SiteLock

Getting Off Pain Drugs

Neurosurgeon Dr. Joseph Maroon discovered the benefits of natural medicine when confronted with a personal crisis involving knee pain.  Listen to this interview with Dr. Maroon to learn how he was able to alleviate severe knee pain with a natural remedy frequently used by chiropractors.

[p1vc-video]

Chiropractors rely on a variety of natural pain relieving strategies to help their clients. With the effective natural pain relieving help of the Naturally the pain relieving strategy changes depending on the client, the cause and location of the pain.

Having said that, there is much that each of us can do on our own to prevent inflammation and pain on our own. The purpose of this series of articles is to provide the right information for you to do that.

Pain / inflammation epidemic in Minnesota, the US and Western cultures.

That we are experiencing an epidemic in pain and inflammatory conditions here in Minnesota and beyond is beyond doubt. Inflammation is a primary cause of many of our health problems today: cardiovascular disease, diabetes, Alzheimer’s, even cancer.

And inflammation is also reason for our epidemic of chronic pain.

Chronic pain usually is not solved by one thing, whether it’s an herbal remedy, a nutrient or nutrients, an adjusting technique, or a new high tech treatment. That’s not to say that once in a while we clinicians don’t see miracle cures.

Most doctors who treat a lot of people in pain can recall cases where a single treatment of some sort made the pain go away and it seemed like a miracle. I can recall the case of a client who had been suffering low back pain for many years-over twelve years-and after a single treatment the pain went away-not to return again.

But that’s not what usually happens. Most often people feel better in small steps. Sometimes they feel that they are not progressing at all. But when they look back over the past six months say, they realize that they have actually climbed out of a big hole of chronic pain and stress.

So, it usually takes time for real lasting results to occur.

How Most People Deal With Chronic Pain

Lets look at what is going on in our country with regard to chronic pain. We as a nation consume a ton of pain killers each year, $10 Billion dollars worth to be exact. That’s the equivalent of $37.04 cents per person in the United States each year.

I think that would be a small price to pay if pain killers were more than a temporary solution-a patch on the problem. The trouble is that it is a patch that often has a big downside.

A study at Stanford University attributed 107,000 hospitalizations and 16,500 deaths each year to over-the-counter pain killers. Another study found that those of us who use over-the-counter pain killers are six times more likely to end up in the hospital with gastrointestinal problems.

The Cox-2 inhibitors, like Vioxx, Celebrex and others were originally touted as being true miracle drugs. Less than ten years later many are being pulled off the market because of life threatening side effects.

The Myth of the Magic Pill

The common myth about chronic pain that we have been led to believe by the pharmaceutical industry is that we should look for a solution in a pill.

This psychology is a throw back to the days of the discovery of penicillin. When it was found that penicillin could stop bacterial infections in their tract, everybody began to believe in the magic of the pill.

Our vulnerability to the idea of a “magic bullet” is exploited every day by pharmaceutical companies selling us their products.

Time Magazine in February 2005 featured chronic pain in the United States in one of its issues. The article discussed what we have learned about the treatment of chronic pain.

One of the major things pointed out in the article was the need for a broad approach. It blamed our medical system for relying too much on drugs to alleviate chronic pain, saying that even doctors were at fault.

Here are two quotes from that article: “The…reason for the widespread failure to find adequate relief is that most of us seek it entirely in a pill bottle.” “The quest for pharmaceutical salvation is misguided to begin with.”

Once We Stop Looking For The Magic Pill We Can Really Start Healing Our Chronic Pain.

The way to cure chronic pain starts with heading in the right direction. Over-the-counter-drugs, while often necessary for relief of acute pain, are not a long term solution-quite the opposite. Our culture leads us into believing the lie that there is a “magic bullet.”

The cause of pain is what is called the inflammatory process. Inflammation is actually one and the same with the healing process. MN chiropractors utilize a variety of therapies to help improve our body’s healing ability. In this way our body can fully heal an area of pain (and inflammation) the way it is supposed to.

Dr. Harlan Mittag is a chiropractor in St. Louis Park and Minneapolis, MN and owner of Mittag Holistic Chiropractic. He is a chiropractor, nutritionist and acupuncturist who specializes in the treatment of natural pain and natural pain remedies. New patients are asked to schedule an appointment by calling (952) 345-8245. A graduate of Stanford University and Northwestern College of Chiropractic, he has had a clinical practice in Minneapolis, Minnesota for the past 25 years.