Millions of people wake up each day to pain and other symptoms from diseases and conditions that have not yet been diagnosed. Marianne Genetti is trying to do something about that. She founded "In Need Of Diagnosis," a non-profit organization committed to helping undiagnosed patients find appropriate doctors and resources.

Genetti plans to work with other nonprofit groups to create a database of symptoms. It's hard to believe that in this age of supercomputers, someone hasn't already done something like this. But in fact, there's nothing like it anywhere.

With all the billions of dollars spent on medical care and research each year, very little of it goes into diagnosing. And that's despite the fact the about forty percent of all illnesses are misdiagnosed. According to an article in the Journal of the American Medical Association, fatal illnesses are misdiagnosed in 20 out of every 100 cases.

In May of 2008, the National Institutes of Health launched an Undiagnosed Diseases Program to study some of the most difficult undiagnosed cases. As it only accepts 50 to 100 patients per year, it does little to address the crying need for proper diagnosis for millions of people in the United States alone. Marianne Genetti hopes her organization will help fill the gap by collecting information that may advance the medical communities knowledge.

Genetti was motivated to start In Need Of Diagnosis after her own struggle with a serious and undiagnosed lung problem. She recognized the need for a national database of symptoms, as well as the need to encourage undiagnosed patients to be more aggressive in asking their doctors for more tests, information and input. In Need Of Diagnosis is a young organization. It is in need of volunteers and donations. If you are in need of help and support in finding a proper diagnosis for chronic pain or any other health-related issue, I encourage you to visit In Need Of Diagnosis at their web site, http://www.inod.org

### Bonnie Boots publishes Pain Health News to provide information and motivation to people living with chronic pain.  You can stay in touch with her by typing your email address into the subscribe box in the upper right corner of this page.

A new book by Professor/Dr. Rothbart says that a recently discovered foot structure which can be effectively treated without drugs or surgery has been proven to be the source of a great deal of chronic muscle and joint pain.

On first reading the book, “Forever Free From Chronic Pain: the pain sufferers guide to getting your life back,” I felt this explanation was fantastical, almost unbelievable. Could a slightly twisted foot really be the reason so many millions of people live in unrelenting pain?

But on a second reading, I began to develop a better understanding of the source of much muscle and joint pain as well as the way to resolve it.

Professor/Dr. Rothbart is a podiatrist and surgeon who spent the better part of his career in clinical practice and research. But in 1991, an auto accident left him with neck and shoulder pain that did not respond to traditional medical therapy.

He sought out alternative therapies and tried countless practitioners, but when continuing pain threatened his career, Professor/Dr. Rothbart finally decided he would have to help himself.

That’s when Rothbart began his research into chronic musculoskeletal pain, or pain of the muscles and joints. His work lead him to the discovery of a very common source of musculoskeletal pain that begins in the foot, but is frequently the source of pain in the knees, hips, back and all the way up to the jaw.

What Prof/Dr Rothbart discovered was an embryological foot structure that forms in about the seventh week of development. That is to say, the foot of the growing fetus does not develop normally.  This embryological foot structure results in lifelong poor posture and that forced poor posture, the doctor’s research proved, is frequently the source of chronic musculoskeletal pain.

Furthermore, the doctor discovered the condition is inherited. Typically, if you have chronic pain and this foot structure is the source, it’s likely one of your parents will have a history of chronic pain. You may also pass it on to your children.

The embryological foot structure he discovered now bears the doctor’s name: Rothbarts Foot.

The therapy Professor/Dr. Rothbart developed involves neither drugs nor surgery. It is, he says, geared toward normalizing the foot, which then automates the correction of poor posture and allows the body to heal without drugs or surgery.

The therapy is done in a unique way. It begins with specialized shoe inserts. As the foot structure is corrected, the foot sends new signals to the brain, literally reprogramming the central nervous system to correct the posture. As the posture automatically corrects, pain ceases. “This is not about managing pain,” says Professor/Dr. Rothbart. “It's about eliminating chronic muscle and joint paint. My therapy reprograms the brain to adopt perfect posture, thus removing the source of pain.”

If, after the initial consultation, the doctor determines you are a candidate for this therapy, he will help you plan a course of action based on your individual case. Regarding the time the treatment takes, Professor/Dr. Rothbart says it varies, but he compares it to the time it takes to correct the teeth with braces.

“It takes time, “ he says. “Typically, the therapy takes from 6 to 18 months. It involves consulting with me or being seen by me 5 or 6 times. Most of my patients find their pain reduced 30, 40, 50% in a week or two.”

“I don’t work miracles,” Professor/Dr. Rothbart says. "But what I can do, when people have this embryological foot structure, is effectively treat it and these people dramatically improve, even if they have concurrent problems.”

Professor/Dr. Rothbart explains that many who have been diagnosed with diseases ranging from fibromyalgia to arthritis and even muscular sclerosis also have Rothbarts Foot Syndrome. “When I normalize the signals being sent to the brain by this embryological foot structure,, the pain gets much better,” the doctor says. “ I haven't resolved the arthritis or lupus or whatever, but the patient feels much better because I have resolved one major source of their pain.

The doctor says that for the most part, traditional medicine focuses on pain management, not resolution of pain.

“One of the reasons I left surgery, ´ Professor/Dr. Rothbart says, “ is because I was so unhappy with the results. I found that many of the patients I gave joint replacements to returned years later with the same pain. “But pain is not the problem,” he says. “Pain is a symptom of the problem. I was treating the symptom. What I wanted was resolution of the cause.”

And the cause, discovered over 40 years of research, is frequently poor posture caused by a twisted foot. If this explanation sounds too simplistic to you, if you don’t believe poor posture could be causing your back or jaw pain, consider this: prior to 1945, correct posture was considered critical to good health. A good deal of medical care involved correcting the posture so that the body could heal itself naturally.

But in 1945, penicillin was discovered, and the entire focus of medical care tuned toward pharmacological treatment. Doctors began to believe, and the public was told, that science could develop “magic bullets’ to cure most anything. There no longer seemed any need for people to be proactive in building good health. And all that information about good posture as the source of good health was lost.

Today, the millions of people suffering from chronic pain stand in testimony to the truth: there is no magic bullet from chronic pain. And Professor/Dr. Rothbart’s research has brought him back full circle to where traditional medicine once stood—pointing toward good posture as the wellspring of good health.

Reading Dr. Rothbart’s new book, “Forever Free From Chronic Pain: the pain sufferers guide to getting your life back,” gave me new insight into why so many people are in chronic pain, and why the traditional medical community is so ill-prepared to treat it. It also gave me hope that for many people, help is finally at hand…or should I say foot?

If you want to explore Dr. Rothbart’s work and see if you might be a candidate for his therapy, you’ll find a vast amount of resources online. Begin with his book web site at Forever Free From Chronic Pain

There you’ll find a vast treasury of information ranging from patient stories to book reviews to interviews with the doctor. Here you can download a free chapter from his book and register for his free newsletter.

At his personal web site, http://rothbartsite.com/ you’ll find more resources, including a blog featuring some of the latest medical research Dr. Rothbart is involved in.

After exploring these resources, if you feel you might be a candidate for the therapy, you can explore the possibility of a long-distance consultation with Dr. Rothbart. In much that same way as many cardiologists now do long-distance consultation, Dr. Rothbart will speak to you by phone, determine if you are a candidate for this therapy and whether or not any tests need to be done. The cost of a long-distance consultation with the doctor, who currently resides in Italy, is 100 Euros, about $125 U.S. Dollars.

If, after the initial consultation, the doctor determines you are a candidate for this therapy, he will help you plan a course of action based on your individual case. Regarding the time the treatment takes, Professor/Dr. Rothbart says it varied for everyone, but he compares it to the time it takes to correct the teeth with braces.

“It takes time, “ he says. “But typically, the therapy takes between 6 and 12 months. It involves consulting with me or being seen by me 5 or 6 times. Most of my patients find their pain reduced 30, 40, 50% in a week or two.”

If you have been going from doctor to doctor, and yet find no relief from your chronic pain, I urge you to look into Professor/Dr. Rothbart's work for yourself.

### Bonnie Boots publishes Pain Health News to provide information and motivation to people living with chronic pain.  You can stay in touch with her by typing your email address into the subscribe box in the upper right corner of this page.

In March of 2009, Doctor Scott S. Reuben, a prominent anesthesiologist and former chief of acute pain at Baystate Medical Center in Massachusetts, was accused of faking studies that were published in several anesthesiology journals betweenn1996 and 2008.

Dr. Reuben had been a paid spokesperson for Pfizer and the company paid for some of his research. Pfizer's Celebrex and Lyrica, as well as Bextra and Vioxx, which have since been withdrawn from sale-received positive reports from Dr. Reuben. He also claimed positive findings for using the antidepressant Effexor XR, from Wyeth, as a painkiller.

Wyeth said it wasn't aware of any financial relationship between its company and the doctor. In a press release, Pfizer claimed it had no prior knowledge of Dr. Reuben's alleged actions and were disappointed to learn of the accusations.

Dr. Reuben, now 50, has been accused of falsifying data for more than a decade. In one case, he forged the signature of another doctor on some reports. The journal Anesthesia & Analgesia is reporting articles containing the questionable data go back to 1996.

Reuben had been a high profile and much-respected researcher. He championed the use of anti-inflammatory drugs known as COX2 inhibitors and claimed his studies showed reduced post-surgical pain and dependence on steroids and addictive drugs.

Dr. Reuben's studies affected the type of pain relief offered to millions of people around the world. Because his data was so widely relied upon by other researchers, the integrity of an untold number of related studies is now called into question. Clinical trials of drugs that relied on data from Reuben's work may have to be repeated as a result of this scandal.

In addition, many doctors relied on his studies when determining what prescriptions to write for their patients. Two of the COX2 inhibitors he reportedly falsified favorable data for, Pfizer's Bextra and Vioxx, became some of the most widely prescribed pain killers. They were removed from the market in 2006 after evidence showed they increased the risk of fatal strokes and heart attacks. Vioxx was further discredited when it became known that some studies signed by professors and medical researches claiming they had written the findings were actually written by Merck employees.

Fraud in the handling of drug research affects everyone participating in the use of prescriptions for health care, both medical professionals and patients. It is undoubtedly troubling for doctors who must rely on published studies to stay informed about new developments in pain care. It's troubling and also dangerous for patients who rely on their doctors.

I was personally involved as a patient advocate for an elderly woman whose doctor suggested, after reading a study, that she try Vioxx for her arthritis pain. During a nightmarish two-month trial of the drug, she suffered from many side effects. Her condition became so severe it was necessary to place her in a nursing home for the last month. When her doctor finally ordered her to stop taking Vioxx, all negative symptoms withdrew and she was able to return to caring for herself in her own home. Her doctor, a deeply caring practitioner, told me he had a hard time assessing that Vioxx had been the problem "because all the reports on it have been so favorable."

As a pain patient, you must always be aware that studies can be faked and doctors, no matter how well intentioned, can be misguided. They can also make mistakes. Always keep in mind that YOU are the only expert on your body and it's condition. If your body is not responding well to a drug, that's not a fault in you. That's the wrong drug–no matter what any study says.

### Bonnie Boots publishes Pain Health News to provide information, motivation and understadning to people livingw ith chronic pain. To keep in touch with her, use the subscribe form in the upper right corner.

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Over the last 2 days, with much of North America caught in the icy grip of a major winter storm, even Florida has felt the brunt of those cold northern winds. Our temperatures have dropped into the 40’s. True, that’s not much by Northern standards, but for those of us who live in the Sunshine State, it feels like a new Ice Age has descended. And my bones don’t like it one bit.

My whole body aches. My fingers have lost their dexterity and all I want to do is curl up in a ball and sleep until it’s over. But that’s something I rarely let myself do. For years, that was my main pain strategy—take a pill and sleep as much as possible, hoping that when I woke it would all be better. But it didn’t get better. Not until I stopped running from pain and confronted it head on.

In order to move past chronic pain, I had to adopt a whole new attitude, one that wouldn’t hide under the covers at every twitch of a nerve. So yesterday, for instance, while cold was making my bones creak, I sat right here at the keyboard working. I wasn’t thinking very clearly and I certainly wasn’t typing very fast, but I was working.

Between bouts of work, I took breaks for hot showers and sit-downs in my massage chair. I listened to my hypnosis tapes. I did my EFT tapping. I did gentle exercise. And I kept my inner talk positive. “Pain can’t stop me,” I told myself. “ Today’s not the best day I’ve had, but it’s far from the worst!”

All that’s in far contrast to what I did and thought when pain was my daily companion. I used to drug myself, curl up in a ball and cry, “I can’t take it. I can’t stand this. I can’t do this.”

Everyone that suffers from chronic pain know this—chronic pain robs you of your self-esteem. You doubt your sanity. You doubt your decisions. You doubt your ability to cope.

 Pain and negative inner talk left me feeling both powerless and hopeless. That’s a lethal combination. To save myself from both, I used hypnosis tapes and CD’s to transform my thinking.. I learned to keep my inner talk positive. And I learned that my attitude was the most powerful pain management tool I have.

One of the programs I worked with that made a real difference in my life is “Core Inner Strength,” a 2-CD set by Dr. Shirley McNeal. At a time when I was feeling worthless, hopeless and weak. Dr. McNeal’s program turned my attitude around. It helped me find the self-confidence I needed to stop cowering from chronic pain. That’s why, yesterday, I didn’t cower in bed. I got up and took action, because I know, beyond any shadow of doubt, I have the inner-strength to do anything I set my mind to.

I regard “Core Inner Strength” as one of the key skills every pain patient needs to learn. You can read all about the "Core Inner Strength" program here: http://www.hypnosisnetwork.com/hypnosis/self_esteem.php It comes with my highest recommendation!

### Bonnie Boots publishes Pain Health News to provide information and motivation to people living with chronic pain.  You can stay in touch with her by typing your email address into the subscribe box in the upper right corner of this page.

But recently, some states have been taking steps to limit the sort of largesse that drug companies can pass to physicians. In Minnesota, for instance, the state ruled that pharmaceutical salespeople could not give more than $50 in free food to doctors per year. One pharmaceutical sales rep I know in here in Florida sat down and cried buckets when she saw laws changing. “There goes my career!” she cried. “Without freebies, I won’t be able to get my foot in the door at most medical offices.”

Her fears, it must be admitted, were justified. A study has shown that doctors in Minnesota are rejecting pharmaceutical sales visits more than anywhere in the country.

I didn't have to be psychic to  see that pharmaceutical companies would ferret out new ways of making sure their pill is the drug of choice when a doctor sits down to write a prescription. And today, I got my first glimpse of one of those new ways. I just saw a television ad for the Orencia Promise Program from Bristol-Myers Squibb. Orencia is a new drug for people suffering from moderate to severe Rheumatoid Arthritis.

In a nutshell, the Orencia Promise Program is a co-pay program for new Orencia patients with private insurance. The program will pay the full co-pay for Orencia for the first 6 months of therapy. In addition, if you're not satisfied after 6 months, the program will pay your first co-pay of another RA medicine, up to $500 (Some restrictions and exclusions may apply. If you're interested in the Orencia Promise Program click their name to visit their web site.)

On the one hand, I’m pleased to see pharmaceutical companies throwing their money at patients for a change. While they’re at it, how about inviting us to some of those fine restaurants and weekend trips to Disney World for “educational seminars”? I could use a new laptop, too!

On the other hand,  I’m worried that bribing —err, “rewarding” patients could turn out to be an even bigger threat than the old method of rewarding doctors. With the world economy swirling down the toilet,  how many RA patients will be tempted to change therapies just to get their prescriptions—any  prescriptions—free for 6 months?

Doctors are influenced by their patient’s requests.  “Naturally I want patients to be involved in their own health care,” one doctor told me. “If they express interest in a drug with potential benefit and I see no contra-indications, I’m inclined to let them have a trial of it.”

But this tactic of throwing money at people to get your drugs in play is the same old double-edged sword. It’s only that this time, the sword is being passed to the patient. As a pain patient, what’s your take on this issue? Use the comment box below to state your opinion. Meanwhile, I'll be on the phone to Bristol-Myers Squibb to see if that link I provided to their website  is worth a new laptop to them.

### Bonnie Boots recovered from totally disabling chronic pain, but still has occasional days when she feels like hell. That's why she publishes Pain Health News, providing information, motivation and conversation to people challenged by chronic pain.

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