Tramadol

Tramadol: The Most Successful Painkiller

Healing has been around as long as civilization. From spiritual remedies, to prayer, to folk medicine like tonics and poultices, humans have been experimenting in ways to cure age old diseases and pain for eons. Five thousand years ago, ancient Egyptians began practicing the roots of modern medicine. Greeks continued studying the body and how it reacts to certain substances. Meanwhile, in China, people were making great strides in herbal medicine, developing treatments that are still used to this day.

All the way through the Middle Ages, people treated pain with herbs. Lots of herbs. Europeans practically threw plants at the problem until it went away or the patient died.

It wasn't until the 19th century that medicine underwent a revolution. We learned that microscopic organisms caused diseases, and we developed radically more effective treatments for diseases. And pain.

Though a compound called salicin had been in use since the time of Hippocrates (the 5th century BC), scientists in 1829 developed aspirin from the ancient cure. In 1893, acetaminophen (Tylenol) was developed. In the middle of the 20th century, we were gifted with ibuprofen. Meanwhile, the more extreme opiate painkillers were being used broadly and many began to suffer addictions to morphine and its relatives. Luckily, the pharmaceutical company Grunenthal was hard at work throughout the 1960s developing a new treatment for pain.

The world needed it too. With opiates being widely available by catalog, even from department stores like Sears, homemakers around America were suffering an epidemic of drug abuse. At the same time, factory and mine workers needed drugs to treat their back pain, and the new desk-job economy in the US was booming, creating a whole new kind of back problem.

Debuting in 1977, Tramadol quickly became a powerhouse in the pain treatment world because it was more effective at relieving moderate pain than aspirin, tylenol, and ibuprofen. Plus, it did not have the same potential for abuse as drugs like codeine, morphine, and heroin. Almost immediately, the drug was being copied the world over to treat all sorts of pain.

Since then, pain treatment has become a big money industry. Almost yearly, pharmaceutical companies release new drugs, touting them to be the next big cure. However, while the Vicodins of the world are effective, they have not really threatened the market share of Tramadol. In this kind of world, it says something that fifty years from the time it was developed, it is still one of the top drugs for treating chronic pain. Part of the reason is its high safety standard and rarity of side effects. Part of it is that it is less addictive. Mostly, however, it is just an amazingly effective pain reliever.

Today, it is used to treat pain from various disorders, including back problems, withdrawal symptoms, chronic back and neck pain, headaches, cancer, arthritis, and many more. It is even used for diabetic neuropathy, postherpetic neuralgia, fibromyalgia, restless legs syndrome, migraine headaches, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and premature ejaculation. With so many new and experimented uses still being discovered, the future is bright for Tramadol and its patients.