Pain
Pain is a complex phenomenon. It is classified as an emotion but felt as a sensory experience in the brain. So we have to consider the brain in treating pain, without a doubt. Pain is also experienced to a greater degree as a result of stress chemicals, inflammation, and poor sugar regulation. A person who has had a poor experience with a chiropractor probably has a lot of the latter, so much so that the adjusting aggravates the nerves more than it relieves them. Still, chiropractic is a valuable tool in treating pain because it normalizes motion, and motion dampens pain. Everyone who has clubbed their thumb with a hammer knows that whipping that hand around is the only source of relief initially, and then ice is used to decrease the inflammation. Sometimes it has to be the other way around for chronic pain. The inflammation has to be relieved in the muscles and nerves, and then you can start to adjust or move the painful area.
Traditional medicine uses anti-inflammatory meds as the primary treatment of pain, including Steroidal and Non-Steroidal pain relievers. Once the body and brain has “learned” pain, and the pain becomes chronic, you might get an opiate type drug that makes you not care about the pain. But even these people have hope; although, their work is cut out for them to be pain free again.
The steroidal and non-steroidal pain relievers are basically prostaglandin blockers. These are strange hormones that don’t have a home. They are released from every cell in the body and may make you feel good if the right hormone is released or awful if the wrong one is released. The wonderful thing is…you decide. If you choose to eat breads and pasta, corn and vegetable oil, sugar, trans fats, chips and crackers, cookies and donuts, you will make the awful hormones. And if you don’t get pain (or in other words, if it doesn’t affect your muscles and nerves) it will affect your heart and brain. There is no escaping these awful hormones. But if you eat grass and pasture fed meat, olive oil, fish and flax oils, walnuts and greens, and you avoid the previous list, you will find no need or no benefit to the steroidal and non-steroidal pain relievers because you will have no awful prostaglandin hormones.
No, this doesn’t fix all pain. We still have to fix the stress hormones and possibly sugar regulation to really feel well, and then the tissues that perceive pain, including the brain and body. Sugar regulation and stress hormones can be evaluated with the OptiChem and ASI (Adrenal Stress Index) labs respectively (see LABs).
Now, we balance and fix the muscles and joints, discs and nerves, cerebellum and brain. These can be reset using massage techniques, acupressure, exercise, chiropractic, biofeedback, NET, EFT, electrical muscle stimulation, and a variety of brain feedback therapies.
Is it always this complicated? Of course not. Occasionally, a pain will be resolved in one adjustment, or one other therapy happens to hit the neurological circuit that is causing the pain. But if the pain is all over, has a mind of its own, and is a bit schizophrenic, you better have a good health detective to solve the crime.
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