, high-octane form of the opioid painkiller hydrocodone, containing up to 10 times the dosage of the drug currently available in the already crazily addictive drug Vicodin, and that the Zogenix pills could be on the market as soon as 2013 with others to follow. Let&#8217;s take a moment to review the numbers. As the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported in November: Enough prescription painkillers were prescribed in 2010 to medicate every American adult around-the-clock for a month. Prescription painkiller overdoses killed nearly 15,000 people in the U.S. in 2008. This is more than 3 times the 4,000 people killed by these drugs in 1999. In 2010, about 12 million Americans (age 12 or older) reported nonmedical use of prescription painkillers in the past year. Nearly half a million emergency department visits in 2009 were due to people misusing or abusing prescription painkillers. What&#8217;s more, in 30 states, unintentional overdoses have surpassed motor vehicle accidents as the leading cause of unintended death. Want more? As TIME reported last year, in 2010, seven people died every day from prescription drug overdoses in Florida alone — the state that has long been the nation&#8217;s capital for quasi-legal pill mills, essentially drug trafficking centers thinly disguised as pain clinics. LIST: The Painkiller Overdose Epidemic, and 7 Other Stories to Watch in 2012 The<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=healthland.time.com&#038;blog=8684427&#038;post=50249&#038;subd=timewellness&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Pharmaceuticals</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://healthland.time.com/category/policy-industry/pharmaceuticals/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timewellness.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/prescription-drugs.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">prescription drugs</media:title>
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			<media:title type="html">jkluger</media:title>
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		<title>Controversial Study Linking Virus to Chronic Fatigue Is Retracted</title>
		<link>http://healthland.time.com/2011/12/22/controversial-study-linking-virus-and-chronic-fatigue-is-retracted/</link>
		<comments>http://healthland.time.com/2011/12/22/controversial-study-linking-virus-and-chronic-fatigue-is-retracted/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 22 Dec 2011 18:37:54 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Sora Song</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Medicine]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Pain]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[bruce alberts]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[chronic fatigue]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[retraction]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[science]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[xmrv]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://healthland.time.com/?p=50020</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The journal Science is retracting a contentious 2009 paper linking chronic fatigue syndrome to a mouse retrovirus called XMRV. The paper&#8217;s original findings — that XMRV had been found in the blood of people with the syndrome — galvanized researchers and sufferers of chronic fatigue, a condition of unknown cause that leads to pain, debilitating fatigue and cognitive problems. But since the paper was published, it has repeatedly come under fire — no fewer than 17 follow-up studies have failed to replicate the link between chronic fatigue and the retrovirus. In May, Science published two reports suggesting that the original findings were due to laboratory contamination. At the time, the journal&#8217;s editor, Bruce Alberts, said the paper was &#8220;now seriously in question.&#8221; In September, the authors of the study issued a partial retraction, acknowledging the contamination of some of their original blood samples, but did not retract the full paper. On Thursday, the journal announced it was retracting the paper fully, without the authors&#8217; consent. Typically, retractions come from the authors, but in this case, the journal said the authors couldn&#8217;t agree on the wording of a retraction statement. &#8220;It&#8217;s kind of a surprise that it took so long,&#8221; John Coffin, a retrovirologist at Tufts University in Boston, who co-authored an editorial in Science supporting the original paper, told Science Insider&#8217;s Jon Cohen, regarding the journal&#8217;s retraction. Cohen reports: Science Executive Editor Monica Bradford says the journal always prefers authors to sign retractions. &#8220;It&#8217;s the authors&#8217; work, and it&#8217;s a very clear signal to scientific community that there can&#8217;t be accusations of other agendas,&#8221; says Bradford. Alberts says they simply had been &#8220;spun&#8221; by the authors too many times for too long. &#8220;If our editorial retraction helps to end the resources to go into this fruitless endeavor, I think we&#8217;ve made a contribution to the scientific community,&#8221; he says. Stay tuned for more on this story from Healthland&#8217;s Alice Park.<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=healthland.time.com&#038;blog=8684427&#038;post=50020&#038;subd=timewellness&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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	<primary_category>Pain</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://healthland.time.com/category/medicine/pain/</primary_category_link>
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			<media:title type="html">Sora Song</media:title>
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		<title>Could Medical Marijuana Reduce Patients&#8217; Need for Opioid Painkillers?</title>
		<link>http://healthland.time.com/2011/12/12/could-medical-marijuana-reduce-patients-need-for-opioid-painkillers/</link>
		<comments>http://healthland.time.com/2011/12/12/could-medical-marijuana-reduce-patients-need-for-opioid-painkillers/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 12 Dec 2011 19:05:12 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Maia Szalavitz</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Medicine]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Pain]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[cannabis]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Marijuana]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[medical marijuana]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[morphine]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[opioid]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[opioids]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[oxycontin]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://healthland.time.com/?p=48844</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[A small, new study backs a long-standing claim of advocates of medical marijuana: pain patients can safely use cannabis while taking opioid painkillers, and may actually need fewer pills because of it. The research included 21 chronic pain patients, who were taking either long-acting morphine or Oxycontin twice a day. Adding marijuana to these opioid drugs reduced patients&#8217; pain by an average of 27% and did not significantly affect blood levels of the prescription drugs. If marijuana had raised those blood levels, it could have increased overdose risk. &#8220;The combination may allow for opioid treatment at lower doses with fewer side effects,&#8221; the authors concluded. MORE: Why Medical Marijuana Laws Reduce Traffic Deaths For the duration of the study, participants were housed and monitored in the hospital for five days, so that their vital signs could be tracked and any complications rapidly treated. They were given vaporized cannabis to inhale: the first day, they used it in the evening; for the next several days, they smoked three times a day; and on the last day, they used it in the morning. No medical problems occurred. The patients did report feeling &#8220;high&#8221; when given the marijuana, but not when given opioid drugs, to which they were already tolerant. The study was not placebo-controlled so it&#8217;s possible that some of marijuana&#8217;s painkilling effect was due to patients&#8217; expectations of the drug— but previous research has found that marijuana is superior to placebo as a pain reliever. With rising concerns about opioid overdose — the death toll associated with prescription painkillers has recently surpassed that of traffic accidents — the new finding is striking. While marijuana will never be able to replace opioids for the most severe pain, it carries no overdose risk and a far lower risk of addiction than prescription painkillers do. Further study to determine which patients would benefit most, and to what extent marijuana can actually reduce opioid use should be conducted. Unfortunately, the Obama administration is currently engaged in a crackdown on marijuana dispensaries in the 16 states that have<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=healthland.time.com&#038;blog=8684427&#038;post=48844&#038;subd=timewellness&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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	<primary_category>Pain</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://healthland.time.com/category/medicine/pain/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timewellness.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/medical_marijuana.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">medical_marijuana</media:title>
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			<media:title type="html">MaiaSzalavitz</media:title>
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