Pain is associated with a host of diseases and injuries. Millions of people suffer from acute or chronic pain at some point in their lives. When something hurts, a typical reaction is to reach for a pill. Over-the-counter medications for everyday aches and pains are standard fixtures in home medicine cabinets. For more severe pain, doctors have many additional drugs to offer.
In 2014, Americans received 259 million prescriptions for narcotic painkillers. This represents 80 percent of the global supply. More than one-third of women aged fifteen to forty-four enrolled in Medicaid and more than a quarter with private insurance filled a prescription for a pain medication each year between 2008 and 2012. Every day millions of people wake up knowing they are going to contend with pain, and many believe they have to pop pills, undergo surgery, or else live with their condition. Unfortunately they do not realize that there are varied ways of treating pain naturally.
In this country we need a different approach to acute and chronic pain. We need to go from treating just the symptoms to treating the sufferer holistically. This includes getting proper nutrition through sensible eating and taking natural supplements, including minerals and herbs. Other methods of pain management include chiropractic, shiatsu, acupuncture, and the Trager and Alexander techniques.
Dr. Art Brownstein, author of Healing Back Pain Naturally and Extraordinary Healing: The Amazing Power of Your Body’s Secret Healing System, is a former assistant clinical professor of medicine at the University of Hawaii who also teaches yoga. He was a back pain patient himself for twenty years. Like many of the 50 million Americans who have chronic back pain, he ended up on an operating table in a futile attempt to relieve his suffering. He describes his experience and how it bolstered his views on alternative healing.
“I’ve got two vertebrae that are only halfway there, and I was getting worse after the surgery to the point where I couldn’t work for three years as a physician. I got hooked on the narcotic pain pills, and I was depressed and suicidal. At the end of the three-year period I was offered another operation, at which point I remembered my professors in medical school saying, ‘Physician, heal thyself.’ To make a long story short, I ended up traveling around the world several times during the next three- to seven-year period and discovered some very simple, ancient mindbody healing techniques, including yoga, which allowed me not only to heal my own back pain naturally but also to help thousands of others.”
Dr. Brownstein’s back pain protocol emphasizes the importance of the muscles in supporting the health of the back. “When people have back pain, they automatically assume, because it is so painful, that there must be a problem with the discs or the bones. And that is what conventional medicine focuses on with its diagnostic tests such as MRIs and X-rays. Muscles don’t show up on MRIs or X-rays, so in performing these tests, physicians are simply bypassing the most important system.”
Often, Dr. Brownstein says, the back problem relates to the condition of the muscles. “If you look at other cultures that have very little furniture and very low-tech kind of societies, they have virtually no back pain. We spend so much time sitting down, sitting at our jobs, sitting while we are driving, that these muscles in our back just don’t get used . . . We have to really tone our muscles in our backs and stretch them . . . Yoga is an effective strategy for this.”
Stress management is part of his program. When people are under mental stress, the nerves are overstimulated. This can cause the muscles, including those of the back, to tighten and contract. If you have pain in your back, it will get worse. “If you don’t have pain,” Dr. Brownstein says, “you are an accident waiting to happen. Just bending forward and picking a paperclip off the floor can send your back into tremendous spasms.” Among the stress management techniques Dr. Brownstein uses are breathing, relaxation, meditation, and visualization.
Diet is also part of Dr. Brownstein’s program. He explains: “I’ve discovered a very strong connection between what you put in your body and not only every cell and tissue of your body but particularly your back.”
Take coffee, for example. “I had a patient who had been to the top specialists all over the country—the Mayo Clinic, Johns Hopkins, Harvard,” Dr. Brownstein says. “[T]hey were all recommending surgery for him. I asked him about his diet and it turned out he was drinking eight to ten cups of coffee a day. I asked him if he would be willing to quit, and reluctantly he agreed. Of course he had the caffeine-withdrawal headaches, but after two to three days he got over that. Within three weeks his back pain was totally cleared up. So it can be something that simple.”
As Dr. Brownstein’s example shows, one of the most important ways of combating back and other types of pain is by guiding your diet to avoid abrasive foods and concentrate on those that build up the body’s biochemistry. You should eat the same way you should drive—defensively.
It seems that people are really taking a new look at diet, especially people who used to think that relief from aches and pains could come only from a jar or bottle or from even more drastic remedies such as surgery. Not in every case, but in many cases, we’re finding that diet can be the most powerful medicine.
One physician who has been looking is Dr. Neal Barnard, author of Food That Fights Pain and president of the Physicians’ Committee for Responsible Medicine, a nationwide group that promotes preventive medicine and addresses controversies in modern medicine. As he sees it, there are four ways pain is manifested in the usual course of an illness. He uses arthritis as an example. First, there is some type of injury. Second, there is inflammation with redness, swelling, and stiffness. Third, there is irritation of the nerves that transmit the pain signals to the brain. Fourth, the brain receives the signals.
Dr. Barnard explains that there are three steps that must be taken in using diet to help with health problems. First, it is necessary to look for possible trigger foods. These are foods that commonly set off pain: dairy products, wheat or citrus for some people, tomatoes, meat, and eggs. “We want to do a little detective work and see which one is a trigger for an individual, because the triggers may be different for each person,” Dr. Barnard counsels.
The second step is to find out which foods are safe to eat. “We focus on the pain-safe foods, which is fairly simple to do.”
The third step, which Dr. Barnard believes is especially necessary for women, is to use foods to balance hormones. Because low-fat, vegetarian diets reduce hormone swings, they can dramatically reduce pain.
In contrast to normally innocuous foods such as strawberries, which may trigger a pain reaction in certain people, some foods may reduce pain but also weaken the body’s ability to resist pain. Coffee is one of those foods.
Dr. Barnard mentions sugar as another substance that lowers a person’s pain tolerance. “Sugar never gets good press, and I’m sorry I have to add to the list of its problems. In a research study, people have taken volunteers and put a little metal clip on the web of skin between the fingers. Then this clip is hooked up to an electrical generator. The participants are given a little bit of electrical energy, which is gradually increased, and asked when they can feel it and when it becomes intolerable. Those numbers are written down. Then they are given sugar and the progression is repeated. These studies find that after ingesting the sugar, they feel the pain sooner and it becomes intolerable sooner.
“I’ve been so struck by the fact that people would start their breakfast with a cup of coffee, which, as a vaso- and cerebrodilator, temporarily reduces pain, then add a little sugar, which will increase pain sensitivity. It goes on for the rest of the day, where we are mixing up foods that cause and reduce pain.”
Pain-safe foods include rice—any kind of rice, but especially brown rice—and cooked green vegetables such as broccoli, Swiss chard, and spinach. If you get an upset stomach from broccoli, cook it a little longer; this knocks out some of the vitamins, but the proteins in the broccoli are what cause stomach irritation in some people. Also, cooked orange vegetables such as sweet potatoes and carrots are pain-safe. Cooked yellow vegetables such as squash are also good. For fruits, pick the noncitrus ones, especially dried or cooked.
Dr. Barnard has also found that some overlooked foods are especially good for dealing with pain. “One of the things we like to use is hot peppers, jalapeño peppers. The zing in the jalapeño is from a chemical called capsaicin. This doesn’t just make your mouth hot, it actually changes what happens in the nerves. It stops the nerves from being able to conduct pain. Pharmaceutical manufacturers have taken this capsaicin straight out of the pepper and mixed it into a cream, which is applied externally. Two brands of capsaicin cream in the United States are Capsin and Zostrix.
“At first when you put on the capsaicin, it tingles and may even burn a little just as a hot pepper would. Do it day after day, and gradually the pain will diminish. You will still feel touch and pressure, but you won’t feel pain. Give it a couple of weeks to work.”
Most people know that minerals are essential for building up the body, maintaining the body’s fluid balance, and helping with many chemical reactions. Let us look specifically at how minerals and vitamins have proved effective in treating pain.
Magnesium salts are useful for those with pain from the torso or joint aches. Many people are already deficient in magnesium. This calmative mineral is obtained from nuts and seeds that are raw and not roasted. Nuts are also beneficial in that they contain essential oils, including the omega-3 fatty acids, which also have mild anti-inflammatory properties that help reduce pain. For torso and joint problems, intake of magnesium citrate salts should be 400 milligrams per day, divided into doses of 100 to 200 milligrams.
Sound sleep is an essential part of good health. For people who have trouble sleeping due to headaches or other pains, there are a number of useful supplements. Valerian, hops (the same element found in beer), skullcap, or passionflower can be used. These supplements, which can be mixed, should be taken a half hour before going to sleep, in either capsule (one or two) or tincture form. You might also try taking 1 milligram of melatonin before sleep.
General musculoskeletal pain can be relieved by a number of substances. Lcarnitine allows the body to burn fats and soak up excess lactate, which may be causing pain. Also helpful with muscle aches are the methyl donors, such as DMG (dimethyl glycine) and TMG (trimethyl glycerin), taken in doses of 100 milligrams per day.
To reduce the soreness after exercise, one should take vitamin E (400 to 800 IU/day), which prevents the leakage of enzymes from the muscles.
A final way to approach pain is to modify the way the brain perceives it. DLphenylalanine (DLPA), which is a synthetic amino acid, slows down endorphins, making the ones you have work better. Taken in a dosage of 500 milligrams three times a day, it reduces chronic pain while getting the sufferer off analgesics.
Chiropractic treatment involves the manual manipulation of vertebrae that become misaligned, causing nerve pressure and energy blocks to various organs. This manipulation is called an adjustment. It involves the chiropractor’s gentle application of direct pressure to the spine and joints. The chiropractor may squeeze or twist the torso, pull or twist the limbs, or wrench the head or back. What the chiropractor is doing is readjusting the spinal column to restore the normal vertebral relationship. This eliminates the body’s energy blocks and keeps life-sustaining energy flowing freely to the vital organs.
Chiropractic is effective in dealing with pain and as a preventive treatment because it relieves nerve pressure. The buildup of this pressure is cumulative in its erosion of the health and integrity of specific body organs or regions. If one vertebra is out of relationship to the one next to it, a state of disrelationship is said to exist. This disrelationship throws off that vertebra’s environment, that is, the blood supply and detoxifying lymphatic drainage surrounding it. When this occurs, a congestion of blood, toxins, and energy creates pressure that upsets both local and systemic homeostasis, or balance.
Tissues all need normal nerve functioning in order to transport required nutrients to the cells. Insofar as the vertebrae are misaligned, the blood becomes congested and slow in its delivery, creating the absence of this nutrient supply. The cell’s normal activity is thereby hindered, and it becomes irritated. Moreover, once the cell’s metabolic processing is interfered with, its waste-removing lymphatic servicing to that area is diminished. This leads to toxic buildup that causes further irritation and inflammation. The chiropractor is concerned with alleviating all these problems.
Acupuncture sees pain as being derived from blocked energy or qi (chi). In treating this blockage, the practitioner has to determine whether it stems from an overabundance or a deficiency in energy, so that treatment can be adjusted depending on whether it is necessary to strengthen or decrease qi.
The acupuncturist first records the patient’s medical history in the manner of a conventional doctor. Then, with the patient lying down or seated, depending on the area to be treated, fine-gauge, stainless steel needles are inserted into sig-nificant points and meridians to exert different physiological effects on the body and induce both relaxation and energization. The patient will remain in this position for twenty to thirty minutes, though an appointment with an acupuncturist may last up to an hour, since part of the time will be spent consulting about the employment of other traditional and herbal treatments that might be recommended. Bodywork and massage may also be included in the session.
Dr. Christopher Trahan notes that the treatment will have analgesic and anesthetic effects, block pain, and accelerate recovery from motor nerve injury. Moreover, it enhances the immune system, which has a sedative effect; helps with muscular spasms or neurological problems; has a homeostatic effect in that it helps balance blood pressure; and has positive psychological effects, acting directly on brain chemistry.
Many patients with chronic low back pain find that acupuncture will not only help break the pain cycle, it will also allow them to reduce pain medications and participate more vigorously in physical therapy. Dr. Emily Kane, a naturopath who practices in Juneau, Alaska, says in an article on the website of the American Association of Naturopathic Physicians (www.naturopathic.org) that experiments have shown that acupuncture stimulates the nervous system to release endorphins as well as other chemical pain relievers in the body. Some people get immediate relief from low back pain after the first acupuncture session, but she recommends having six or eight sessions within a short period of time before assessing whether or not it is working for you.
Shiatsu is also based on the principle that qi (chi) flows through the body. The primary cause of pain is an imbalance of this energy. The goal of the healer is to balance the client’s energy so that pain and discomfort do not manifest or, if they do appear, will be relieved.
As bodywork practitioner Thomas Claire explains it, thumbs, fingers, palms, forearms, elbows, and even knees are used to apply pressure to specified points in the body to modulate the flow of energy. During a shiatsu treatment, the client lies on the floor on a comfortable padded surface, such as a futon, fully clothed or undressed to her level of comfort. What the client feels is pressure, which can be gentle or deeper at the places where the practitioner is working. As the pressure continues, the patient generally feels relaxed and energized at the same time.
Shiatsu is good for treating a variety of different pains. It is especially beneficial in combating chronic pain in the back, neck, or shoulders, but it has also proved effective in treating whiplash, herniated discs, and problems affecting the nervous system, such as Bell’s palsy.
A shiatsu healer concentrates on certain pressure points that have metaphoric names that tell us something about what they do or how they are to be worked with. The first point of interest is on the ankle and called Spleen 6. It is at the meeting of three yin meridians and is the most powerful point for tonifying the feminine energy in the body. It can be located by placing the little finger on the border of the inside ankle and counting up four fingers. At the very top of these fingers, and at the center, is Spleen 6. To modulate the energy, you can put pressure on this point with your thumb, pushing three times in succession for seven to ten seconds each time. This pressure will also help a woman control PMS and irregular cycles.
The corresponding point for male tonification is called Stomach 36. To locate this point, find the indentation just outside the kneecap. Put one finger at this indentation and go down four fingers. There you’ll find Stomach 36, which is also known as Leg 3 Mile. This second name is given since, it is said, if you have a strong Stomach 36, you will have enough stamina to walk three miles with no trouble. For women, this point can be used to ease childbirth and labor pains.
A third important point, located at the middle of the web of the hand, is Large Intestine 4, also called Meeting Mountains. The latter name is derived from the “mountain of flesh” found jutting up between the thumb and index finger when you close your hand. To locate this point, find the highest point on that protruding flesh and then open your hand. This point should be pressed three times running for seven to ten seconds to tonify the upper body. Pressing this point can also help with nausea, vomiting, colds, and constipation.
The Trager technique is a way of working with the mind and body simultaneously. According to the philosophy behind this technique, pain comes from the accumulated action of the patient frequently tightening her movements and posture. To correct it, the practitioner uses gentle motions to increase the patient’s pleasure in the quality of the tissues and decrease the restriction and the sense of holding. The practice works by reaching into the functional subconscious with particular qualities of movement, posture, and sensation. Gentleness is emphasized so that no message will be sent to the body alerting it that pain is on the way or causing the patient to tighten up. The movement reaches into the central nervous system with a motion at once pleasurable, lengthening, softening, and opening, conveying this sensation to the tissues and joints. The movements can be very small and internal or can be done at the periphery of the body in the limbs. In the latter case, the limbs are used as handles to reach the core.
Roger Tolle, a Trager practitioner, says that some clients will feel results immediately, as the touching allows them to release pain. In other cases, it takes a repetition of the information into the body and mind, which will gradually allow the client to relearn how to go about daily activity with a different quality of motion.
The Trager method works particularly well against pain in the temporomandibular joint (TMJ), neck, back, pelvis, and carpal tunnel.
Jane Kosminsky, an Alexander technique teacher, describes this modality: “The Alexander technique is an educational tool that teaches us first how to balance our heads well at the top of the spine. It teaches the correct use and relationship of the head to the spine and the spine to the limbs. We deal with the problems of the lower back, the arm, or the leg by focusing first on the balance of the head and its relationship to the spine.”
Actual exercise is not part of the Alexander program. “In Alexander we don’t do exercise, we don’t try to fix ourselves,” Kosminsky says. “We notice what we are doing and then we make the decision to say no to a habit that is not good for us. For example, we note excessive tension, crunching in the spine, pulling in the shoulders, and then we use the technique of visualization to effect change.”
According to the practitioners of Rolfing, pain is due to chronic shortenings in the tissue. Correction of this pain can be accomplished through soft-tissue manipulation. This manipulation acts to create order in the body so that the client stands tall and free of restriction.
David Frome, a physical therapist, states that Rolfing is done in a ten-session series designed to address all the shortenings in the structure systematically. Each session works in a different area. In the first hour, for instance, concentration is on the trunk, shoulders, and hips. In the second hour, work is done on the back and lower leg. Going through the complete series allows the therapist to work through all the body’s shortenings. During a session, a patient may experience a tingling sensation and a sense of release. The patient should strive to draw the deepest possible breath to aid in treatment.
The major goal of the treatment is not pain relief per se, but it has been found to help with TMJ pain, frozen shoulder, tennis elbow, carpal tunnel syndrome, chronic hip problems, sciatica, cervical neuropathies, and knee, foot, and ankle problems.
The sacral region is at the bottom of the spine. Between it and the cranium (skull), there should be a balanced rhythmic motion maintained for the health of the organism. When pain arises, it may be due to a restriction that disturbs the harmony between these two regions or between them and the rest of the body.
In craniosacral therapy, the practitioner places his or her hands on the client’s body in such a way as to try to bring the cranium and sacrum back into alignment, reestablishing a natural rhythm. Charles A. Kaplan, the founder and director of the Center for Pain Management, points out that this hands-on technique usually centers on touching the head or lower back but can be done anywhere, such as on the fingers or toes. Some patients will go through a first treatment and not feel anything, but most will leave the treatment table feeling very relaxed and stress-free.
Craniosacral therapy is recommended for dealing with muscular and skeletal pain, headaches, pains in the back and neck, sports injuries, sciatica, and nerve pain. It can also be beneficial to those recovering from pneumonia or bronchitis, helping by loosening the rib cage. Craniosacral therapy is a tremendous stress reducer.
With an ancestry as old as that of acupuncture and shiatsu, magnet therapy also acts to influence the body’s energy. Dr. Jim Joseph mentions that the healing power of magnets was known in China over four thousand years ago. Such ancient fathers of medicine as Galen and Aristotle discussed magnets, as did Paracelsus, one of the founders of chemistry. Mesmer and others in the nineteenth century also elaborated on the value of magnet therapy, and it is still being developed and practiced today.
Down through history, magnets have been used to deal with the causes of various ailments. As Dr. Joseph remarks, “Pain is a messenger. We don’t want to kill the messenger but find the cause.”
Pain in the body can be caused by positive energy being drawn to the site of injury. To bring about this transfer, the brain sends out a negative signal. Using the negative side of a magnet can augment and assist that reaction. Furthermore, around an injury there will be an acidic buildup. The negative side of the magnet is an alkalizing force that can help alleviate the pain accompanying this acidity.
A second source of pain arises when a person is overworked or suffering from undue stress, causing that person’s cells to be overly positively charged. Putting a negative magnet on a weakened area will repolarize the cells, restoring the balance between positive and negative charge.
The distortion of the cells’ polarity and resultant pain may also be caused by our technological environment. We are swamped with positive electromagnetic pulses coming from televisions, radios, electric clocks, and all the other electrical devices around us. The pulses of their fields are not congruent with the one found in our body and can throw us into disharmony and disease.
Magnets can be obtained in a plastiform case that can be molded and shaped for a particular area. They last indefinitely and are low priced. A medium-sized magnet may cost twenty dollars. Healing magnets are color-coded with the negative pole green and the positive red. The positive side of the magnet is active and sun-oriented; the negative side is relaxing and earth-oriented. All the treatments discussed here utilize the negative pole. One must be careful with the positive pole, since positive magnetism causes growth in any biological system, even cancer. Treatment should last from twenty minutes to overnight. The magnet’s power should be from 1,000 to 6,000 gauss.
A magnet can be wrapped with Velcro on the area to be covered. Special wraps in which the magnets are inlaid in Velcro are available. These wraps can be placed on most parts of the body, though they should not be used on the eyes. Negative magnetism attracts fluids and gases, and a negative magnet placed near the eye would draw out its fluids. If work is to be done on the eyes, the magnet can be placed off to the side. From this position, magnetism can be exerted on cataracts to reduce oxidation and free-radical development. The magnet’s value in reducing oxidation is due to the fact that oxygen is paramag-netic. When you breathe, you are pulling negative energy from the earth into your body.
At night, it is useful to lie on a magnetic bed pad and put magnets behind the head, where they will bathe the pineal gland in energy. This will induce a restful night’s sleep. By using a magnet, one can feel rested even after sleeping fewer hours than one normally does. Magnets have also been known to increase sexual abilities.
Magnets can help with shoulder pain, pain in the rotator cuff, and aches in the lumbar region of the back. They can be attached to the head or neck to deal with hypothyroidism, depression, migraine headaches, and problems with the vestibular system. For depression, the magnet should be placed near the occipital lobe.
Some therapists such as Dr. Art Brownstein, mentioned earlier, recommend a more eclectic approach, one that looks for and relies on the often-overlooked synergies that flow between the mind and the body. Dr. Ron Dushkin brings up a number of points to consider in dealing with pain. He notes, first, the importance of relaxation, which will quiet and calm the nervous system. Remember that when we feel pain, we are also feeling a layer of stress on top of that pain. If the layer of stress is relieved, the pain will diminish significantly.
Human touch can also play a part in relieving pain. As babies we like to be touched and as adults we still find this important.
A third overlooked factor in healing is humor. The late writer Norman Cousins tells the story of how he was hospitalized with a critical health problem. As he saw it, a lot of his physical deterioration was due to stress and negative thoughts from that stress. He reasoned that if we can create disease with stress, then by alleviating stress through means such as humor, we can cure disease. He had a movie projector brought into his hospital room and began showing Marx Brothers’ films and other comedies. Soon his room became a place of congregation for other patients who wanted to enjoy the shows. It got rather chaotic because so many people were coming into his room and laughing. You’re not supposed to laugh in a hospital. Some people were scandalized. Cousins said that the doctors would give him blood tests before and after he had been laughing at a humorous film and would find an improvement after the film. He also had less pain after laughing.
Guided imagery is also an element of the mind-body connection. With this technique, a sufferer places a hand over the injured area and invites the other cells in the body to go to the aid of the damaged area. After all, the body’s cells always work together, and this is one way to encourage their interplay.
All the methods mentioned as part of the mind-body connection get the patient to take charge of personal recovery. Many people are strong in many areas of life—pursuing a career, forming good relationships, playing sports—but when it comes to their own health, they turn over all control to a doctor. To really escape pain, the patient must play a big role in the recovery process.