Pain medicine : the official journal of the American Academy of Pain Medicine
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Exercise performance and chronic pain in chronic fatigue syndrome: the role of pain catastrophizing.
This study aimed to examine the associations between bodily pain, pain catastrophizing, depression, activity limitations/participation restrictions, employment status, and exercise performance in female patients with chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) who experience widespread pain. ⋯ These data provide evidence favoring a significant association between pain catastrophizing, bodily pain, exercise performance, and self-reported disability in female patients with CFS who experience widespread pain. Further prospective longitudinal studying of these variables is required.
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One potential consequence of chronic opioid analgesic administration is a paradoxical increase of pain sensitivity over time. Little scientific attention has been given to how cessation of opioid medication affects the hyperalgesic state. In this study, we examined the effects of opioid tapering on pain sensitivity in chronic pain patients. ⋯ These findings suggest that the withdrawal of opioids in a chronic pain sample leads to an acute increase in pain sensitivity.
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To identify, in community dwelling elders, the determinants of sustained pain improvement or worsening. ⋯ With a 1-month time lag between predictor variable assessment and follow-up pain measures, the study supports temporal associations between depressive symptoms and SRH and subsequent pain change. Clinicians providing care to community dwelling elders are advised to evaluate and attend to both the depressive symptoms and SRH of their patients.
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Specialists in pain medicine commonly experience psychological assaults on their self-esteem, especially from patients who seem unreasonably demanding, overly critical, or threatening. This article will discuss how these challenges can trigger a professional's self-protective and defensive coping mechanisms that, in turn, can provoke decidedly unempathic responses. ⋯ The first set will focus on certain pragmatics of empathy skill development. The second will discuss the Eastern notion of "bare attention" as an ideal form of empathic engagement that can also counteract an unhealthy degree of defensiveness when self-esteem is threatened.