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New information about chronic back pain in smokers!

In recent weeks, a new study has come out..it sheds some interesting light on the effect of smoking on chronic back pain.  The study involved comparing brain  MRIs of chronic back pain sufferers by categorizing them into smoking and non-smoking groups.



It appears that smokers have worse problems with back pain than their non-smoking counterparts. The explanation given by this study suggests that a communication pathway between two areas is affected by smoking; therefore the pain signal is affected.

This is an interesting development.  It might just help the development of better pain medications or treatments for all back sufferers..and it might get some people to believe that they really would be better off if they could kick the habit!

You can read more about the study here:



Sources: Northwestern University, wikimedia
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