Vitamin D and Chronic Pain

I was wanting to bring something into today's blog related to nutrition, since it's 'been all about pain' for the past week, because we realize our following is a diverse group of people interested in healthy eating and nutrition, the environment, health care reform, food allergies, complimentary medicine, etc.  I love the topic of chronic pain, but 'allright already'.  Let's talk about what to put in salads or something! 

But as luck would have it, my 7 a.m. opportunity to learn today was a great one... "Managing Opiods in Seriously Ill, Hospitalized Patients -- Pitfalls and Pearls, " by Daniel Johnson, MD, FAAHPM of the Life Quality Institute, Kaiser Permanent, and University of Colorado.  I learned a lot about opiods for pain, which brought some balance to what I'd learned last week at the Chronic Pain Documentary Workshop.  I'd wanted to learn more because of the feedback on Lumigrate's facebook page from the chronic pain population who are advocating for the use of narcotics.  In talking with Dr. Johnson after his presentation and describing Lumigrate and the integrative medical approach we are utilizing, he volunteered that he would like to include more integrative concepts into his presentations, thanked me for my perspective, and asked to be included in information we gather about fibromyalgia.  I'll hope to bring you a summary of his presentation at a later date with his input. My encounter made me reflect upon the substantial information credible, established organizations possess and how they also gradually change in their perspectives.

I thought I'd try to find something about chronic pain and alternatives which would be interesting to our bigger audience and drew from an established medical organization in order to appeal to our many followers who are 'into' alternative approaches or nutrition.  And I recalled some interesting information I'd come across recently about the association of Vitamin D and pain and found the following newsblog on the Mayo Clinic website about patients taking pain medication and their vitamin D levels.  As I've stated before here, Scott Rollins, MD (presenter on Lumigrate.com's video 'Supplements and Disease Prevention' and 'Hypothyroidism:  Misunderstood, Misdiagnosed ... Missed!') has stated in presentations that he's testing a large number of his patients (when he suspects it may be a factor) and is finding an 'epidemic' of vitamin D deficiency.  He's presenting tomorrow night (July 29) on 'Fibromyalgia', and I'm eager to see what he has to say, including nutrition -- such as vitamin D.   I'd much rather take a supplement than a narcotic! And for those of you lucky enough to not have chronic pain -- remember: an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure -- so please check in with yourself and get information about YOUR nutrition and supplements and see if you're in a good place with it. 

newsblog.mayoclinic.org/2009/03/20/mayo-clinic-researchers-link-vitamin-d-and-chronic-pain-relief/