Yoga for Youth in Pain

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Abstract

Children, adolescents, and young adults do not typically feature in clinics, studies, and mainstream notions of chronic pain. Yet many young people experience debilitating pain for extended periods of time. Chronic pain in these formative years may be especially important to treat in order for young patients to maintain life tasks and to prevent protracted disability. The Pediatric Pain Program at the University of California, Los Angeles, is a multidisciplinary treatment program designed for young people with chronic pain and their families. We offer both conventional and complementary medicine to treat the whole individual. This article describes the work undertaken in the clinic and our newly developed Yoga for Youth Research Program. The clinical and research programs fill a critical need to provide service to youth with chronic pain and to scientifically study one of the more popular complementary treatments we offer, Iyengar yoga.

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Most cited references 23

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AGA technical review on irritable bowel syndrome.

Douglas Drossman, Michael Camilleri, Emeran Mayer … (2002)

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Pain in children and adolescents: a common experience.

Rene van der Heijden, Emile van Lin, John M A Bohnen … (2000)

Little is known about the epidemiology of pain in children. We studied the prevalence of pain in Dutch children aged from 0 to 18 years in the open population, and the relationship with age, gender and pain parameters. A random sample of 1300 children aged 0-3 years was taken from the register of population in Rotterdam, The Netherlands. In the Rotterdam area, 27 primary schools and 14 secondary schools were selected to obtain a representative sample of 5336 children aged 4-18 years. Depending on the age of the child, a questionnaire was either mailed to the parents (0-3 years) or distributed at school (4-18 years). Of 6636 children surveyed, 5424 (82%) responded; response rates ranged from 64 to 92%, depending on the subject age and who completed the questionnaire. Of the respondents, 54% had experienced pain within the previous 3 months. Overall, a quarter of the respondents reported chronic pain (recurrent or continuous pain for more than 3 months). The prevalence of chronic pain increased with age, and was significantly higher for girls (P<0.001). In girls, a marked increase occurred in reporting chronic pain between 12 and 14 years of age. The most common types of pain in children were limb pain, headache and abdominal pain. Half of the respondents who had experienced pain reported to have multiple pain, and one-third of the chronic pain sufferers experienced frequent and intense pain. These multiple pains and severe pains were more often reported by girls (P<0.001). The intensity of pain was higher in the case of chronic pain (P<0. 001) and multiple pains (P<0.001), and for chronic pain the intensity was higher for girls (P<0.001). These findings indicate that chronic pain is a common complaint in childhood and adolescence. In particular, the high prevalence of severe chronic pain and multiple pain in girls aged 12 years and over calls for follow-up investigations documenting the various bio-psycho-social factors related to this pain.

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Neurobiology of Acupuncture: Toward CAM

Sheng-Xing Ma (2004)

It has long been accepted that acupuncture, puncturing and scraping needles at certain points on the body, can have analgesic and anesthetic effects, as well as therapeutic effects in the treatment of various diseases. This therapy, including acupuncture anesthesia, has drawn the attention of many investigators and become a research subject of international interest around the world. Numerous studies have demonstrated that the nervous system, neurotransmitters, endogenous substances and Jingluo (meridians) may respond to needling stimulation and electrical acupuncture. An abundance of information has now accumulated concerning the neurobiological mechanisms of acupuncture, in relation to both neural pathways and neurotransmitters/hormonal factors that mediate autonomic regulation, pain relief and other therapeutics. Early studies demonstrated that the analgesic effects of electroacupuncture (EA) are mediated by opioid peptides in the periaqueductal gray. Recent evidence shows that nitric oxide plays an important role in mediating the cardiovascular responses to EA stimulation through the gracile nucleus-thalamic pathway. Other substances, including serotonin, catecholamines, inorganic chemicals and amino acids such as glutamate and α-aminobutyric acid (GABA), are proposed to mediate certain cardiovascular and analgesic effects of acupuncture, but at present their role is poorly understood. The increased interest in acupuncture health care has led to an ever-growing number of investigators pursuing research in the processes of the sense of needling touch, transduction of needling stimulation signals, stimulation parameters and placebos. In this Review, the evidence and understanding of the neurobiological processes of acupuncture research have been summarized with an emphasis on recent developments of nitric oxide mediating acupuncture signals through the dorsal medulla-thalamic pathways.