Pain is not something very many of us like, and that is a good thing.  Pain is our body's way of telling us that something is wrong and we need to do something different.  Putting up with pain is not a good idea, both because of the accumulating damage occurring in the painful area, and because our brain will learn pain and form habitual pain circuits that fire even when there is no reason for them to fire.

Much of my practice is about reducing and relieving pain.  Pain is the most common reason patients come to see me.  The trick is to relieve the unnecessary pain while repairing the cause of the pain.  Isn't all pain unnecessary?  No.  Pain is vital and necessary.  If you accidentally put your hand on a hot burner on the stove, it is pain that tells you to remove your hand right now before you destroy your hand.  We need pain to tell us when we are damaging ourselves so we can stop.

When a patient tells me they just want all the pain to go away, I suggest that they make friends with an armadillo.  Why an armadillo you ask?  Because armadillos are the main source of the disease leprosy in this country and leprosy destroys the pain nerves in our body.  Without pain nerves we don't feel injury, infection, or necrosis as body parts fall off... not good.  We need our pain nerves, but we don't need unnecessary pain.

Standard medicine has three main types of painkillers - narcotics, Cox inhibitors that fight inflammation, and steroids.  Also becoming widely used for pain are antidepressants, which don't actually stop pain, but just make you not be upset about it.

Narcotics block the perception of pain in the brain.  They have the obvious drawback of being horribly addictive.  Plus there are the common side effects of nausea, vomiting, dizziness, and constipation.  But if you have ever been in terrific unrelenting pain like the stuck kidney stone I had a few years ago, the availability of IV morphine is a wonderful thing.

The Cox inhibitors (also called NSAIDS) like aspirin, ibuprofen, Tylenol, Advil, VIOXX, etc block the formation of prostaglandins, some of which are protective of the gut while others create inflammation and pain.  The big problem with these drugs is that while they do well at reducing pain, they are also causative of bleeding in the gut as well as fun things like heart attacks, liver damage, and kidney damage.  The body generally tolerates the occasional pain pill rather well, but problems start showing up with chronic use such as in arthritis, chronic headaches, and other frequent pain syndromes.  

A special problem with NSAID medications that no one is talking about is the late consequences of GI bleeding.  Obviously bleeding is not good in itself, but another aspect to bleeding is that the bleeding means that open wounds are occurring in the gut.  The protective lining of the gut becomes damaged exposing our blood stream to whatever is in our gut.  Foreign food proteins, viruses, bacteria, and fungus are able to get into our blood triggering our immune system to form antibodies and become allergic to these "invaders."  We can end up with systemic fungal infections, chronic systemic viral problems, and chronic food sensitivities.  These can undermine our health for years after any GI bleeding problem has been resolved.

The last group, steroids, are scary.  They massively disrupt the normal physiology of the body.  Some of their side effects include hyperglycemia, insulin resistance, diabetes mellitus, osteoporosis, cataract, anxiety, depression, colitis, hypertension, stroke, seizure, erectile dysfunction, hypogonadism, hypothyroidism, amenorrhoea, and retinopathy.  While use of a steroid inhaler is preferable to death from asphyxiation in an asthma attack, generally, using steroids is like swatting flies with a baseball bat.

In simple terms, traditional medicine's painkillers are super powerful in their impact on the body, which means significant side effects result.  There are times when super powerful is necessary, but the consequences are rarely worth the benefits.  But these powerful drugs have become an accepted part of our comfort and convenience driven culture.  Our culture has the maturity of a 15-year-old delinquent.  All that is important is "how do I feel today", with no thought given to the impact our decisions today will have on our life down the road.

This kind of thinking is currently creating a crisis in the healthcare system because of the overuse of antibiotics.  We have vastly overused antibiotics because they are convenient and make us more comfortable.  But we have now bred so many drug resistant super bacteria that we face the very real threat of massive plagues wiping out major portions of the human race.  There are no new antibiotics in the pharmaceutical pipeline and many new bugs can not be stopped with the drugs we have.  MRSA is just the tip of the iceberg.  At this point it is considered such a problem that health authorities recommend you stay away from hospitals as much as possible because most of these powerful bacteria exist in hospital environments.

I have written previously about this same thinking as the source of most of our degenerative diseases due to our convenience and comfort approach to food.  Comfort foods and convenience foods are the cause of our degenerative disease epidemic.

The purpose of this article is to talk about natural painkillers.  So why am I going on about comfort and convenience?  Because the reason everyone is not using natural painkillers is the same reason everyone is not eating fresh wholesome food, they are not convenient and do not produce instant comfort.  If you want the health benefits of natural painkillers and want to avoid the negative consequences of the powerful drugs, you have to accept that you will have to participate more with the natural approach and that you will not get instant relief.  Natural painkillers work with your body rather than overriding its normal physiology.  That means that when you work naturally you have to respect that your body has a good reason for having pain and you don't get to just turn pain off like a light switch.  You actually have to address the cause of the pain.  Addressing causes is a lot more involved than just suppressing symptoms with drugs.  

Natural Painkillers

In part 2 of this article I will write about all the herbs and nutriceuticals that have powerful anti-inflammatory and pain killing effects.  But in part 1 I want to talk about some of the most powerful physical things you can do for pain.

Although I might be biased, I truly have found in working with thousands and thousands of patients, that good Chiropractic care is the single most powerful intervention you can use to help with pain.  I prefer non-force Chiropractic care as I have heard too many patients describe actually hurting worse after a forceful Chiropractic adjustment.  Force works great for some people, but in my experience non-force works better for a greater number of people.  

How often is optimal for non-force Chiropractic care?  Obviously if you are in pain, right now is good.  For muscle and joint pain I advise patients to use heat for 15 minutes followed by cool for 15 minutes then give it a good nights rest.  If the area is still in pain the next day then give a call for an appointment.  In the past I have told patients that the best schedule for appointments is "When it hurts, come on in."

30 years ago (yes I have been treating patients over 30 years), most conditions I saw were injury caused.  Now most of what I see is the consequence of postural, dietary, and work/home stress.  The favorite line I hear is "I don't know what happened, I just woke up with the pain."  Another favorite is "I was doing something I have always done, but this time my back went out."  These are signs of stress building up in the body until something gives.  Dietary stress can blow out your back.  Sitting too much in front of the computer can blow out your back.  Home and work stress can blow out your back...and so on.  This means pain intervention is turning into stress management.

As a result of the changing picture of pain development I have to change my view on when to engage Chiropractic care.  If you are under a lot of work or home stress; if you eat the average American diet; if you have to sit all day or lift kids; then optimal care is probably monthly checkups to unwind the body stress before it blows up.   If you have had more than one episode of back, neck, or other pain in the last year, again monthly body rebalancing is a good idea no matter what your age is.  The same is true of seniors.  With age, your body just does not stay balanced like it used to, so monthly tune-ups are in order.

What else is helpful?  Regular exercise is vital to keep pain away.  The key with exercise is to pay attention.  If something you are doing hurts while you are doing it, don't do it.  If it just makes you sore a day or two later for a day, it probably is ok to do.  Joints need to be regularly stretched and moved through their full range of motion.  Yoga, Tai Chi, Pilates, Stick stretching, ball work, and the like are all wonderful.

Acupuncture, Massage, and Reflexology are all excellent pain control methodologies.  As with any healing discipline, the value in the work all comes down to the skill of the practitioner.  There are good and bad therapists in any discipline.  Physical therapy is another option for some people.  Physical therapy modalities like ultrasound, electric stim, micro-current, infrared, laser, heat and cold are all useful in controlling pain.

Relaxation, meditation, prayer, mindfulness practice, and uplifting social connection are all highly related to lowering pain.  Being of loving service to others is also found to decrease pain levels.  Have somebody you can talk openly with.  Cultivate good friendships and have good emotional support networks to get a good handle on emot

ional stress before it gets its hands on you.  Coaching and counseling (like Heartflow) are good options for working with how to tackle life less stressfully.  Stress causes pain; stress equals pain.

The last area I want to mention is a good diet.  I can't tell you how many times I find an acute low back condition that is caused by bowel inflammation from a bad diet.  Keep away from eating seed oils (corn, soy, sunflower, canola, cottonseed, etc...), especially frying with them.  They produce massive inflammation in your body.  Stay completely away from sugar and high fructose corn syrup - fructose in them directly creates inflammatory chemicals in your blood.  Avoid any foods you are sensitive to.  For example some people get migraines when they eat chocolate while others get joint pain when they eat potatoes.  Eat real, whole, fresh foods, freshly cooked.

These are basic pain avoidance and pain relief methods you can employ at any time.  Make them a regular part of your lifestyle, and you will feel better.  These are natural painkillers.  They don't have negative side effects that you need to take still other drugs to counter the effects from the initial drugs you started with.  These all do require your participation and commitment, so they are not necessarily convenient or comfortable.  But they work.

Until next time,

David       

Hours Changing at FOHAC for Dr. DeLapp

How to find us -

Take care,

David            

Ketogenic diet kills cancer

At last!  Years ago I started telling people that a ketogenic fat burning diet would be an ideal approach to limiting cancer growth.  Cancer cells can only eat sugar, not fat.  Healthy cells can eat either sugar or fat.  Most people run their bodies on carbs that turn into sugar and hardly ever burn just fat.  Our popular USDA food pyramid would have us eat the majority of our calories as carbs.  Yet carbs are completely unnecessary in our diet.  We have to have protein and fats and fiber, but not carbs.  Carbs are cancer food.  This link is to a youtube video by an MD given 2 months to live with full body metastatic cancer that tried a ketogenic diet and totally eliminated his cancer. 

What does a ketogenic diet look like?  On your plate, you will see about 75% non-starchy and leafy vegetables, 15% good quality protein, and about 10% fat.  In terms of calories about 65% of your calories are coming from monosaturated fat like coconut, olive, and avocado and from animal and fish fats - no seed oils or trans-fats are consumed.  25 - 30% of your calories are from healthy proteins like pastured animals and poultry, and wild caught fish.  Even though visually the veggies are 75% of your diet, only the last 5 to 10% of calories are from the non-starchy vegetables since they have very few calories.

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Rosemary extract lowers weight, blood glucose, and cholesterol
 

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Jedi could perform marriages

The government of Scotland is amending its civil laws to include those of any belief system such as humanists to be able to perform marriage ceremonies.  The Free Church of Scotland feeling threatened by this encroachment on their territory is fighting this amendment by claiming that the law is so vague that Jedi Knights from Star Wars fan clubs could perform marriages!  I say "May the force be with them!"  

 "Real knowledge is to know the extent of one's ignorance. "

~ Confucius

About Dr. DeLapp

Dr. DeLapp has been a philosopher, non-force Chiropractor, medical intuitive, and health innovator for over 30 years.  He began experimenting with  medical intuition in 1972 while studying physics at UC Davis.  In addition to physics he designed and completed an individual major in the philosophy and psychology of education.  Shortly after he choose to pursue a career in the only truly health oriented profession available at that time, Chiropractic.  He graduated with honors in 1981 with his doctorate and opened a private practice. 
Since that time he has continued his research into the effects of consciousness and learning on health. 
He developed the Biomagnetic Retraining system for correcting movement abnormalities. 
Since 1991 he has focused on developing a powerful system for uncovering and assisting the mind-body connection in health and personal growth.  The in-depth coaching, guided by the subconscious direction from the body, is called Heartflow and the simpler mind-body retraining for health and unfoldment he has named Gracework.  Both are available at Fair Oaks Health.

Dr David DeLapp DC
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