Story at a Glance:

•A lot of money is made in "treating" pain. For this reason, a variety of ineffective or dangerous therapies (e.g., gabapentin) are kept on the market to indefinitely sustain it, while many highly effective therapies that would destroy that market are kept off. Likewise, a remarkable number of parallels exist between the pain industry and the unconscionable profiteering that was seen throughout COVID-19.

•The worst examples are NSAIDs and the opioids. There are numerous instances where their manufacturers knew the drugs had serious safety issues, but covered them up and through the power of bribes (e.g., to the medical journals or the FDA) were able to have these dangerous drugs pushed on America.

•Neck and back pain is a particularly lucrative condition due to the costly spinal surgeries and steroid injections that are routinely used to treat it. Unfortunately, these dangerous treatments often worsen the structural causes of spinal pain, which in turn, like many things in medicine is addressed by more of "treatments" being sold to the patient.

•In this series, we will look at the actual causes of spinal pain so we can understand how to safely, effectively and affordably to treat it.