https://youtu.be/VmbbvlrnXsQ?t=14m

Pelosi is minority leader of the House.. so does her statement reflect all the Democrats in the House or the whole Democratic party ?  Even with Obamacare, we have abt 10% of the population  ( 30 million) without insurance and we still spend 3.8 TRILLION on healthcare. 

Does she really mean that everyone has the right to have access to healthcare ?  But wait a minute, the DEA has stated that anyone paying CASH for healthcare is a RED FLAG ?

Our previous Surgeon General stated that addiction(s) is a mental health disease and not a moral failing http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/vivek-murthy-report-on-drugs-and-alcohol_us_582dce19e4b099512f812e9c

But wait a minute,  the DEA/judicial system treats opiate addiction as a CRIME… are substance abusers/addicts also have the right to have access to medical care for their mental health issues ?

Should those in the chronic pain community contact their members of Congress to ask what their position is on a person’s right to have access to medical care ?

Many politicians at both the State and Federal level are trying to limit the number of days of opiate therapy for acute pain and many/most are allowing chronic pain pts to remain on their long term opiate therapy… BUT.. if there is a limit on treating acute pain to 3-5-7 days and maybe one additional prescription for an additional 3-5-7 days.. does this mean that there is no mechanism in place for newly diagnosed chronic pain pts to receive long term opiate therapy ?  Maybe legislatures intent is to just “legislate” chronic pain away ?

BUT… Dr. Steven Severyn, director of the Pain Services and Pain Medicine Fellowship at Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center. Believes that new standard involves helping a patient improve function, not necessarily eliminating pain.. https://www.pharmaciststeve.com/?p=21495

But wait a minute… pain is a sign that something is wrong and pain usually LIMITS FUNCTION…  what is going to happen if pts are forced to push thru the pain and keeping “functioning” and causes more damage and increases pain ?

If Congress comes down on the side that everyone is entitled to ACCESS TO MEDICAL CARE… where will this leave the DEA.. going back to their original charge — chasing drug cartels that are flooding our streets with illegal opiates ?

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Doctors prescribe fewer opioid pain killers, but experts say it’s not enough

http://www.dispatch.com/news/20170729/doctors-prescribe-fewer-opioid-pain-killers-but-experts-say-its-not-enough

The amount of opioid pain killers prescribed in Franklin County dropped by 41 percent from 2010 to 2015, but doctors still were prescribing the equivalent of a 14-day supply of the drugs for every person in the county, according to federal data.

Across Ohio, prescriptions for opioids decreased by at least 10 percent in all but 13 of 88 counties. In nine counties, the rate remained relatively stable. In four others — Hocking, Morrow, Ottawa and Van Wert — prescriptions for opioids increased by at least 10 percent, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine said the numbers are consistent with what he sees when he travels the state.

“We have started to turn this around, but it’s tough to change the culture, and the culture in this case I’m talking about is the culture of prescribing,” he said. “We’re moving in the right direction, but we still have a ways to go.”

Across the country, the amount of opioids prescribed dropped by 18 percent. Prescriptions hit a high of what would be the equivalent to 782 milligrams of morphine per person in 2010, falling to 640 by 2015. That’s still three times higher than it was in 1999, said Dr. Anne Schuchat, principal deputy director of the CDC.

While nearly half of all U.S. counties saw a significant decrease in prescriptions from 2010 to 2015, nearly 23 percent saw an increase of at least 10 percent, according to the numbers, based on raw prescription data obtained from QuintilesIMS, a pharmaceutical analytics company.

A crackdown on the unnecessary prescription of drugs has gone on for years as law enforcement officers and state legislatures seek to curb the deadliest drug overdose epidemic in U.S. history. Users of the drugs often become addicted to the prescription pills and then move on to opioid-based street drugs, DeWine said. Three-fourths of people addicted to heroin or the far more powerful fentanyl and carfentanil started with pain medications, he added.

Doctors have become increasingly aware of the opioid problem with the knowledge that 15 to 18 percent of people are susceptible to developing a chemical dependency, said Dr. Steven Severyn, director of the Pain Services and Pain Medicine Fellowship at Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center.

As such, they have come to think not only about clinical risks when prescribing the drugs but also about risks to the community and society at large.

“Prescription narcotic medication really is the dominant form of narcotic use, at least early in drug addiction,” Severyn said. “Physicians are responding to that understanding by being certain that the use of medications for the treatment of pain is appropriate in dosing and frequency and, especially, escalation.”

In Ohio, Jackson County topped the 2015 list, with doctors prescribing 1,582 morphine milligram equivalents per person, representing a 33-day supply of the drug for each resident. Others at the top were Jefferson, Washington, Pike and Ross counties.

Vinton County (pop 13,000) saw a 98 percent decrease from 2010 to 2015, dropping to 6 morphine milligram equivalents per person, the lowest in Ohio. Also at the bottom were Holmes, Noble, Paulding and Mercer counties.

In central Ohio, decreases were seen in Delaware (30 percent), Fairfield (28 percent), Licking (19 percent), Pickaway (24 percent) and Union (15 percent) counties. Madison County remained relatively stable, with an increase of just 2 percent. Still, the counties each prescribed the equivalent of at least a 10-day supply of the drugs for every person in those counties in 2015.

Severyn noted that pain medications are still being prescribed because they are the only option for some people who are suffering.

“The other side of the argument, and the difficulty with pain medication, is that often it is the only tool that we really have for the treatment of painful conditions,” he said. “They’re very necessary.”

But a new standard involves helping a patient improve function, not necessarily eliminating pain. Severyn said his program prescribes as few opioids as possible, using other pain management techniques, including surgeries, psychological support, physical therapy, injections, nerve ablation and device implantation.

Physicians have taken a lead and become accountable in addressing the opioid problem, but more needs to be done, especially when it comes to the amount of attention and resources focused on treating people who are addicted, said Reginald Fields, Ohio State Medical Association spokesman.

He said the association assists doctors by offering Smart Rx, an online training program that helps health-care providers stay up to date on rules and regulations regarding opioids. It also gives them best practices for treating pain and offers tips on how to educate patients about the opioid problem.

Also addressing the problem is the Ohio Board of Pharmacy, which has developed prescription guidelines targeted to emergency departments and to physicians who handle chronic or acute pain, said spokesman Cameron McNamee. The board also offers education on best practices, encouraging doctors to look at alternatives before prescribing drugs.

McNamee said the board also focuses on regulations. He pointed to 2014 Ohio legislation that requires doctors to use a prescription-drug monitoring program, which allows them to track whether a patient has received prescriptions from other health-care providers. A proposal going before the legislature’s Joint Committee on Agency Rule Review this week would limit the amount of opioids that can be prescribed for acute pain, he said.

“A vast majority of people that develop addiction and move on to heroin or fentanyl use start with prescription opioids,” McNamee said. “As we make progress in reducing the amount of legal opioids prescribed, we will start seeing an impact in the amount of people dying of heroin and fentanyl overdoses.”

1,582 morphine milligram equivalents per person, representing a 33-day supply of the drug for each resident.

This calculates to 48 mg/day morphine.. and that is what some BUREAUCRATS considers a typical appropriate number of mg of Morphine to treat chronic pain pts.  Giving a pt a Morphine ER 15 mg every 8 hours – MIGHT – help the pt deal with mild-moderate pain.

It would appear that those chronic pain pts suffering from mod-severe pain would have to deal with a new standard involves helping a patient improve function, not necessarily eliminating pain..

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Trump’s FDA Chief Takes Wide Aim at Opioid Addiction Crisis

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-07-24/trump-s-fda-chief-takes-wide-aim-at-opioid-addiction-crisis

The Food and Drug Administration, as part of a sweeping overhaul in how it regulates opioid painkillers, plans to look to some unusual allies to limit the flood of the addictive pills — health insurers and companies that manage prescription drug benefits.

Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Scott Gottlieb plans to meet in September with the benefit payers and insurance administrators, groups the FDA hasn’t typically worked with in its role as a drug regulator. The plan, Gottlieb said, is to stem the tide of addiction to the pills by limiting the number of people exposed to them in the first place.

“Most people who become addicted to opioids are medically addicted,” Gottlieb said in a wide-ranging interview with Bloomberg in New York. “The way to reduce the rate of new addiction is to reduce the rate of exposure, and the way to reduce the rate of exposure is to make sure people are receiving prescriptions when it’s only medically appropriate.”

Gottlieb, who was picked by President Donald Trump earlier this year to lead the agency, said he views it as part of his mandate to tackle the opioid crisis, as well as other issues such as drug costs. The sessions with insurers and pharmacy managers will be his first official meetings with health-care companies, he said. The agency doesn’t have regulatory authority over insurance companies, which are largely overseen by state regulators or other departments within the Health and Human Services Department.

Millions of Pills

More than 240 million opioid prescriptions were dispensed in the U.S. in 2014, according to the Department of Health and Human Services. Deaths from opioid pain pill overdoses in 2015 totaled almost 23,000 in the U.S., double the number a decade ago, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

Gottlieb said he wants to examine whether insurers and pharmacy benefit managers, or PBMs, can reduce the number of pills dispensed. That could involve changing drug labels or requiring doctor education for longer prescriptions.

“There shouldn’t be 30-day prescriptions for a tooth extraction, or 30-day prescriptions for a hernia repair,” Gottlieb said.

Gottlieb, 45, served in several senior positions at the FDA during the George W. Bush administration. He’s also worked as an adviser to investment firms and as a fellow at the conservative-leaning American Enterprise Institute, a Washington think tank.

“I’m looking at different models that could potentially be less burdensome but be more effective at achieving the goal of making sure that prescribing conforms more closely with clinical guidelines,” Gottlieb said. “They’re not in there right now. There’s no information in the drug label about what the appropriate dispensing should be.”

Opioid Mandate

Gottlieb said that he’s altered the FDA’s focus on certain issues since he was confirmed as commissioner in May, but the agency’s opioids policy has been the biggest change in focus.

“Coming out of the confirmation process, I had a mandate to try to steer the agency in a little bit of a different philosophical direction,” he said. “I talked to 65 senators who all wanted to see the agency act differently.”

In a first, the FDA in June asked Endo International Plc to pull its opioid Opana ER from the market. Endo has since agreed to stop sales of the painkiller that became a favorite of people abusing such drugs and led to a serious outbreak of HIV and hepatitis C linked to shared needles used to inject crushed versions of the drug.

The move marked a shift in FDA policy to consider how opioids are used not just by appropriate patients but also by people addicted to the pills.

“We’re constantly looking retrospectively to what’s on the market and making sure that it still makes sense relative to today’s marketplace and what’s available,” he said.

Gottlieb said the agency will keep looking at how drugs that are already on the market are used, in both medical settings and also illicit ones.

“It’s like I said on the drug pricing thing, there’s no silver bullet,” he said. “There’s not going to be one thing that we’re going to do. We’re going to be doing a long list of things.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Gottlieb

If you read Dr Gottlieb work experiences… it would appear that once he completed his internal medicine residency.. he did little/no further “practicing medicine”.  Since the FDA is going in the direction of overseeing/influencing the utilization/treatment of subjective diseases ( pain, anxiety, depression, ADD/ADHD, mental health) having someone “at the helm” of the agency… that has little hands-on experience and must depend on their “book smarts” which can be biased by the author of the academic books and/or the biases of professors/instructors… which could have been developed in the “vacuum” of little/no hands-on clinical experience.

Just look at the numbers in this particular article… 240 million opiate prescriptions and 100+ million chronic pain pts would suggest that each chronic pain pts.. could now be getting TWO PRESCRIPTIONS PER YEAR ???

240 million opiate prescriptions and a total of 4.5 billion total prescriptions/yr… suggests that abt 5% of all prescriptions are for OPIATES ?

Dr Gottlieb  in the above wikipedia link … The nominee testified before Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP).^[24] There, Gottlieb equated the spread of opioid addiction with the previous epidemics of Ebola and Zika virus.  So apparently Dr Gottlieb believes that addiction/substance abuse should be considered the same as a EPIDEMIC from a  CONTAGIOUS DISEASE(s) ?

Apparently Dr Gottlieb has not made himself familiar with the statement from our previous Surgeon General that addiction(s) is a mental health disease and not a moral failing http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/vivek-murthy-report-on-drugs-and-alcohol_us_582dce19e4b099512f812e9c    It would be nice for the head of the FDA to be “up to date” on current beliefs on the real cause of addiction

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Prosecutor: Man killed doctor after opioid prescription disagreement

http://www.wndu.com/content/news/Police-news-conference-on-fatal-shooting-of-local-doctor-437015853.html

Dr. Todd Graham was killed after an opioid disagreement with the husband of one of his patients, according to St. Joseph County Prosecutor Ken Cotter.

Dr. Todd Graham

On Thursday afternoon, the gunman was identified as 48-year-old Michael Jarvis.

Jarvis’s wife was Graham’s patient, according Cotter.

During an appointment Wednesday morning, Graham indicated to her that he was not going to prescribe any opioid medication.

Jarvis became upset and argued with the doctor. Authorities say his wife didn’t have a previous prescription for opioids.

They left, but Jarvis later came back and confronted Graham.

After telling two witnesses to leave, Jarvis shot and killed Graham.

“This was a very targeted attack,” said Commander Tim Corbett of Saint Joseph County Metro Homicide. “I am a firm believer — and I think Ken feels the same way — that if Jarvis would have got inside that building, although there wouldn’t have been any specific target, it’s like trapping an animal in a corner: they’re going to come out fighting. I truly believe this could have escalated into a mass shooting. I do believe that.”

Jarvis then drove to a friend’s home and indicated “that he was no longer going to be around,” according to Cotter. The friend contacted police out of concern for Jarvis’s safety. Before law enforcement arrived, Jarvis took his own life.

“Make no mistake, this was a person who made a choice to kill Dr. Graham. This is not a fallout from any opioid epidemic or any opioid problems. This is a person who made that choice,” Cotter explained. “That probably leads us into an examination of what is happening with the opioid problem in our community, and frankly in our whole nation.”

Cotter says Jarvis’s wife wasn’t aware of her husband’s actions.

“It was clear that she didn’t know what he was doing. She’s suffering as well,” he explained.

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Lawsuit Argues Federal Marijuana Laws Are Arbitrary and Target Black People

http://www.houstonpress.com/news/federal-marijuana-laws-violate-due-process-and-the-civil-rights-of-african-americans-new-lawsuit-argues-9639253

A groundbreaking new lawsuit aims to force the feds to change their rules on cannabis.

A group of marijuana activists and patients sued the Drug Enforcement Agency and the Department of Justice on Tuesday, alleging that the federal government violates due process, along with the civil rights of African Americans, by continuing to implement what the suit characterizes as arbitrary and ill-intentioned pot laws.

Although almost every state now allows some form of recreational or medical marijuana use, the DEA still classifies cannabis as a Schedule I drug. That’s the highest classification, ostensibly reserved for only the most dangerous substances. The lawsuit, filed in a federal court in New York, argues the government can’t “merely…manufacture a supposedly ‘legitimate government interest’” to criminalize marijuana use. And the government is violating due process by doing so, according to the suit.

More explosively, the lawsuit also argues that the Nixon administration invented strict marijuana prohibition as a pretense to harass black people and that the government remains insincere about its reasons for criminalizing the drug. African Americans are almost four times more likely than white people to be arrested for pot crimes despite using pot at roughly the same rate, according to numerous studies, including a 2013 analysis by the American Civil Liberties Union.

“The Nixon Administration recognized that African Americans could not be arrested on racial grounds, and war protesters could not be prosecuted for opposing America’s involvement in Vietnam,” the five lawyers, who hail from three separate law firms, wrote. “The Nixon Administration ushered the [Controlled Substances Act] through Congress and insisted that cannabis be included on Schedule I so that African Americans and war protesters could be raided, prosecuted and incarcerated without identifying the actual and unconstitutional basis for the government’s actions.”

With almost 20 percent of Americans now living in states with legal recreational marijuana, it can be easy to forget the feds retain such strict policies. But the criminalization of marijuana at the federal level still has huge, if subtle, ramifications.

Medical marijuana patients can’t travel out of state with their medicine, even if the other state also allows them to use the plant. They can’t get medicine shipped to them unless it’s weak enough to meet the federal definition of industrial hemp. Researchers have a harder time getting cannabis for studies. And although doctors are allowed to “recommend” marijuana, technically they cannot prescribe it. (This will be a particular problem in Texas, where a new medical marijuana law, set to roll out in September, explicitly requires doctors to “prescribe” cannabis medicine.)

The lawsuit highlights just how diverse the American cannabis community has become. Among the plaintiffs, there’s Marvin Washington, a former football player who wants to start a medical marijuana business; a military veteran with post traumatic stress disorder; and two parents who use marijuana to manage their severely ill children’s symptoms.

One of the parents is Sebastien Cotte, whose six-year-old son, Jagger, suffers from a rare neurological disease called Leigh syndrome. Born in Georgia, Jagger has been in hospice for almost his entire life. In 2014, the Cottes piled into a car and drove to Colorado so that Jagger could try medical marijuana. At the time, the young boy was so sick that the family couldn’t fly. They had to stop every three or four hours during the drive.

“Jagger was doing much better when we were living in Colorado,” Sebastien Cotte said. The family stopped going to the hospital as much. But, after 13 months away from home, the Cottes had to get back to their lives in Atlanta. Cotte and his wife had jobs and a mortgage. And Jagger, although much healthier overall, struggled with the thin air and high altitude.

Cotte thinks he should be able to give his son medicine without having to move his family across the country. Although he’s allowed to give Jagger medicine with up to 5 percent THC, under Georgia’s medical marijuana program, there isn’t anywhere in the state to buy it. He could get medicine shipped, but only if the medicine qualifies as “industrial hemp” under federal laws. That lowers the THC limit again, to 0.3 percent.

If Jagger never gets the chance to legally use the medicine he needs in Georgia, Cotte hopes he can at least get the laws changed for other kids. Jagger suffered heart and respiratory failure in March. “We didn’t think he was going to make it,” Cotte said. “My wife’s parents drove from Florida in the middle of the night just to be there. He was on every machine to keep him alive.”

In the end, the young boy pulled through. “He’s a fighter,” Cotte said.

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Title: The Moral Hazard of Lifesaving Innovations: Naloxone Access, Opioid Abuse, and Crime

Authors: Jennifer Doleac and Anita Mukherjee

http://jenniferdoleac.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Abstract.pdf

Abstract:
States across the country have responded to the opioid epidemic by increasing access to Naloxone,
a drug that can help save lives when administered during an overdose. However, Naloxone access
may unintendedly increase opioid abuse because the catastrophic risk of death might have
previously deterred risk-averse individuals from these substances. Using jurisdiction level panel
data on crime and a difference-in-differences framework exploiting Naloxone access laws, we
estimate that broadening Naloxone access increases opioid-related crimes by 50%. These effects
come mostly from heroin and a category that includes prescription opioids. These crimes are also
more likely to coincide with theft, assault, and robbery offenses, suggesting that drug users are
engaging in other types of crime to fund their addiction or as a byproduct of addiction. We also
show that Naloxone access may encourage substitution from crack and cocaine to opioids, and
investigate changes in offender demographics and crime location. We find no statistically
significant effect of expanded Naloxone access on placebo categories of crime including murder
and marijuana-related offenses.

I have repeatedly stated that Naloxone will seldom prevent OD deaths… just postpones them. I have already seen the number of estimated serious addicts/substance abuser being increased from 1.2 million to 2.1 million.

So that means that at the lower end of “food chain” … more people seeking various substances to abuse.. many of these people increasingly involved in petty crimes to support their habit… giving local law enforcement, jails, prosecuting & defense attorneys, the court systems.. many more “bodies” running thru the system… so that they can demonstrate the need for bigger budgets, more staff , larger jails and all the other ancillary expenses that goes along with this.

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New opioid vaccine could be a huge step to prevent addiction:

AND THEN THERE ARE THE UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES

IF THIS IS SUCCESSFUL…. You give an addict this vaccine and their body now attacks or binds any opiates that they take… preventing it from working…

Presuming that this vaccine is like a lot of other vaccines it WORKS FOR YEARS…

Now this “treated addict” needs surgery, is in a car accident, breaks a bone, or comes down with a disease where PAIN is a major component… here you have a PATIENT in need of pain management but they have been inoculated so that opiates do not work for them.   

Often good intentions … have bad outcomes

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Federal lawsuit filed against AG Jeff Sessions seeks to have Controlled Substances Act declared unconstitutional

http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/football/jets/ex-jets-lineman-files-federal-lawsuit-ag-jeff-sessions-article-1.3359320

If the Founding Fathers of this country were cool with cultivating and using pot, then the current attorney general, Jeff Sessions, and the Department of Justice need to get on board and recognize that a decades-old federal policy is unconstitutional as it pertains to cannabis, an explosive federal civil lawsuit claims.

Former Jets defensive lineman Marvin Washington and several other cannabis advocates filed the lawsuit in Manhattan federal court Monday. According to the suit, the Controlled Substances Act — which went into effect in 1971 and which is responsible for marijuana being classified as a Schedule I drug — “has wrongfully and unconstitutionally criminalized the cultivation, distribution, sale, and possession of cannabis, which, historically, has been harvested to produce, among other things, medicine, industrial hemp, and a substance known as tetrahydrocannabinol (“THC”).”

Washington has been a leading voice in the cannabis movement and he is the founder of Isodiol Performance products, which are THC-free, meaning they do not contain the component of cannabis that gets you high. Washington advocates cannabis use as a safe and less addictive means to treat the pain from debilitating injuries football players sustain during their careers, including trauma to the head and brain. The other plaintiffs in the suit include a military veteran, Jose Belen, who suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and two sets of parents of children who have serious medical conditions. The plaintiffs argue that cannabis use is an effective means of treatment in each of the individual cases, but that the CSA prevents the plaintiffs from accessing cannabis.

“Jose’s treatment providers at the Veterans Administration informed Jose that they are unable to prescribe medical cannabis because it is illegal under the CSA,” reads the suit, referring to Belen, the military veteran.

Currently 29 states and three U.S. territories have legalized marijuana for medical use.

The suit cites former presidents George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison — several of the nation’s Founding Fathers — as cannabis advocates, and the suit also lists more recent Leaders of the Free World, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, as “accomplished statesmen” who are supportive of the cannabis movement.

“Despite the relatively recent stigmatization of cannabis in the United States as a supposed ‘gateway drug’ used primarily by ‘hippies’ and minorities, there is a long and rich history of people from virtually every part of the world using cannabis for medical, industrial, spiritual, and recreational purposes,” the suit reads. “Indeed, those who have cultivated, encouraged the cultivation of, and/or used cannabis include, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, James Madison, James Monroe, Abraham Lincoln, John F. Kennedy, Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama — an assortment of the most intelligent and accomplished statesmen in American history.”

Lauren Rudick, one of the plaintiffs’ attorneys who works at Manhattan law firm, Hiller PC, and who is the co-founder of Hiller’s cannabis business practice, said that if the plaintiffs are successful in their pursuit to have the CSA declared unconstitutional — as it pertains to cannabis — the substance will be de-scheduled. If that happens and the federal government decides to re-schedule cannabis, Rudick said the government would have to review current medical evidence that demonstrates cannabis doesn’t meet the criteria to be classified as a Schedule I drug.

“We are seeking a ‘declaration’ to that effect, and also a permanent injunction restraining enforcement of the CSA as written, as it pertains to cannabis,” said Rudick. “The classification of cannabis as a Schedule I drug deprives individuals of basic constitutional rights, including Due Process and the fundamental right to travel. Some of these individuals, such as Alexis Bortell and Jagger Cotte (both plaintiffs in the action) are patients who seek cannabis as a means of life-saving medication. The government has a federal patent on cannabis, and has recognized the medical efficacy of cannabis in a variety of ways, yet Sessions is trying to reverse policy on cannabis use and contend that it has no medical use. It’s hypocritical.”

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I’m a Doctor With Chronic Illness. Here Are 12 Things I Wish People Knew.

www.themighty.com/2017/02/doctor-with-chronic-illness-things-to-know/

I’ve written this article to help educate those who want to learn about chronic illness. It is written from my perspective, that of a doctor who treated patients with chronic illness for many years, and who spent five years of my life homebound due to chronic illness.

I want to spread awareness so that friends, family, employers, coworkers, and health care professionals can better understand chronic illness. My hope is that an increase in awareness will help strengthen relationships, reduce misunderstandings, and improve support systems for those with chronic illness. 

About Chronic Illness

Chronic illness is a disease, condition, or injury that can last years or a lifetime and is typically not curable, though in some cases it may go into remission. It can vary in its severity, with some people able to work and live active or seemingly “normal” lives; while others are very sick and may even be homebound.

Many people with chronic illness have an invisible chronic illness. The severity of their symptoms is not clearly

1. Nobody wants to feel sick.

In all my years as a doctor treating patients with chronic illness, I never saw a patient who enjoyed feeling ill. I saw the opposite, patients who were once very active, desperately trying to find answers and treatment for their overwhelming symptoms.

2. Many doctors don’t understand chronic illness.

For years, doctors were under the misperception that some chronic illnesses were caused by depression or anxiety and the only treatment available for these patients was psychiatric care.

Despite medical evidence disproving this perception, some doctors are “set in their ways” and do not truly understand chronic illness or how to appropriately address it. Therefore, patients often have to spend precious time searching for a doctor who understands their illness and provides appropriate treatment options while their symptoms potentially worsen.

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