Pain is a common side effect of orthodontic treatment and it is particularly common in the first 24 hours following appliance placement. The aims of this prospective controlled longitudinal study were to assess subjective pain experience and oral health-related quality of life (OHQoL) in patients over a 3-month period, following placement of their fixed appliances. [read the full story…]
Benzodiazepines are used to treat insomnia, anxiety and chronic back pain due to their sedative and muscle relaxing effects. They’ve got a sting in the tail though and can cause memory disruption, loss of coordination and dependence if used long term. It’s therefore recommended that other treatments, such as psychological interventions, are tried first and [read the full story…]
Pain and discomfort is often reported by patients undergoing orthodontic treatment and has been cited as a reason for failure to complete treatment. Removal of fixed appliances could be painful and it has been suggested that an intrusive bite force may stabilize teeth allowing greater resistance of torsional forces. The aim of this study was [read the full story…]
There’s little doubt about it – meditation is in vogue. In fairness, it probably always has been. However, clinical and research interest in the effects of meditation programmes on psychological wellbeing has grown considerably in recent years. The development of mindfulness-based interventions has no doubt driven much of this interest. For example, running a PubMed keyword [read the full story…]
A new review by Pieper et al 2013 aims to provide a comprehensive overview of the research on treatments for both pain and challenging behaviour in people with dementia. It hinges around the fact that pain is commonly undertreated because it is not easy to recognise unless there is a diagnosed physical cause, and also because [read the full story…]
Last week, Kirsten Lawson blogged about mindfulness-based stress reduction as a treatment for breast cancer. We have featured a number of blogs on mindfulness in the last couple of years, including a piece about the use of Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT). MBCT is recommended by NICE to prevent relapse in people who have already experienced three [read the full story…]
Worldwide dental caries remains one of the most prevalent chronic diseases of childhood. Sadly, in many countries a significant proportion of this decay remains untreated leading to pain, sepsis and occasionally more severe complications. Studies have shown associations between caries and poor growth, low weight gain, missed school and poorer performance. The aim of this [read the full story…]
A friend of mine is currently training to be a Yoga instructor. This got me thinking about Yoga and musculoskeletal conditions. The different Yoga poses focus on increasing the flexibility of the joints and improving postural stability through improvements in muscle strength. Yoga also aims to release the tension on muscles with the aim of [read the full story…]
Chronic pain is a major health concern, which increases in prevalence and impact with age. This is important as chronic pain can result in a significant decrease in function and quality of life along with an increase in use of health and social care. Self-management is a potentially inexpensive form of pain management and it [read the full story…]
December brings two new protocols to the Cochrane Library from the Cochrane Oral Health Group. The first of these:- Liu JLY, Walsh T, Kerr AR, Lingen M, Brocklehurst P, Ogden G, Warnakulasuriya S, Scully C. Diagnostic tests for oral cancer and potentially malignant disorders in patients presenting with clinically evident lesions (Protocol). Cochrane Database of [read the full story…]
