Let our experience and knowledge help you overcome chronic pain.
May 2017
Medication or Management The Future of Pain Recovery
A couple winters ago, I slipped on a sheet of ice as I crossed a parking lot. Losing my balance, I fell and landed hard on the left side of my back and shoulder. I didn’t suffer any serious injuries that would require surgery, but I was still hurt. The terrible pain meant I couldn’t lay on my back or side, and I slept in a reclining chair for eight weeks. At the time, I needed to choose whether I would start reaching for pain medication or focus on truly recovering from my pain through pain management. Since I’m a doctor in the pain management specialty, I obviously chose the latter option. I developed a treatment plan and started at-home rehab. It wasn’t an overnight fix, but with time, I recovered. I often share my story with patients who come in without any hope that they can get relief. I won’t give my patients false promises or tell them they’re never going to feel pain again, because that’s just not how it works. There are days when I still experience some form of ache from my fall, but it’s not constant. I enjoy a better quality of life today than if I had only relied on medication to deal with my pain. Pain management is a fairly new specialty. When I started, there was a lot being discovered, and even today, there’s a lot of ongoing research. To be honest, when I first entered medicine, I focused on surgery, not pain management. But when I began working in a hospital, I realized the field didn’t provide the work-life balance I desired. I wasn’t going to drop out of medicine completely, but I needed to rethink the direction I was headed. I approached my mentor, a neurosurgeon, to get some advice about what I should do with my future. He made it clear he didn’t want me to leave the surgical field, but once he saw I’d made my mind up on that matter, he warned me not to let my hands be idle. “You have very good technical skill and great hands,” he said. “Don’t just waste them. Look into pain management. You have a natural skill. I think you’ll do good there.” Many patients — and even other doctors — don’t fully understand the potential of this specialty. I know I didn’t understand it completely when I first started. Entering pain management has been a roller coaster, an exciting series of ups
and down, but all in a good way. I’m in the business of giving patients hope that they can recover and helping them feel better so they get to play with their kids, work the hours they want, and enjoy their lives again without restrictions. I get a great deal of joy and satisfaction from knowing I’m able to help my patients come up with a solution for their pain. We still don’t know everything about pain and recovery, but that’s what makes the field interesting. I am excited to be in a specialty that will grow so much in the near future.
Dr. Chi Izeogu
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Getting Things Done® How a Few Changes Can Boost Your Productivity
draw, write, and think? One of the most compelling things about Getting Things Done is that it frees up your brain by getting all of those items written down somewhere — a notebook, an app, a tape recorder, or a Word doc. Then, all you have to do is break those tasks down into simple lists. First is the “in” list, which is a master list of anything that you have to do or want to do. The “in” list includes everything, from getting the mail to opening a new bank account. From there, you need to process the items on the list. The very first question to ask yourself is, “Is this actionable?” If you can do something in response to the task, ask if you can do it in under two minutes, like replying to an email. This is called the two-minute rule, and it allows you to clear out tasks that are easy to handle now, instead of putting in unnecessary effort to carry them forward. If the task would take longer than two minutes, ask, “What is the next action for this?” Then add that specific action to a “next actions” list you refer back to regularly. For example, if you need to join a gym, the next action is to stop by the gym near your house after work. Just asking about the next action to take will dramatically improve how much progress you make on your goals. There’s more to Getting Things Done® than just these strategies, but try implementing just this much. Get all of the to-do items out of your head and start classifying them by which ones you can take action on. For more on productivity, check out www.GettingThingsDone.com !
Let’s not beat around the bush. We all know how to do things.
The real question is, what’s happening in our psychology that gets in the way of peak productivity? Fortunately, David Allen’s Getting Things Done® methodology can help. You may not realize it, but your brain is full of lists right now. That bogs down your brain, which isn’t really designed to remember a lot of things. If you need proof, try to remember that thing you said you’d remember two minutes ago, then promptly forgot.
Put another way, if your brain were a white board, would it be covered with a bunch of to-do lists and reminders, or would there be a lot of blank space to
Annoying Online Marketing Are You Guilty of These Awful Tactics?
Pop-ups, autoplay videos, and keyword-stuffed content — these are among the most annoying strategies in the digital marketer’s toolkit. And calling them “strategies” is a stretch of the imagination. While these kinds of tactics can work to drive traffic to your website or a select landing page, they do so by unscrupulous and annoying means. Pop-ups are designed to be accidentally clicked. Autoplay videos or audio files are meant to grab your attention — and hopefully deliver a message before you can click mute. Keyword-stuffed content is written to garner the attention of the web-crawling bots of Google, Bing, Yahoo, and other search engines in the hope that content will appear higher in search results. While you might think using these tactics is counterintuitive, many businesses continue to do just that. They use them because, again, they can work. But just because something can work doesn’t mean it should be used. These tactics are why more people are installing ad-blocking software on their web browsers. People — your potential customers — don’t want to be accosted by ads or sales
pitches when they browse the web or check their email. The days of impersonal marketing tactics and intrusive advertising are over.
What should you do instead? Start by getting personal. Consider one of the golden rules of selling: People want to buy from people they like. Don’t annoy potential customers, embrace them! Start by looking at your online copy and the content on your website, blog, or social media pages. Who is it written for? SEO bots, or living, breathing human beings? Then look at how you are advertising on the web. If you are running a campaign with a third-party service, scrutinize their tactics. Make sure they aren’t cutting corners or using shady tactics to get you results (for example, black hat SEO, which relies on keyword stuffing, URL redirects, link farming, and more). All of your online ads, regardless of what service you use or your approach, should paint a positive picture of your business and what you offer. Your ads shouldn’t intrude on the web browsing experience of your customers — they should complement it.
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Opioids and Chronic Non-Cancer Pain Strategies Doctors Need to Know Before Prescribing
The activist group Physicians for Responsible Opioid Prescribing cites three popular myths doctors must stop believing regarding chronic opioid therapy:
Myth: Chronic opioid therapy is supported by extensive evidence and research. Fact: Evidence of the long-term effectiveness of chronic opioid therapy is limited and much research had been called into question. Myth: Opioid dependence can only occur if a patient is prescribed high doses over several months. Fact: Dependence can occur within a few weeks or even mere days with daily use. Myth: High dose therapy — at least 120 mg of morphine per day — is supported by strong evidence. Fact: No randomized trials have shown the long-term effectiveness of high dose therapy in treating CNCP. As doctors try to navigate between helping their patients and inadvertently opening the door to addition, it would be wise to take advice from the journal Current Psychiatry: “Multidisciplinary care paired with psychological interventions and a treatment plan has some evidence of efficacy in treating pain in patients with chronic non-cancer pain at high risk of substance abuse.” Treating pain should not end with a prescription. Doctors have a responsibility to educate themselves about pain and opioid addiction by partnering with specialists who can aid in treating pain without increasing the risk of addiction.
Chronic non-cancer pain (CNCP) is one of the most challenging conditions doctors treat. Sometimes the only pain-management tool a doctor has in their arsenal is prescription opioids. Opioid prescriptions have risen drastically over the last 10 years. The Centers for Disease Control estimate providers wrote 250 million opioid prescriptions in 2013 alone, enough for every adult in the U.S. to have a bottle in their medicine cabinet. Unfortunately, opioid abuse rose alongside the prescriptions. Research from the American Society of Interventional Pain Physicians reports over twice as many chronic pain patients treated with opioids develop illicit drug use when compared to patients not treated with opioids. Doctors must be careful when looking into options for treating pain, as trends indicate prescribing opioids may do more harm than good. Today, a patient dies from opioid overdose every 24 minutes.
book review ‘Five Keys to Powerful Business Relationships’
Manage yourself before others. Individuals who leave a greater impact on the workplace are those who have worked on themselves first.
Sallie Sherman, expert B2B strategist and founder of S4 Consulting, teams up with Joseph Sperry, an authority on relationship management programs, and Steve Vucelich, customer relationship strategist. Together, these “Relationship Masters” combine decades of experience and firsthand knowledge to create a guide for building strong business relationships in five steps. Every relationship, whether personal or professional, takes time to establish and grow. There’s no quick trick for building powerful business relationships, but these five keys offer insight into what makes strong relationships thrive:
Through personal anecdotes, interviews, and scientific research, Sherman, Sperry, and Vucelich present a detailed account for including each of these keys into your own life. A quick, informative read, “Five Keys to Powerful Business Relationships” is a must have for both managers and individuals looking to establish strong, dependable relationships in the business world.
Connect first, then focus on the task. Before any work can be done, people must connect.
resource of the month Each month, I want to make sure we are providing you with as much useful information as possible. Look for these additional helpful links in each month’s newsletter to help keep you informed, and as always, feel free to give us a call!
Learn by walking in another’s shoes. By taking the time to “walk in someone else’s shoes,” teams can learn to better understand and respect each other, creating powerful relationships. Understand that whether or not people trust you is often up to you. Sincerity, reliability, and competence are all necessary to extend trust to others, as well as helping your team better trust you.
Pain Management Resource of the Month — www.asipp.org
Share information to increase personal power. Open information invites other team members to offer their own ideas and promotes company success.
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PRST STD US POSTAGE PAID BOISE, ID PERMIT 411
50 Union Avenue, Suite 501 Irvington, NJ 07111 table of contents here’s what’s inside
Medication or Management PAGE 1
Getting Things Done® Are You Guilty of These Awful Online Marketing Tactics? PAGE 2 What Every Doctor Needs to Know Before Filling Out Their Next Prescription Book Review: ‘Five Keys to Powerful Business Relationships’ PAGE 3
Caffeine and Sleep PAGE 4
Caffeine and Sleep Is Caffeine Stealing Your Sleep?
Sleep is essential, and one-third of us aren’t getting enough. According to the National Sleep Foundation, adults need between seven and nine hours of sleep per night. While sleep may be influenced by sleep disorders and side effects from medications, that afternoon cup of coffee or tea may be to blame for your sleeping struggles. Why is sleep important? Every night, the body repairs and rejuvenates itself during sleep. Getting enough sleep positively affects your mental and physical health, while not getting enough can be detrimental. Lack of sleep is linked to obesity, mental illness, high blood pressure, and stress. Sleep is also fundamental for retaining information, because the brain forms new pathways during sleep. How caffeine hinders sleep Caffeine hinders sleep by blocking adenosine receptors in the brain. Adenosine is responsible for telling your brain that your body needs rest. Caffeine fits perfectly in your adenosine receptors, taking adenosine’s place and leaving it with nowhere to go. This means if caffeine is consumed too close to bedtime, your body’s circadian rhythm may be thrown off. Researchers from the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in the U.K. found that when study participants were given 200 mg of
caffeine 3 hours before bed, the caffeine delayed their circadian sleep pattern by 40 minutes. And participants who were given caffeine and then exposed to bright lights had their sleep cycle delayed by 105 minutes!
Keep caffeine from stealing your sleep Fortunately, there are ways you can drink the caffeinated beverages you love and still get the shut-eye you need. First, avoid caffeine during the afternoon. If you normally go to bed around 10 p.m., it’s recommended that you avoid caffeine after noon. Because caffeine has a half-life of 5.7 hours, if you drink 200 mg of caffeine at noon, you’ll still have 50 mg of caffeine in your system at bedtime. Second, know your body. Most people have a limit of 300–400 mg of caffeine per day, which is the equivalent of one large cup of coffee at Starbucks or three to four 8-ounce cups of coffee. Third, don’t drink coffee when you first wake up. While many run for their coffee immediately after waking up, caffeine works best when consumed 1–2 hours after waking.
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