Most of the pain we suffer we can do something about. We have a pretty good grasp of what causes the pain of headaches, and in alternative medicine we have many effective ways to treat arthritis.
Most back pain can be prevented and healed using a combination of physical and emotional healing, and with lifestyle changes alone, the pain of osteoporosis can often be prevented. This means that millions of people can avoid the use of painkilling drugs and their side effects.
If you have an acute pain such as a muscle sprain, you may need to warm up before you exercise in the future. If you have chronic pain such as back pain, you may need to do exercises to strengthen your back muscles. Exercise is the single best cure for chronic back pain and for arthritis.
If you have chronic pain such as from arthritis, try an elimination diet to find out whether a food sensitivity is causing inflammation in your joints. Or it could be a side effect of a prescription drug.
The Best Natural Remedies for Occasional Pain Relief
There are many ways to alleviate chronic pain before reaching for pain drugs. Here are a few favorite natural pain relievers.
Hot and Cold Packs. Ice is one of the best and simplest remedies for pain caused by inflammation.
The cold very effectively reduces the inflammation. Use a cold pack for 20 minutes every few hours for sprains and strains. For a muscle sprain or strain that’s been around for a few days or swelling caused by a bruise, first use a 20-minute cold pack, then a 20-minute hot pack. The cold will reduce the inflammation, and the heat will encourage blood flow into the area and help break up and remove damaged tissue so that healing can take place.
One of the simplest, cheapest, and most effective ways to relieve chronic pain is with what is known as moist heat. You can apply moist heat by taking a long, hot shower and aiming the showerhead at the area that hurts.
You can take a long, hot bath with relaxing herbal oils, or you can use a hot pack or a hot water bottle. If you have access to a Jacuzzi, you can aim the jets of water at the places that are painful.
Digestive Enzymes. If you have pain from a muscle injury or arthritis, try digestive enzymes.
Clinical studies show that enzymes help reduce inflammation caused by arthritis and injuries to joints and connective tissues such as muscle sprains, and can even relieve back pain. Enzymes tend to speed up the rate at which many bodily processes work, and injuries are no exception. Enzymes work at the site of an injury to remove damaged tissue, which reduces swelling, and to help the body repair itself.
Bromelain, which comes from pineapples, is an enzyme that has anti-inflammatory properties. One of the best combinations is quercetin, an antioxidant, and bromelain.
DL-Phenylalanine (DLPA). This is a combination of L-phenylalanine, an essential amino acid, and D-phenylalanine, a nonnutrient amino acid that helps promote the production of endorphins, natural painkillers made in the brain. DLPA can be very effective in the relief of chronic pain such as arthritis and back pain. While in most studies there have been no side effects at all from DLPA, it has raised blood pressure in a few people. Although this is unlikely to happen, please monitor your blood pressure if it is high and you take DLPA.
Don’t use DLPA in combination with antidepressant drugs or if you have phenylketonuria (PKU).
Vitamins and Minerals. There are vitamins and minerals that can play a part in reducing inflammation. These include vitamin C, vita-min E, and the B-complex vitamins. Taking a magnesium-calcium supplement can help relieve the pain of muscle spasms and often relieves chronic headaches.
A copper deficiency can cause inflammation in the joints, as well as fragile skin and connective tissue. The bioflavonoids, such as grapeseed extract and quercetin, can help reduce inflammation reactions.
Herbs for Pain
White willow bark (salix spp.) was used as a pain reliever long before a chemist at the Bayer company in Germany synthesized acetylsalicylic acid, or aspirin, from one of its active ingredients in 1897. Aspirin is a synthetic drug , but various teas, decoctions, tinctures, and poultices of trees of the salix species, most commonly known as wil-low and poplar, have been used to relieve pain for many centuries.
White willow bark doesn’t cause gastric bleeding or ringing in the ears as aspirin does and can be a very effective pain reliever, especially for headaches and arthritis pain. Traditionally, a tea of the inner bark was used to treat headaches.
A bath, wash, or poultice was used to treat aches and pains in the joints. You can find white willow bark in capsule or tincture form at your health food store.
Nearly 2,000 years ago, the Roman doctor Dioscorides, one of the first to write a medical textbook, recommended the herb feverfew (Chrysanthemum parthenium) for headaches. Fever-few is still the most effective treatment known for migraines.
It is the only medicine that will help migraine headaches without side effects. This member of the daisy family is also called bachelor’s buttons. Feverfew has undergone much testing and research as a migraine remedy, as pharmaceutical companies are trying to find the active ingredient so they can isolate it and synthesize it.
However, the lowly feverfew is not revealing its healing secrets, and the freeze-dried herb in capsules, or a tincture of the fresh leaves, is still the best way to take the plant. Feverfew has also been used successfully to treat arthritis.
Treating Chronic Pain with Herbs. Two of the biggest problems in chronic pain are stress and tension: physical, emotional, and mental. When you hurt all the time, you tend to tense muscles all over your body, creating additional areas of pain. People who suffer from chronic pain often become anxious and fearful, and feel helpless, which is understandable. Waking up and going to bed with pain as a constant companion is a traumatic experience.
For that reason you can try the herb kava with the goal of relieving anxiety and tension, and secondarily to relieve pain. Sometimes a little herbal help in relaxation can help start you on the path to healing.
• Kava (Piper methysticum). This member of the pepper family grows as a bush in the South Pacific. Kava is a sedative and muscle relaxant. The South Pacific islanders, who use it in much the same way many people in North America use alcohol, describe kava as a calming drink that brings on a feeling of contentment and well-being and encourages socializing.
Kava is also a pain reliever and can often be used in place of the NSAIDs. In a European study, people with anxiety symptoms given a 70 percent kavalactone extract in the amount of 100 mg three times a day were found after four weeks to have a significant reduction in anxiety symptoms such as feelings of nervousness, heart palpitations, chest pains, headaches, dizziness, and indigestion, all withno side effects noted.
For over 100 years, scientists have been trying to figure out exactly what it is in kava that gives it sedative and antidepressant properties. Although they have isolated chemical compounds named kavalactones, which act as sedatives and antidepressants when given alone, an extract of the whole root has always worked better. Kava also has a different action on the brain from any of our other antidepressants or sedatives, possibly working in the limbic brain, the seat of our emotions.
Used occasionally in medicinal doses, kava has no known side effects. In very high doses, it can cause sleepiness, and high doses over a long period of time can cause skin irritation and liver damage.
The FDA issued a press release cautioning against the use of kava because of “the potential risk of severe liver injury.” Virtually all prescription drugs and many over-the-counter drugs have the potential to harm the liver when taken long term in large doses. Acetaminophen (Tylenol) is a perfect example of a widely used over-the-counter drug that quickly becomes toxic to the liver when combined with other drugs or alcohol.
The kavalactones, and lactones in general, are toxic to the liver. However, it turns out that kava also naturally contains glutathione, a substance that protects the liver and is essential to its detoxification processes. The South Pacific islanders, who have used kava for centuries without problems, use the whole root and thus retain the benefit of the glutathione.
In Western countries, kava is most commonly sold as a liquid extract of the root: some of the active ingredients are pulled out in a laboratory using alcohol or acetone, leaving concentrated lactones and no glutathione.
Some researchers claim that low-alcohol or acetone extracts are safer.
Kava is useful when used in moderation but can be harmful when overdone or combined with other drugs. It’s not a substance to use daily for an extended period of time. It would also be wise to avoid combining kava with alcohol and to avoid the highly concentrated doses offered by some manufacturers.
• St. John’s wort (Hypericum perforatum). This medicinal plant with a beautiful yellow flower has been used by the Chinese, the Greeks, the Europeans, and the American Indians for centuries to treat heart disease, anxiety, insomnia, and depression. In a study of 105 patients who had symptoms of mild to moderate depression, half the patients took 300 mg of St. John’s wort extract three times a day for four weeks, and the other half took a placebo. Some 67 percent of the group taking the St. John’s wort had positive results, compared to only 28 percent of the placebo group. Another study comparing St. John’s wort to two standard antidepressants, amitriptyline (Elavil) and imipramine (Tofranil), showed that St. John’s wort had a better positive result. This amazing herb has also been used in studies alongside the antidepressant SSRIs, such as Prozac, and found to be as effective. And you guessed it, those taking the prescription antidepressants suffered from drowsiness, constipation, and dry mouth, while those taking St. John’s wort reported no side effects.
Healing Headache Pain Naturally
Headaches are a source of pain that bothers all of us at some time or another, but they can almost always be avoided with a bit of alertness to what might bring them on. Of course, nobody outside of yourself can help you solve the problem of “too much” headaches, as in too much alcohol, sugar, staying up late, TV watching, or Internet use.
How you cure your chronic headaches is a matter of uncovering the cause, and that will take some sleuthing. Once you have a few leads, you can track down the perpetrator and say goodbye to pain. It will be up to you to put together your own personal headache profile, but once you do, avoiding headaches will be a matter of commonsense solutions.
Headaches are an extremely personal matter, in the sense that the cause tends to be a little bit different for everyone.
Harry cured his headaches by eliminating certain foods from his diet. Sarah started using natural progesterone cream and tak-ing magnesium, and her migraines disappeared.
Francine banished her tension headaches by swimming at her local YMCA three or four times a week and taking a yoga class, where she learned some breathing exercises for muscle relaxation.
Six Core Principles for Optimal Health is your best bet for a headache-free lifestyle.
• Exercise. This is such a simple solution to headaches that it’s often overlooked. Moving your body improves circulation and increases oxygen in the blood, improves hormone balance, reduces stress and is relaxing, reduces anxiety and depression, and stimulates our brain’s natural mood enhancers and painkillers called endorphins.
• Magnesium. If there had to be one magic bullet for both migraine and tension headaches, it would be the mineral magnesium. It’s not clear whether magnesium banishes migraines by relieving muscle spasms or changing brain chemistry, but there have been many, many successes curing migraines with this simple solution. If you get migraine headaches, include magnesium in your daily vitamin regimen. You can take 400 mg twice daily , and if you feel a migraine coming on, take 400 mg immediately.
• Feverfew. The herb feverfew is another safe, natural, and effective remedy for both tension and migraine headaches. If you tend to get migraines, it’s best to take feverfew daily as a preventive until you’ve found the underlying cause. You can use it in capsule or tincture form, but since it tastes absolutely terrible, you might want to stick with the capsules! Follow the instructions on the container.
• Coffee. If you feel a headache coming on, a cup or two of coffee can constrict your blood vessels enough to prevent it. On the other hand, too much coffee can cause a headache, as can coffee withdrawal. Coffee is a stimulating drug and should be treated as such.
• Relaxation. Almost anything that helps you relax will help prevent and treat headaches. That includes massage, breathing exercises, visualization techniques, and meditation. Soothing herbal teas such as chamomile, skullcap, and passionflower can be helpful, and when necessary, you can use the more powerful antianxiety and antidepressant herbs St. John’s wort or kava.
Treating Arthritis Pain Naturally
Sometimes you can take care of arthritis naturally, covering all your bases with nutrition and exercise,and still get a painful flare-up that leaves permanent damage to joints. "Mary" is a good example. A couple of years ago, Mary’s pain and stiffness had been increasing in her hands and her hips, and the aspirin she had been taking to keep it under control was causing stomach pain. She started taking glucosamine and EFAs (essential fatty acids) and started easing off the aspirin gradually, over a period of two weeks. She also tried an elimination diet. Within a few months her arthritis was virtually gone.
But a few months after that, Mary experienced a painful flare-up of her arthritis that left her with a permanent knob on the knuckle of one of her hands. After closely examining her lifestyle changes during the flare-up, Mary realized that during the summer months she had been eating fresh tomatoes at least once a day, sometimes twice. Tomatoes belong to the night-shade family (along with potatoes, eggplant, bell peppers, hot peppers, and tobacco) and are renowned for aggravating arthritis in some people. As soon as Mary stopped eating the tomatoes, her arthritis symptoms eased up entirely.
To avoid permanent damage caused by a severe flare-up of arthritis, it’s important to treat the symptoms immediately, as well as look for the underlying cause and eliminate it as soon as possible.
For immediate treatment of symptoms, you can keep a cortisone cream on hand and rub it on the affected area every few hours until the pain begins to subside. (Cortisone creams are easily available at your pharmacy. They are not for long-term use, but are very effective in reducing inflammation for the short term.) For minor flare-ups, you can also use a cream containing capsaicin (cayenne).
In addition to the cortisone cream, you can take the supplements listed at the end of this section. Most important is to play detective and make a list of everything you’ve done differently in the week preceding the flare-up, to track down the culprit.
Other factors besides dietary allergens that may cause an arthritis flare-up are primarily related to inflammation. These can include exposure to environmental toxins such as pesticides, excessive estrogen caused by hormone replacement therapy (HRT), a leaky gut caused by taking NSAIDs (e.g., aspirin and ibuprofen), overdoing it with exercise or some other type of physical exertion, or a sudden onset of stress such as can happen when traveling and visiting family.
If the culprit is stress, resist the temptation to blame the stress on the outer cause (e.g., travel, family, illness of a loved one) and work on your inner response to the stress. You can’t control your outer environment much of the time, but you can always control your inner environment, and that is one of the great secrets to serenity.
Delayed Food Allergies Are the Biggest Culprits. Alternative health care professionals are finding that nearly all of their patients with arthritis can be helped at least some by eliminating food allergens from the diet, and some patients can be cured this way. According to a Scandinavian study, delayed food allergy tests (such as the ELISA) do not seem to be good predictors of foods that cause arthritis.
This means that the very best course of action at this time is an elimination diet. This is one step that everyone with arthritis should take. Glucosamine. A natural treatment for arthritis in clinical studies relieved the symptoms of osteoarthritis and in some cases reversed the disease.
This substance is glucosamine, a naturally occurring compound in the body that can help keep cartilage strong and flexible, and can also play a role in repairing damaged cartilage.
Like bones, the cartilage found in tendons, ligaments, and other connective tissue is very much alive. When it becomes damaged in a healthy person, it is slowly but surely replaced by new cartilage. As we grow older, our bodies become less efficient at repairing cartilage.
Glucosamine is a key substance in the cartilage rebuilding process. It provides basic cartilage building blocks and stimulates the growth of cartilage. Animal studies have also shown that through a presently unknown mechanism, glucosamine reduces inflammation.
There have been at least five excellent studies done comparing the effects of glucosamine versus NSAID drugs such as acetaminophen, ibuprofen, and aspirin. In each study, the NSAIDs group improved faster during the first two weeks, but after a month the effectiveness began to wear off and side effects such as stomach and digestive problems began to appear. In contrast, after four to eight weeks, the glucosamine group showed a high degree of relief from pain, joint tenderness, and swelling. A study that did before-and-after electron micrographs of cartilage taken from both a placebo and a glucosamine group showed continuing arthritis in the placebo group and nearly healthy cartilage in the glucosamine group.
In one recent study that compared the effects of glucosamine sulfate and a placebo on the progression of knee osteoarthritis, it was found that three years of treatment with 1,500 mg a day of glucosamine sulfate halted the progression of cartilage deterioration and joint space narrowing. Those who took the placebo showed progressive joint space narrowing, to the tune of 0.19 mm over three years. Symptoms improved 20 to 25 percent with glucosamine sulfate and only modestly with the placebo.
Other studies have shown glucosamine therapy to be as effective at relieving arthritis pain as the NSAID ibuprofen. None of the glucosamine groups reported any significant side effects.
If you are suffering from osteoarthritis, bursitis, joint pain, swelling, or tenderness, you might want to try glucosamine. Take one 500-mg capsule three times a day for eight weeks, and then taper it down to one 500-mg capsule daily for maintenance.
Fish Oil Continues to Be a Winner. Research continues to indicate that omega-3 fatty acids found in fish oil can reduce arthritis pain considerably. A study from the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle that looked at diet and arthritis found that people who ate baked or broiled fish more than twice a week had less risk of rheumatoid arthritis. Other kinds of fish, such as fried fish, didn’t have an effect. You can take fish-oil capsules, but watch for rancid oil, which will do you more harm than good. Whether or not you supplement, make a point of eating cold-water fish two or three times a week.
You can also get omega-3 fatty acids from flax oil, but it’s not recommended in high doses for the long term, as it can suppress both “good” and “bad” prostaglandins, the hormonelike substances that create or subdue inflammation. Flax oil is also notoriously unstable, meaning that it goes rancid almost immediately, which is counterproductive. If you would like to add flax to your diet, take it in the form of whole flax-seeds ground to a powder with a coffee grinder just before you add it to your food. Try it in smoothies, in yogurt, on cereal, sprinkled over salad, or mixed with nut butters.
DHEA May Be Good for Arthritis, Too. A researcher from the National Institutes of Health was the author of an article in the Journal of Rheumatology stating that men and women with rheumatoid arthritis tend to have lower than normal levels of DHEA (dehydroepiandrosterone), and men have low testosterone levels. For many of the chronic problems of aging, including arthritis, you can try taking a DHEA supplement of 5 to 10 mg daily or every other day for women and 25 mg daily for men.
Vitamin C Saves Joint Tissues. A study from a researcher at Boston Medical Center in the journal Arthritis and Rheumatism reported that people with rheumatoid arthritis who had higher levels of vitamin C had significantly less progression of the disease and less knee pain, due to a reduction in the loss of cartilage. Cartilage is made from collagen, and vitamin C is a key component of collagen.
You can take up to 3,000 mg daily in divided doses to prevent and treat arthritis.
Other Supplements to Reduce Inflammation. One of the first steps in cooling down an arthritis flare-up is reducing inflammation, which should be done as quickly as possible. Following are some herbs, vitamins, and other nutrients that reduce inflammation. As a preventive measure, you can take them in one of the many arthritis formulas that contain combinations of these supplements. For flareups, increase the dose of the formulas or take them separately.
To prevent both chronic arthritis and flare-ups, it’s extremely important to follow the Six Core
Principles for Optimal Health, taking the vitamins, drinking plenty of water, and getting some exercise. Keeping muscles strong will support joints better, and movement helps move toxins out of the joints.
• Pregnenolone, a steroid hormone, can be very helpful in treating arthritis. Most of the studies were done decades ago, but interest in it as an arthritis treatment was dropped because it can’t be patented. It has no known side effects and often improves memory as well. You can take 100 mg two to three times daily.
• Bromelain (from pineapple) is an enzyme that helps heal tissues and speed up the removal of inflammatory waste products from the joint. Other digestive enzymes such as papain (from papaya) can also be helpful.
• Turmeric or curcumin (curcumin is the active ingredient of turmeric), which you mainly know as a spice, is a powerful anti-inflammatory that works as well as cortisone for some people during arthritis flare-ups. For a flare-up, you need to take 300 to 600 mg of curcumin, three times a day in capsules. (If you take turmeric, you may need as much as 50 grams a day, which is overdoing it!)
• Cat’s claw or una de gato (Uncaria tomentosa) is a South American tree. Its inner bark is used to treat arthritis. You can take it as a tea (the way the natives take it), in capsules, or in tincture form. Take 1 to 6 grams for a flare-up, or drink a cup or two of the tea a week as a preventive measure.
• Ginger is one of the best healing herbs that is effective in reducing inflammation of all kinds.
Experiment with adding fresh ginger to foods. Ginger tea is delicious with a touch of honey and is great for relieving nasal, sinus, and chest congestion.
• Vitamin D is essential for healthy joints. Recent research has shown that low levels of vitamin D can contribute to the progression of osteoarthritis. Be sure you’re getting out in the sunlight for at least 15 minutes a week, summer and winter, and if you live in a cloudy climate, you may want to include
1,000 to 2,000 IU of vitamin D in your daily vitamin intake during the winter months.
Treating Carpal Tunnel Syndrome Naturally
Although the general wisdom is that carpal tunnel syndrome is caused by repetitive movement, our great-great grandparents did plenty of repetitive movement—just think of plowing, spinning, sewing, and churning butter, to name a few—and yet carpal tunnel syndrome was relatively unknown until the past few decades. Repetitive motion may just be the final insult to already aggravated wrist nerves.
It’s very likely that there are nutritional and hormonal factors associated with carpal tunnel syndrome that are important to pay attention to. It’s clear that a vitamin B6 deficiency is involved in carpal tunnel syndrome, and a B6 deficiency may have even more to do with carpal tunnel syndrome than repetitive motion.
Pyridoxal-5’ -phosphate, the active form of vitamin B6, is a cocatalyst for a large number of enzymes. It reduces inflammatory reactions in connective tissue and promotes collagen repair. Vitamin B6 is also essential to the production of progesterone, a hormone that balances excessive estrogen.
Women get carpal tunnel syndrome more than men do, some women get it when they’re pregnant, and both sexes get it around middle age, leading us to suspect that hormonal imbalance may aggravate or precipitate carpal tunnel syndrome. We also know that low thyroid and birth control pills are associated with carpal tunnel syndrome.
When estrogen is present in excess, it can cause salt and fluid retention, interfere with thyroid hormone, reduce the level of oxygen in all cells, and reduce vascular tone. All of these conditions aggravate carpal tunnel syndrome. We’re living in a sea of xenoestrogens (environmental estrogens) from pesticides, plastics, and even soaps, not to mention exposure through hormone-treated meat, so that even men are exposed to excessive amounts of estrogen.
A woman named "Beth" who uses a computer for a living began to have wrist pain and stopped using her computer immediately. The pain persisted, so she tried taking vitamin B6 and that helped some, but she had to take large doses to get relief. Then Beth realized she was eating a snack food every day that contained yellow dye no. 5 (tartrazine), which depletes vitamin B6. Within days of avoiding yellow dye, her wrist pain began to go away.
Once carpal tunnel gets established in the nerves of the wrist, it is very difficult to treat. It’s important to pay attention to any type of pain in the wrist that doesn’t go away after a few days and to stop doing the aggravating motion immediately.
To aid in healing carpal tunnel, in addition to 50 to 100 mg of vitamin B6 daily you can take ginkgo biloba to improve blood supply to the affected area. Since ginkgo improves circulation to the extremities, it seems a logical choice for carpal tunnel syndrome.
Written By Lisa M.
