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For more than two thousand years people have believed that joint pain could be triggered by bad weather, but the link has never been proven.
But now, by harnessing the power of thousands of volunteers, doctors hope to unravel the mystery. And the new technique could offer countless solutions to a whole host of ailments.
[...] Each day she enters information about how she feels into an app on her phone, the phone's GPS pinpoints her location, pulls the latest weather information from the internet, and fires a package of data to a team of researchers.
On its own Becky's data is of limited interest, but she isn't acting alone. More than 13,000 volunteers have signed up for the same study, sending vast quantities of information into a database - more than four million data points so far.
The app, called "Cloudy with a Chance of Pain" is part of a research project being run by Will Dixon. He is a consultant rheumatologist at Salford Royal Hospital and has spent years researching joint pain.
My rheumatism is triggered when the wife asks me to carry heavy, heavy things up to our 3rd-floor walk-up...
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday May 02 2017, @08:53PM (1 child)
Yes, I'm being monitored for both the HUMIRA and methotrexate. But I sometimes stop taking HUMIRA for several months at a time. My Dr. is fine with that if I want to find a balance between taking it and not taking it. When I take it, I take it in steady regular doses. It's one of those things that makes me wonder if the cure is worse than the pain, since I've generally learned to live with it mostly without opioids.
I'm glad you also don't have a problem with opioids. I find it amusing the information about taking opioids regularly making addiction less likely. I've been using them for years and years and IMO the best advice is to avoid them generally, and use the minimal effective dose when necessary. I don't want to screw with my ability to hyperfocus. There was one occasion, years ago, where I took 1/2 tablet increments until I reached 2 tablets. I was definitely woozy. And I suddenly realized *why* people get addicted. But I had no interest in repeating that feeling considering the tradeoff. I'm not taking it for fun. I'm taking it when it feels like a wire saw cutting through my bone.
I agree that for the poor addicted people it should be a medical issue rather than a criminal one. Unless, of course, the ensuing criminal behavior cannot be stopped. As long as they can maintain on a steady dose, and hopefully ween off of it, that would seem best in my non expert opinion.
For some odd reason all scientific instruments searching for intelligent life are pointed away from Earth.
(Score: 1) by purple_cobra on Saturday May 06 2017, @08:30PM
I took sulfasalazine for a while - up until my doctor finally listened to my protests that it was doing nothing at all! - and that required monthly blood tests for 12-18 months. As I'm no great fan of being punctured this was not welcome news, but as that stuff was supposed to alleviate the problem I just put up with it. Opioids (in my case 4-6 30/500 co-codamol daily) definitely make me feel a bit slower, less mentally alert, enough that I'd rather not take them at all, but for the moment it's either take them or don't work and I'd rather keep my job, crappy though it is. :)
I'm always surprised at the people who want to lock drug addicts up rather than get them treated, clean and functioning as members of society again. Locking people up is bloody expensive and, ultimately, isn't curing the problem, merely moving it somewhere else for a while. Given the success of countries like Portugal in modifying how they deal with addicts and, ultimately, significantly reducing the problem, it's even more puzzling.