There are providers who recommend vaginal diazepam (Valium) for pelvic pain due to pelvic floor spasm. I have never understood why they do this as based on our understanding of how diazepam works it cannot be an effective therapy. I have written previously about vaginal diazepam (Valium) here, reviewing that diazepam works on GABA receptors which are …
Continue reading “Vaginal Valium: another study shows it’s ineffective for pelvic pain”
I’ve been asked so many times about Livia in the past month that I figured it’s time for me to just post on it. The makers of the device claim it is an “off switch for period pain” and that it is a “new device.” It’s neither. What Livia appears to be is a TENS …
Continue reading “Livia isn’t a new off switch for period pain, it’s an expensive TENS unit”
As a pain medicine physician one of the hardest parts of my job is to get people to buy into the idea that addressing stress or anxiety or sleep or nutrition doesn’t mean I think their pain is “all in their head” or that I am not taking their pain seriously. Or both. Chronic pain …
Continue reading “Stress and a bad diet can cause chronic pain, just ask my cat”
I published 97 posts in 2012 and during the year my blog was viewed approximately 970,000 times. I’m humbled that anyone took the time to read anything that I wrote. Some posts were read by a couple of hundred people and some posts by a couple of hundred thousand. I don’t think the writing on …
Restrictive diets, the most common being the low oxalate diet, are widely reported in the lay press and on-line for vulvodynia (a chronic pain condition of the vulva). In one study, 41% of women with chronic vulvar pain reported trying a low-oxalate diet. The only problem? The low oxalate diet doesn’t work. How this diet …
Continue reading “The low oxalate diet and vulvodynia: how a case report becomes snake oil”
Dr. Jen Gunter 