Article Excerpt: Chronic pain is one of the leading causes of long-term disability in the world. By some measures, 50 million Americans live with chronic pain, in part because the power of medicine to relieve it remains inadequate. Helen Ouyang, a physician and contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine, explores the potentially groundbreaking use of virtual reality in the alleviation of acute pain, as well as anxiety and depression, and meets the doctors and entrepreneurs who believe this “nonpharmacological therapy” is a good alternative to prescription drugs. Ouyang explains virtual reality’s rise as an unlikely tool for solving the “intractable problem” of pain, but she also highlights those set to benefit financially from the treatment: The virtual reality sector in health care alone is, according to some estimates, already valued at billions of dollars, and is expected to grow by multiples of that in the next few years.
Full Article: https://tinyurl.com/52wfx2s2
Article Source: The New York Times Magazine