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For two years after a hip surgery that didn't work out as well as he'd hoped, pain shot down Jim Heckler's leg like electrical shocks. Several doctors, eager to help Heckler feel better, prescribed various narcotic painkillers.
"I was taking whatever they gave me," says Heckler, a 47-year-old businessman.
His doctors were fine with Heckler taking narcotics long-term, but Heckler wasn't. He sought out Dr. Vijay Vad, a sports medicine specialist at the Hospital for Special Surgery in Manhattan, where Heckler lives, in hopes of finding a different approach.
Vad suggested Heckler get off the narcotics as soon as possible, lose weight, do back exercises, take up yoga, ride a bike, ice frequently and take fish oil, glucosamine and chondroitin supplements.
Heckler dropped from 240 to 208 pounds, did the exercises, took the supplements and while the pain has never gone away, he says it's now tolerable enough that he doesn't have to take painkillers.
Heckler's experience raises a question hotly debated among doctors: Should patients to take narcotic painkillers long term? The answer has never been more important, as a new Institute of Medicine report says 116 million Americans adults have chronic pain, a number larger than many previous estimates.
Read more: http://www.cnn.com/2011/HEALTH/07/14/ep.drugs.pain.cohen/index.html
"I was taking whatever they gave me," says Heckler, a 47-year-old businessman.
His doctors were fine with Heckler taking narcotics long-term, but Heckler wasn't. He sought out Dr. Vijay Vad, a sports medicine specialist at the Hospital for Special Surgery in Manhattan, where Heckler lives, in hopes of finding a different approach.
Vad suggested Heckler get off the narcotics as soon as possible, lose weight, do back exercises, take up yoga, ride a bike, ice frequently and take fish oil, glucosamine and chondroitin supplements.
Heckler dropped from 240 to 208 pounds, did the exercises, took the supplements and while the pain has never gone away, he says it's now tolerable enough that he doesn't have to take painkillers.
Heckler's experience raises a question hotly debated among doctors: Should patients to take narcotic painkillers long term? The answer has never been more important, as a new Institute of Medicine report says 116 million Americans adults have chronic pain, a number larger than many previous estimates.
Read more: http://www.cnn.com/2011/HEALTH/07/14/ep.drugs.pain.cohen/index.html
