Americans Spend More to Treat Spine Woes
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Although Americans are spending more money than ever to treat spine problems, their backs are not getting any better.
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The US National Institutes of Health invests $28bn annually in research. European spending is lower, although the European Union is closing the gap, helped by a shortsighted American policy of &quot;flatlining&quot; many scientific research budgets. (Perhaps this is because scientists have an annoying tendency to discuss things that conflict with the Bush administration&#39;s view of reality, such as global warming, evolution, the insufficiency of the New Orleans levee system and the medical potential of stem cells.)
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Patients with degenerative disc disease in their spines may have an alternative to getting their vertebrae fused, which alleviates pain but limits motion.
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The first artificial disc for the  spine, a metal-and-plastic implant made by Johnson & Johnson,  won U.S. approval on Tuesday for treating severe lower back  pain.
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More than a quarter of growth in health care spending over the past 15 years is due to obesity, and experts say prevention is key to control soaring costs.
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Pushing more of the cost of  prescription drugs onto consumers causes patients to cut back,  sometimes with adverse health consequences, according to a  review of two decades worth of studies published on Tuesday.
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BOOMING sales of laptops have led to a surge in the number of computer users with back and muscle problems, experts warned yesterday.   Girls as young as 12 are being diagnosed with nerve damage caused by slouching over screens, a group of leading chiropractors said.
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Americans are cramming their medicine chests ever fuller in the struggle to lower cholesterol, treat depression, reduce inflammation and ease other illnesses.
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For people with chronic pain, relief comes with a tradeoff.
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A survey of US households released Thursday finds almost half of Americans take at least one prescription medication and one in six take three or more.
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How to benefit from increased spending on preventative medicine.
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More than a third of working-age people miss work because of chronic pain, resulting in $60 billion in lost productivity each year.
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A handful of conditions such as mental illness, stroke, diabetes and lung disease accounted for much of the huge increase in health-care spending dating back to the late 1980s, US researchers said on Wednesday.
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The dramatic increase in health-care spending in the United States since 1960 is a major reason that Americans are living longer, making the world's most expensive health-care system a good value despite its high costs, according to an academic study being released today.
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Schizophrenia patients do as well, or perhaps even better, on older psychiatric drugs compared with newer and far costlier medications, according to a study published yesterday that overturns conventional wisdom about antipsychotic drugs, which cost the United States $10 billion a year.
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Couch potatoes beware -- slumping for  hours in front of the television or computer can cause severe  lower back pain which may take months or years to cure.
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Chronic back pain can shrink the gray matter in your brain by as much as 11 percent in one year, the same amount of brain density that&#39;s lost in 10 to 20 years of normal aging, says a Northwestern University study.