Chronic pain states may stem from the emotional impact on the brain at the time of the original trauma which can be alleviated with things other than drugs.

College Station, Texas: After 12 years of clinical practice both in New York and Texas, Dr. Daniel Bettiol is hanging up his white coat forever to promote the healing benefits of proper body hydration.

Dr. Daniel Bettiol is leaving the profession of Chiropractic to pursue his clinically-tested belief that the primary causative factor in Headaches, Neck & Low Back pain is Dehydration of the tissues and the inability to eliminate accumulated Metabolic wastes from the body.

People with ruptured disks in their lower backs usually recover whether or not they have surgery, researchers are reporting. The study, a large trial, found that surgery appeared to relieve pain more quickly but that most people recovered eventually and that there was no harm in waiting.

And that, surgeons said, is likely to change medical practice.

The study, published Wednesday in The Journal of the American Medical Association, is the only large and rigorous randomized trial to compare surgery with waiting for sciatica.

The study was controversial from the start, with many surgeons saying they knew that the operation worked and that it would be unethical for their patients to participate.

After injury, pain sensors in the body can lapse into a hyper-excited state. Long after the original injury is gone, these pain cells keep on sending intense pain signals. Columbia University researchers report that an enzyme called protein kinase G or PKG is responsible for this long-term hyper-excitability of pain sensors. Rats studies show that turning PKG off stops the pain.

From the August issue of the journal Neuroscience.

A report, published in the online "Early View" edition of Pharmacoepidemiology and Drug Safety, listed 4,451 deaths for opioids without cocaine or heroin, while cocaine alone caused 2,569 or heroin alone 1,061 deaths.

The deaths from opioid-based painkillers -- including oxycondone, hydrocodone, fentanyl and methadone -- have increased in recent years, as the drugs themselves have become more popular on the black market.

An Oregon woman suing her doctor and his medical clinic for $4 million. She said that his medical treatment included intercourse which was needed to help alleviate her lower back pain.

The doctor, Randall Smith, was stripped of his license and sent to jail for 60 days last year for charging the stateís Oregon Health Plan $5,000 for his 45-minute ìtreatmentsî involving the woman.

Injections of human stem cells seem to directly repair some of the damage caused by spinal cord injury, according to research that helped partially paralyzed mice walk again.

"We set out to find whether these cells would be able to respond to the injury in an appropriate and beneficial way on their own," said Brian Cummings, first author of the paper.

Two men suing physician Dr. Robert Harned, claiming he over-prescribed painkillers, causing them to become addicted. Each suit seeks $1.5 million for the plaintiffsí pain and suffering. Also named in the suit are Chatham Medical Associates, where Harned practiced, and Stop & Shop Pharmacy, which filled some of the prescriptions.

Dr. Ian Gilron, an anesthesiologist at Queen's University in Ontario studied using painkillers morphine and gabapentin in patients with diabetes or shingles-related pain. On their own, each drug reduced pain by about one-quarter or one-third. Used together, they worked simultaneously on different areas of the brain, and reduced neuropathic pain by 45 per cent.In addition, patients didn't require as much medication to get an effect.

The results of Gilron's study will be published on April 5, 2005 in the New England Journal of Medicine.