When pain really is in your head

People have been in quest of to relieve the misery of pain for an extraordinarily long time. Opium use in Egypt was once recorded by 1300 B.C., as was once using coca plant leaves in pre-Inca cultures. Zaps from electric fish were used to treat headaches and arthritis in antiquity. The first reference to acupuncture in a Chinese medical text was once in 300 B.C.

Many centuries later, scientists are still laboring to treat chronic pain, with limited success. That stalemate leaves patients and doctors feeling helpless.

As we report at some point of this issue, researchers are in truth getting an improved deal with on the complexities of chronic pain, including the brain’s role in amplifying or maintaining pain, and people’s perceptions. As freelance science journalist Cassandra Willyard reports, scientists are pursuing possibilities ranging from new medications to a tiny injectable electrode to styles of cognitive behavioral therapy designed to aid patients draw close that chronic pain is sometimes a misfiring signal from the brain that will maybe be managed. As against one-size-fits-all, these treatments will likely be tailored to the patient, and can likely encompass multiple treatments to higher address the complexities of chronic pain.

Concurrently our options for medicines evolve, the changing climate may have an effect on their safety. Let's say, some medications may perhaps make it more difficult for folk to deal with utmost heat. Research suggests that people taking antipsychotics or cardiovascular drugs are more susceptible to be hospitalized for heat-related illness, personnel writer Erin Garcia de Jesús reports. I was intrigued to learn that blood thinners and beta blockers, two reasonably common heart medications, can shrink the quantity of blood inside of the skin that otherwise helps people cool off. That’s no reason to forestall taking the meds, the scientists say. Nonetheless it indubitably’s good to keep the hazards in mind, specially after every other summer when temperatures hit record highs.

Get entry to to treatments for infectious disease is per chance a tremendous more urgent challenge. The virus formerly often often called monkeypox is over again causing a global health emergency, affecting people in no longer lower than 12 African countries. A fresh variant of mpox would maybe be fueling the spread. There are vaccines and treatments, senior writer Tina Hesman Saey reports, but these drugs should not readily to be had in many countries.

And at last, a story of getting crocodiles to take their medicine: Freshwater crocs in Australia are being trained to keep away from eating poisonous cane toads. The toads are an invasive species, introduced by people inside of the Thirties to strive against sugarcane pests. Evidently the toads are tempting snacks. Because the amphibians have made their way across the continent, freshwater crocodile populations have plummeted.

Enter humans. Conservation scientists collaborated with an Australian Indigenous group who see freshwater crocs as important players of their dreamtime stories. The team collected dead cane toads, removed the toxin and replaced it with lithium chloride, which prompts nausea. Crocodiles that dined on nauseating toads were tons less susceptible to eat the live, deadly versions.

In Aboriginal art and stories, the crocodiles symbolize strength, stealth and survival instincts. And now humans are helping these revered beings learn a new survival skill.