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Gossip & Opinions / Re: Hormones and intense excercise builds muscle
« Last post by Krankenstein on Today at 05:05:49 AM »What effect does weed have on your pain ?? IME, and some others, it can actually affect how pain "reverberates" increasing pain or emotional processing of that pain or any pain like in emotional pain, trauma etc. But I know many also say it decreases pain in a big way. Opiates and opioids decrease the sensation of pain numbing you emotionally, unlike weed. Some say they don't decrease pain exactly, just the "caring" about it so to say. Many specialists say opiates shouldn't be used in back pain, especially long term as they also increase pain eventually, actually sensitizing your pain receptors. I was looking at treatments for back pain, something affectin me right now in a big way, not lower back but up between my shoulders, possible hernia, waiting for a xray appointment right now. Docs were discouraging me about xrays or MRIs because "we actually don't, and can't, do much wrt to back pain, except surgery in some cases but they will most likely not operate on you anyway."
Xrays won't show anything for hernia. If it is between your shoulder blades, one of the things to look at is the cervical region. Referral pain from mid spine is very common. C4 - C6 most likely. What those guys say about back pain is right. They don't know how handle it unless it is through surgery or pharma. In addition, the likelyhood of a fusion helping is being shown to be less and less. The fuse two segments and the resulting compensatory degeneration is accelerated.
Regarding chronic pain....one of the things that can happen is the brain gets so used to being in pain that even if the tissues become healed, the brain still thinks the area is damaged and the pain centers light up. If there truly is damage that isn't healing (for example a disc that has turned from just a herniation to extrusion) that disc emits cytokines which tell the body there is damage, this in turn causes more release of the neuropeptide substance P (p for pain...literally). Substance P has been implicated in the the initiation of the addictive response to opioids. So, in a way its a double edge sword.