WORLD WITHOUT PAIN
by Lynn Hinderliter CN, LDN |
Living in the shadow of constant, grinding pain is a dehumanizing
experience which imprints itself on the character, and even on the
face. Some people are transformed by it to sainthood, but they are
few.
I hope to provide the inspiration for you to take the problem into your own
hands with renewed hope. It is so easy to give up in the face of
unrelenting pain and fatigue, but just knowing that we
ourselves can do something to affect the situation gives it a more positive
spin,
and as you persevere with this new life style, it is my wish for you
that hope will become reality, and life will once again become a
daily joy rather than a daily agony..
The three most relevant things about pain is
that one, it is idiosyncratic: no one can judge to what
degree the same condition will hurt two different people; two,
while it is an important messenger, letting us know
unequivocally that something needs to be fixed, it is also both a major
producer of stress in the body and a cause of depression; and three,
there is hope.
The statistics are
overwhelming as this article from the
American Academy of Pain Management shows
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Pain is a silent epidemic in the United States. An
estimated 50 million Americans live with chronic pain
caused by disease, disorder or accident. An additional
25 million people suffer acute pain resulting from
surgery or accident. Approximately two thirds of these
individuals in pain have been living with this pain for
more than five years. The most common types of pain
include arthritis, lower back, bone/joint pain, muscle
pain and fibromyalgia. The loss of productivity and
daily activity due to pain is substantial. In a study
done in 2000 it was reported that 36 million Americans
missed work in the previous year due to pain and that 83
million indicated that pain affected their participation
in various activities. .....
Untreated pain has significant impact on the pain
sufferer and their family. The Chronic Pain in
America: Roadblocks to Relief study,
demonstrated clearly that pain has a negative impact
on an individual’s quality of life.
Pain diminishes their ability to
concentrate, do their job, exercise, socialize,
perform daily tasks and sleep. All resulting in an
unrelenting downward spiral of depression, isolation
and loss of self esteem.
.... Pain is complex and defies
our ability to establish a clear definition. Pain is
far more than neural transmission and sensory
transduction. Pain is a complex melange of emotions,
culture, experience, spirit and sensation.
In 1986, the International
Association for the Study of Pain grappled with
this pain conundrum by defining pain as “an
unpleasant sensory and emotional experience
associated with actual or potential tissue damage or
described in terms of such damage.”
This definition speaks to the
inherent subjectivity of the pain experience. As
Turk and Melzack observed in 2001, “There does not
appear to be a simple isomorphic relationship
between the amount of pain and the extent of the
tissue damage.” This is particularly true when
referring to chronic pain, both moderate and
intractable. Thus, it is reasonable to believe
that the unique characteristics of each individual
impact their experience of pain. (Lynn: my
emphasis)
.... four out of five
Americans believe that pain is a part of getting
older, and approximately sixty four percent would
see a doctor only if their pain became unbearable.
Sixty percent of the respondents said that pain was
just something that you have to live with. A
surprising twenty eight percent indicated that they
felt that there was no solution for their pain ..
FULL TEXT HERE for references, see this
text. |
Most commonly, sufferers will
initially try to address the pain themselves with
over-the-counter chemical remedies, trusting that these will not only
help, but also that they are relatively benign, Unfortunately,
this is not so.
A case in point: I was talking the other day to an old friend of my
husband, who had contacted us after 30 years of silence: he
had been a paratrooper, and having been told to "live with the pain"
of his damaged joints, spent those years popping painkillers daily.
- He had suffered a heart attack
- He had been through prostate cancer.
Consider also
the alarming link between the common pain reliever acetaminophen
(Tylenol)
and liver problems. Here is an interesting quote:
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Data from the U.S.
Acute Liver Failure Study Group registry of more than
700 patients with acute liver failure across the United
States implicates acetaminophen poisoning in nearly 50%
of all acute liver failure in this country. Available in
many single or combination products, acetaminophen
produces more than $1 billion dollars in annual sales
for Tylenol products alone. It is heavily marketed for
its safety compared to nonsteroidal analgesics. By
enabling self-diagnosis and treatment of minor aches and
pains, its benefits are said by the Food and Drug
Administration to outweigh its risks. It still must be
asked: Is this amount of injury and death really
acceptable for an over-the-counter pain reliever?
SOURCE
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The recent events surrounding the
Cox-2 inhibitor Vioxx are fresh in everyone's mind, a sad state
of affairs that I commented on
in my Blog in 2004. In England, Doctors have been
instructed by the Government to take their patients off ALL
medications of this type. This makes sense: all Cox 2
inhibitors affect the same pathways, and therefore there is a
reasonable supposition they will have the same cardiovascular
risks. Not so well known (perhaps, she says snidely,
because it involves women - still to a certain extent
underserved by medical research) is the danger to
fertility posed by Cox 2 Inhibitors.
Recently the FDA rejected yet another drug of
this type, suggesting that there is no safe way to control pain
using this appraoch.
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But there is hope for Pain
- and the most effective approach is multi-faceted.
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Fortunately we are emerging from
the dark ages when health professionals thought of their
patients' pain almost as a nuisance, something that
had to be put up with - by both parties!. Compassionate caregivers now will
recommend a number of approaches which hold out promise of
relief, from
acupuncture to
meditation, including many alternative
remedies, topical and internal, which have substantial research
to support their use.
A Selection of supplements
A Selection of topical creams:
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