Opioids and the 3 Treatments for Chronic Pain
In this article, you'll learn and discover about Opioids and the 3 treatments for chronic pain. Opium. Heroin. Morphine. Methadone. Oxycodone. Hydrocodone. What all of these have in common is they’re derived from a plant—the poppy plant. Written references to the use of this plant, native to Southeast Asia, for pain and other ailments, date back to 3400 B.C. In more recent times, opium and even heroin were commonly used in pharmaceutical preparations for pain relief until the early 1900s. Concern about their addictive potential led the U.S. Congress to eventually ban these substances in pharmaceutical preparations. That didn’t stop the pharmaceutical companies from searching for ways to find patentable substances derived from the poppy plant to meet a real need: relief from suffering for those in pain....