The New Wonder Drug For Fibromyalgia
Treating fibromyalgia is a topic of growing concern in the healthcare community because of the increasing number of patients with the infliction. Such ones suffer from chronic pain, fatigue, depression, IBS and headaches. Treating these symptoms is quite challenging when they are deemed idiopathic, meaning a specific cause for the pain cannot be found; however, the success of ketamine infusions to address these problems has given many a newfound hope.
A fascinating phenomenon occurred when ketamine infusion was used as an anesthetic for temporary relief during surgery. In some patients, it triggered a long-lasting cooldown period that eliminated the need for any further pain management.
Researchers are still trying to understand exactly how ketamine provides this long-term pain relief and are currently of the opinion that a large dose of ketamine acts like a reset to the body, like rebooting a computer.
Ketamine’s main effect is to block certain receptors (NMDA) that transmit pain signals, but it also activates opiate receptors and boosts levels of pain-lowering chemicals like dopamine, norepinephrine, and serotonin. The combination of these effects results in the pain “reboot.”
It is debated whether the pain in fibromyalgia is produced by the brain or by the nerves in our body. Part of the wonder revolving ketamine is that it is able to treat pain from both sources by blocking pain transmissions through the spinal cord. When pain-sensing neurons get super active, as in fibromyalgia patients, the neurons transmit an excess of pain stimuli through the NMDA receptors. Ketamine blocks these pain transmissions, which makes it a great anesthetic and also a terrific analgesic for chronic pain.
For this reason, ketamine given intravenously is a way more effective pain reliever than morphine for fibromyalgia. In a study done, more than half of the patients who were treated with ketamine IV reported at least a 50% reduction in their pain levels.
Further long-term testing was performed by tracking fibromyalgia pain levels after administering one dose of ketamine. Researches found that after two weeks, there was still some residual pain benefits, however, the effects had disappeared by the eighth week.
Ketamine IV Infusion treatments are still in an experimental state but research is showing definite signs of it being the only prevalent and result-oriented therapy for fibromyalgia and this means that although it may not be covered by insurance today, more and more pain clinics are starting to offer this treatment.
Point Ketamine which has multiple locations in California, Washington, and Oregon has had great success with their fibromyalgia patients.
