With broad bipartisan support, the Senate passed a compromise legislative bill aimed at curbing prescription drug abuse.
While this comes as relief to many, one must simply scratch their head and wonder why it has taken so long to curb prescription drug abuse. This horrible addiction problem didn’t emerge yesterday.
Could it have anything to do with lobbyists?
Not surprisingly, one political party blamed the other for a lack of action on ...
Continue Reading →In yet another example of how the Department of Veteran Affairs (“VA”) and DoD try to reinvent the wheel in search of a miracle drug to treat PTSD, Fox News reports that “TNX-102 SL, which contains the same chemical property as Flexeril” may soon be used in treating Veterans with PTSD:
Continue Reading →An already-approved muscle relaxant may offer relief for U.S. military veterans and first responders suffering from combat-related post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The Phase 2 trials of the drug, ...
A reader of the SFTT Blog suggested that we “take a look” at Dr. David Cifu, Senior TBI Specialist in the Department of Veterans Affairs’ (“VA”) Veterans Health Administration. Found below is a short video clip of Dr. Cifu testifying at a U.S. Congressional Hearing on concussions in March, 2016.
For Veterans living with the effects of PTSD and/or TBI, I would find his testimony quite disturbing.
The gatekeepers at the Department of Veteran Affairs (the “VA”) remain intransigent in providing urgently need care to Veterans suffering from PTSD and/or TBI. Standard Operating Procedure (“SOP”) at the VA is to argue that FDA-approved clinical studies are needed to sanction treatment methods – regardless if these treatment alternatives have been used with success in many other countries for decades and, in some cases, hundreds of years.
Much has been written about the terrible long-term consequences of Post Traumatic Stress or “PTSD,” but there appears to be no clear way of treating PTSD. Some argue that PTSD is best treated using “psychological” methods to treat the trauma while others argue that certain war-related events (i.e. IEDs) cause physiological changes in the brain.
This dilemma makes diagnosing and treating PTSD so difficult. Based on SFTT’s experiences, we have ...
Continue Reading →The New York Presbyterian Military Family Wellness Center at the Columbia Veterans Research Center is currently conducting a Trauma-Focused Equine-Assisted Therapy for Veterans with PTSD study. See details below:
Through the NYP Military Family Wellness Center we offer veterans and family members evidence-based treatments at no cost in the context of a research study. Essentially, patients are periodically assessed during and after treatment so that we can learn more about the needs ...
Continue Reading →In what seems like a broken record, the Department of Veteran Affairs (the “VA”) continues to dismiss alternative therapies for treating PTSD or post-traumatic stress disorder.
While not entirely dismissing the efficacy of “Complimentary and Alternative Medicine” or “CAM” for treating PTSD, the VA argues that CAM does not really fit-in all that well in the canons of Western medical practices:
Continue Reading →Broadly conceptualized, “complementary and alternative medicine” (CAM) refers to treatments not considered to be standard in the current practice ...
Veterans have known for quite some time that something was amiss at the Department of Veteran Affairs (the “VA’) with their “go-to” promotion of prescription pain-killers to treat PTSD.
There are countless well-documented stories of extreme behavior changes – including suicide – of “over-served” Veterans that were provided a lethal cocktail prescription drugs by VA doctors.
A number of Veterans interviewed by SFTT indicated that they simply “flushed the drugs down the toilet,” while many others reported that there was a thriving black market for pain ...
Continue Reading →The tragic death of Prince appears to have been an overdose of opioids designed to relieve pain. While we are still awaiting toxicology reports, it does appear the Prince has suffered from excruciating pain for quite some time and was taking ever-increasing amounts of pain-killers to deal with this problem.
At this stage, it is unclear that these drugs were prescribed or that he was self-medicating with drugs ...
Continue Reading →The search to help Veterans and active duty military personnel cope with Post Traumatic Stress (“PTS” or “PTSD”) continues to attract much attention from within the scientific community and alternative medicine pundits.
It seems that almost weekly some promising new cure to treat Veterans with PTSD appears on mainstream media, with the caveat that “it will take years” to prove its efficacy. Must our Veterans wait so long?
While many doubt the efficacy of holistic medicine and practices that date back centuries in the Far ...
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