Consumers engaging with health and wellness opportunities are generally a good thing. The medical community appreciates it when people take responsibility for their own health as much as possible. But with the new focus on health and wellness has come an increase in new medical specialties that may or may not benefit consumers. That is why caution is advised.
Certain medical specialties have been around for a long, long time. Pediatrics, obstetrics, and oncology are classic examples. We know enough about them to place a reasonable amount of trust in them and their practitioners.
Other medical specialties are more recent. The two I will address in this post are pain medicine and longevity medicine. Pain medicine has not been around as long as pediatrics were cardiology, but it has certainly been practiced for at least a few decades. Longevity medicine, at least here in the U.S., is a recent phenomenon that began to emerge just before the COVID pandemic.
Pain Medicine as a Specialty
Pain is one of the most common symptoms of illness and injury. No surprises there. But for some people, pain is a persistent issue. It is as routine is eating, sleeping, or taking a shower. For such patients, occasional visits to the GP just are not enough.
Pain management has been an area of medical exploration for hundreds of years. But in the early 1980s, it became clear that Western medicine was not doing enough to help patients with chronic pain. Throughout the eighties and early 1990s, the medical specialty of pain medicine came into its own.
Over the last 30 years or so, pain management clinics have sprung up all over the country. And doctors with a passion for helping chronic pain patients now practice in every major city. Most midsize and small cities have at least one pain medicine practice as well.
Lone Star Pain Medicine is one such practice. Located in Weatherford, Texas, the clinic works with patients suffering from back pain, musculoskeletal pain, cancer pain, and more. Their treatments extend beyond prescription medications and surgeries to include a variety of nerve blocks and corrective procedures.
Longevity Medicine as a Specialty
Like pain medicine, the search for longevity has been going on for centuries. Eastern medicine has placed an emphasis on longevity since its earliest days. But here in the West, longevity medicine did not take off as a specialty until six or seven years ago.
There were doctors in the 18th and 19th centuries who dabbled in longevity science. But longevity medicine never caught on in the West because of our heavy reliance on pharmacology. But when the COVID pandemic hit, things changed. People began exercising more control over their own health and wellbeing. Some in the medical community responded with longevity medicine.
While a legitimate form of medicine, longevity medicine sits dangerously close to health and wellness hype and hyperbole. So much so that there are those within the medical community urging caution. Some longevity services and products are legitimate, but others are not. Consumers need to be educated so as to make sound decisions.
Don’t Blindly Believe Everything
Whether you are talking pain medicine, longevity medicine, or any other type of health and wellness trend, the whole point of being cautious is to protect yourself. Do not blindly believe everything you read online. Don’t necessarily assume that all those testimonials of miraculous products and services are legit.
Medicine is a business in this country. As such, those in the industry are trying to turn a profit. That should be enough to encourage caution with any new medical specialty that pops up.