Pain is a fact of life, from accidents to injuries, medical and emotional conditions to changes as we grow and age. Pain is a universal experience. Yet it’s hard to comprehend what being ruled by fear and wracked by unsupportable pain can do to a person — even for those of us who have, at some point, experienced a long stretch of severe pain.
Science is finding new ways to manage our discomforts, yet hidden old ways might still be the best overall approach. One common goal is to move beyond opioids and their deadly fallout. I find it more than interesting that most of the articles one will read on pain do not mention medical marijuana, one of the safest pain medications, and do not mention magnesium, which reduces inflammation that is at the heart of most pain conditions.
Magnesium deficiencies feed the fires of inflammation and pain. Inflammation is the
missing link to explain the role of magnesium in many pathological conditions.
In the United States, chronic pain, defined as pain lasting more than three months, is a devastating public health issue, affecting approximately 20% of adults and costing roughly $600 billion annually, more than any other medical condition. Pain is the alarm of disease, the symptom that announces that all is not right with our bodies. It is the most common reason people seek medical assistance, whether due to accident or illness. However, because pain has many causes, some of which are poorly understood, it is often a vexing problem to treat. There are no genuinely effective and safe pharmaceuticals for many types of pain.
One in five U.S. adults—51.6 million people as of 2021—is living with chronic pain. New cases arise more often than other common conditions, such as diabetes, depression, and high blood pressure. Yet pain treatments have not kept pace with the need. There are over-the-counter pills such as aspirin, acetaminophen (Tylenol), and nonsteroidal anti-inflammatories (NSAIDs) such as Advil. And there are opioids. The glaring inadequacy of existing medications to alleviate human suffering has fueled the ongoing opioid epidemic, which has led to more than 730,000 overdose deaths since its start.
Around 8% — nearly 20 million people — had high-impact chronic
pain, the kind that interferes with work or day-to-day activities1.
Similar numbers have been reported from surveys conducted in Europe.
The pain medications used today are essentially derivatives of natural products that have been around for thousands of years. Aspirin originally came from willow bark. Morphine and codeine were derived from the opium poppy plant. Prescriptions for what evolved into the two major classes of pain drugs—NSAIDs and opioids—were etched on clay tablets by ancient Sumerians 4,000 years ago.
Chronic pain is too often a horror story that has some people looking to end their lives, which means ending the pain. According to Daniel Clauw, a physician-scientist at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, “If you do make someone’s pain dramatically better, you often make anxiety, depression, and catastrophizing dramatically better.”
Around the world, physicians are prescribing the same kinds of interventions for chronic pain conditions that they have offered for decades. Many people aren’t getting treatment at all. In North America and Australia, opioid overprescription and misuse have resulted in tight restrictions on one of the main tools long used by clinicians for managing pain. Many people who live with pain have spent years bouncing from doctor to doctor, trying to find someone who can eradicate their torment or at least lessen it.
“Minor aches and pains, or even really painful acute pain, can largely be dealt with,” says Rajesh Khanna, a pharmacology researcher at the University of Florida in Gainesville. “But chronic pain? Unfortunately, there’s nothing.”
At the same time, there’s a growing recognition that treating chronic pain requires more than just pills. “We have a culture where people really turned to medications,” says Antje Barreveld, an anesthesiologist at Mass General Brigham’s Newton-Wellesley Hospital in Massachusetts. “But there’s so much more to pain management than the pills that we prescribe.” Getting control and slowing one’s breathing down is a significant way of dealing with pain that most doctors overlook.
Medical Marijuana
Marijuana has been used to treat a wide variety of painful conditions, from headaches to the pain of childbirth. Cancer and AIDS patients, migraine sufferers, and people with spastic and movement disorders all describe how marijuana helped relieve their painful symptoms. Three puffs a day of cannabis allows people with chronic nerve pain due to injury or surgery to feel less pain and sleep better, a Canadian team has found. Many types of pain can be treated with marijuana, and that is why I wrote Medical Marijuana.
Marijuana kills almost no one but opioids? Everyone is aware that the use of opioids is killing thousands of people. More than 700,000 Americans died from drug overdoses from 1999 to 2017, about 10% of them in 2017 alone, according to a new report published by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
In total, there were a staggering 70,237 drug overdose deaths in 2017, which is more deaths than all U.S. military fatal casualties of the Vietnam War. Opioids were involved in 67.8%, or 47,600 of those deaths. Of those opioid-related overdose deaths, 59.8% of them, or 28,466, were due to synthetic opioids.
Cannabidiol
There are many ways to use marijuana as a medicine, and not all of them get a person high. Cannabidiol (CBD), for example, is a compound that is extracted from a particular type of cannabis plant, most commonly known as the hemp plant. The two most familiar compounds of the many that are derived from cannabis are THC and CBD. However, unlike THC, CBD does not produce the same euphoric effects. CBD is a non-psychoactive that provides the same benefits as it’s THC counterpart, which has made it favorable among doctors wishing to explore alternative methods of pain relief.
CBD works by sending certain signals to the body’s endocannabinoid system. The endocannabinoid system contains cannabinoid receptors (CB1 & CB2), and as opposed to THC, CBD utilizes these receptors indirectly. CBD has the ability to increase the amount of the body’s natural cannabinoids by preventing certain enzymes from breaking them down properly.
CBD interacts with the body’s opioid receptors, which has posed to be very fascinating. Opioid receptors produce dopamine, a natural pain reliever that, when produced in excess, may cause an addiction. While further research needs to be conducted on just what effects CBD has on our opioid receptors, there is hope that CBD can negate the cravings that come with opioids, and perhaps suppress the withdrawal symptoms that occur when someone has stopped using these types of drugs.
Diminishing Pain Quickly with Heat
A low body temperature is more than enough to explain many health problems, such as fatigue, headaches, migraines, PMS, easy weight gain, depression, irritability, fluid retention, anxiety, and panic attacks, hair loss, poor memory, poor concentration, low sex drive, unhealthy nails, dry skin and hair, cold intolerance, heat intolerance, low motivation, low ambition, insomnia, allergies, acne, carpal tunnel syndrome, asthma, odd swallowing sensations, constipation, irritable bowel syndrome, muscle and joint aches, slow healing, sweating abnormalities, Raynaud’s Phenomenon, itchiness, irregular periods, easy bruising, ringing of the ears, flushing, bad breath, dry eyes/ blurred vision, and more.
The BioMat is simply the best well-made far-infrared device. It is incredibly comforting and will give people with cancer and sufferers of any disease the best chance of recovering from their diseases. Heat is often applied with a pad to areas of the back that are painful and inflamed. The Biomat is just perfect for back pain sufferers. There is nothing like laying on a far-infrared mattress when one has back or any pain. This treatment method is effective because heat expands blood vessels, increasing blood flow and oxygen levels.
Heat increases blood flow and makes connective tissue more flexible. It temporarily decreases joint stiffness, pain, and muscle spasms. Heat also helps reduce inflammation and fluid buildup in tissues (edema). Heat therapy treats inflammation (including various forms of arthritis), muscle spasms, and injuries such as sprains and strains.
A hot magnesium bath is a great treatment choice for people’s low-back pain and is more indicated than icing. Such a bath near bedtime helps people sleep.
Magnesium Oil
Testimony Claudia French RN:
“Yesterday I witnessed one of the most amazing benefits of transdermal magnesium I have seen. I work with another RN who is afflicted with arthritis, especially in her hands, and frequent muscle cramping/spasms in her legs. She has been using magnesium but has become lax. Before leaving for work yesterday, I received a phone call from her begging me to please bring with me some magnesium oil, as her hands were so cramped up and painful that she could barely stand to continue working.
When I arrived, her hands and fingers were very contorted in spasm. Her fingers were curled up and stiff, and her legs were cramping badly. She reported they had been this way all day, and the pain was driving her to tears. She immediately slathered the magnesium oil all over her hands. We were in the report, and she wanted it on her hands right away, so the entire nursing staff watched, and within 5 minutes, you could visibly see her fingers extend back to normal and the finger movement return. We could literally see the relaxation taking place. It was simply amazing. Within minutes, her hands were completely relaxed and functional again and stayed that way for the remainder of the evening. She also applied the magnesium to her legs and found relief.
About 30 minutes after applying the oil, she held up her hands for everyone to see and showed us the arthritic nodules on some fingers. She described how painful these always are to touch. But she poked and prodded them, telling us there was no pain. She could continue working and doing the extensive writing that is a large part of our work without further discomfort.”
Dr. Linda Rapson, who specializes in treating chronic pain, believes that about 70 percent of her patients who complain of muscle pain, cramps, and fatigue are showing signs of magnesium deficiency. “Virtually all of them improve when I put them on magnesium,” says Rapson, who runs a busy Toronto pain clinic. “It may sound too good to be true, but it’s a fact.” She’s seen the mineral work in those with fibromyalgia, migraines, and constipation. “The scientific community should take a good hard look at this.”
DMSO
According to a Midwestern Doctor, “DMSO is a remarkably effective pain-killing agent, in many cases allowing individuals who’d been disabled for years by their pain (e.g., a failed spine surgery or severe arthritis—DMSO’s most popular use) to get their lives back. Furthermore, it can treat many types of pain other therapies do not work on (e.g., complex regional pain syndrome).”
He goes on to assert that there are decades of evidence that demonstrates the simple (naturally occurring) chemical Dimethyl Sulfoxide (DMSO) is a remarkably safe drug that completely transforms the care of many challenging and insurmountable illnesses (e.g., strokes, severe head trauma, spinal cord injuries, amyloidosis, Down’s Syndrome and dementia).
Decades of research have shown that DMSO is an acetylcholine esterase inhibitor (and that it increases the pre-synaptic release of acetylcholine). That property is believed to account for DMSO lowering the threshold for the vagal nerve to fire and DMSO’s powerful ability to increase parasympathetic function in the body.
Wooden Back Massage Roller
This is one of the best back tools that money can buy! Lie on it and let it dig like a shiatsu expert onto both sides of your spine. When suffering from back problems, one should also be mindful of the level of stress one is dealing with. When the world’s weight is upon us, it weighs heavily on our backs, which is why rest is often essential for recovery.
Trigger Points, Shiatsu & Acupuncture
There is no shortage of evidence that acupuncture is suitable for lower back pain. A study in the British Medical Journal found that it offered a small but significant benefit to back pain sufferers and is cost-effective in the long term. Researchers at the University of Sheffield measured the pain levels of two groups of adults over two years. They found that those with acupuncture were significantly more likely to be satisfied than those with just conventional care.
Hydrogen Medicine
In the book “Hydrogen Cancer Control – Theory and Practice” by Professor Xu Kecheng, a well-known Chinese gastroenterologist and tumor treatment expert, it was found from 82 actual surveys of late-stage cancer patients that inhaling a mixture of hydrogen and oxygen has a positive effect on cancer pain and sleep apnea. Symptoms such as disorders and loss of appetite are improved, the patient’s quality of life is enhanced to a certain extent, the side effects of chemotherapy are reduced.
Holistic Healing Revolution Mastermind
This is a chance to hear from top experts in the field who are committed to helping you break free from the overwhelm and confusion surrounding health and move the needle forward to heal from chronic disease.
October 25 – 31st, 2024
I’m now Offering a Paid Subscription to Substack.
I’ve been working for years, freely sharing my writings with the world. Yet now I need your support for my work. Google lowered the censorship boom on us five years ago, and it has been a hard road ever since.
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