The Health Blog

While it is a big step forward, the pain clinic concept does not provide all the answers for all the complex cases seeking help. Despite the many patients who have been helped, doctors are still not miracle workers and the emphasis is on effective pain ‘management’. This does not always mean pain control, and in fact often means simply learning to cope better with ongoing pain.

Those who will not be helped

There are sometimes people who cannot be helped, no matter how much effort is made. These are people who will increasingly become the victims of their beliefs that only narcotics or surgery can help them.

A cry for help

‘Why can’t these doctors help? Surely the problems are due to adhesions in my stomach?’ complained Joanne who had a very long history of abdominal pain commencing after she had her stomach stapled four years previously.

The operation was a total disaster. It should never have been performed because she was not really overweight enough. She subsequently had another ten operations on her abdomen!

Even worse, she had become an opiate addict, even involving her husband who was giving her two to three injections of pethidine a day at the time she was admitted. These had been prescribed by her local doctor who had run out of other options. He had not thought of the dire consequences of allowing this manipulative patient to self-administer potent narcotic pain-killers to herself.

Joanne was referred to the pain clinic because nobody else was able to help her. When she came into the pain clinic, she was told she would have to give up narcotics and look at the alternatives.

This was a firm condition of her admission as part of the unwritten contract she agreed to before admission. It was carefully explained to her that, fundamentally, there was no obvious cause for her pain, and that the pain medicine which her husband was giving her was simply lowering her natural pain defences by preventing her body from producing its own endorphins.

There simply was no physical explanation that could be found for the pain and itsuapparent severity. Certainly, the pain clinic team could not find any adequate explanation for why she should be on narcotics.

She was told that there was no possible way that the dosage of narcotics she was taking was being used just for pain control. Clearly, she had become addicted to them.

Joanne was brought into hospital as an emergency. Sadly, she left three days later because she was not prepared to give up the narcotics. She was re-admitted a week later to the in-patient pain programme where again she was given a lot of support. It was again stressed that she would have to stop using narcotics and that attempts would be made to try to find alternative methods of treatment for her problems.

But, within a week, she and her husband decided that this was not for her and she discharged herself.

There are many ‘Joannes’ who will go on creating problems for surgeons and other doctors, convincing them to operate for pain relief. Most importantly, the Joannes of this world make their own life miserable beyond imagining. Such patients have to be active participants in their own treatment. Being a spectator just is not good enough.

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Simple painkillers In the absence of any locally correctable cause for the pain the simple painkillers such as aspirin and paracetamol should be tried. These should be taken on a regular basis. Drugs such as aspirin (600mg 3-4 times daily), and paracetamol (lg 3 times a day), or any of the non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs such as Feldene or Orudis prescribed in doses sufficient to reduce pain.

Aspirin seems to have a greater pain relieving effect than paracetamol in cancer pain due to bone involvement. When these drugs cause vomiting nausea or gastric irritation, alternative forms of medication with protective coating such as Ecotrin tablets or the suppository forms of Indocid, Naprosyn and Orudis will be of value.

Adjuvant or ancillary drugs These drugs are known to assist the pain-killers to act more effectively than when the pain-killer is taken alone.

The antidepressant drugs appear to have a pain-killing effect which is quite separate from their primary role of relieving depression as discussed earlier in this book. The more commonly prescribed antidepressants of which Sinequan, Prothiaden and Anafranil are typical should be prescribed in doses of at least 50-100mg (2-4 tablets) per night. These drugs bring about a decrease in depression, improved sleep and a decreased need for pain-killers.

In those whom there is increased pressure around the brain due to brain tumours or blockage of the fluid surrounding the brain and spinal cord (the cerebro-spinal fluid), the steroid or cortisone drugs may help to decrease the pressure and thus the headache and pain.

The major tranquillisers such as Largactil are effective in reducing nausea and producing sedation where necessary.

The minor tranquillisers such as Valium, Xanax, and Serepax also have a role in the treatment of the anxiety associated with cancer pain and in the treatment of associated non-malignant soft tissue pain and muscle spasm.

Anti-epileptic drugs also have a role in the treatmenf’of cancer pain. The most commonly used drugs for the treatment of pain due to the cancers involvement of nerves are Tegretol and Rivotril. These will also be useful in the treatment of epilepsy caused by brain involvement in the cancer.

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Keep your eyes closed. Now think back to a time when you heard some wonderful vibrant music. You could have heard it anywhere. By thinking back, you can hear it even more exquisitely in your own mind. You make it yourself and you can experience it as intensely as real music. The music can be absolutely powerful — strong, exquisite. It’s vibrating through every pore of your being. It’s going deep into every pore. It’s penetrating through every fibre of your being. It’s the most beautiful, complete, exquisite and overwhelming music you’ve ever heard. Listen to the music now, as you create it in your own mind. Give yourself 15-20 seconds to experience the music. You can stop thinking of the music now.

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How does TENS relieve pain?

Two possible ways to explain the effectiveness of TENS in the relief of pain seem to be the ‘Gate Theory’ and the theory that TENS increases the liberation of endorphin in the blood and spinal fluid.

According to the gate theory, there is a gate between the source of the pain and the area of the brain which perceives the pain, and normal non-painful sensations pass through this gate from the source of pain to the brain. As a result of treatment with TENS the strength of these sensations can be increased enough to squeeze out the pain impulses and permit the gate to block them. According to the other theory, the increase in the liberation of endorphin by TENS acts to block the transmission of pain impulses to the brain.

Can TENS be used for all kinds of pain?

According to world literature there seems little doubt that TENS will block out many forms of pain, such as that caused by childbirth, surgery, trauma, organic lesions and arthritis.

However, it is important to realise that pain may well be a useful and important warning that something is wrong with a person’s body. To block out such pain would be ignoring that warning and could be harmful.

Can TENS become addictive?

When someone has chronic pain, the cause of which cannot be treated directly, he or she may have to take pain pills for a long time. In such a case there is a real hazard of addiction to the medication requiring increasing doses to achieve an effect. As well, there are other possibly undesirable side-effects to some medications. There is no evidence that TENS is addictive.

Can TENS cure a pain or make it worse?

It is very difficult in advance to know what effect TENS will have on pain, because there are many kinds of pain and many causes. Those with a certain kind of pain will not react in the same way. Despite this it is probably safe to say that it is unlikely that TENS will ever make a pain worse. At most clinics where TENS is used the results are that some will achieve partial relief after two to three treatments, others complete relief after 3 or 4 weeks and suffered recurrence of the pain between one or two years later, and still others only felt relief while the machine was being used. This latter group requires continuous stimulation to obtain relief of their pain.

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This is a very controversial area. The putative link between food intolerance and alcoholism is based on case-histories of dried-out alcoholics, many of whom were seeking treatment for other symptoms. Regardless of what these other symptoms were, most also complained of extreme tension, great fatigue, continuous headaches, or other such symptoms.

These symptoms had begun when they gave up drinking, but had not cleared up despite many years ‘on the wagon’. Some sought treatment because these symptoms had become so unbearable that they felt they were about to hit the bottle again.

According to the doctors treating these cases, the case-histories show a common pattern. For many of these patients, the elimination diet was apparently very successful – it brought relief from the tension, fatigue and other symptoms. More surprisingly, the craving for a drink, which is the bane of reformed alcoholics, also disappeared for the first time. When they began to reintroduce foods, they experienced unusual reactions to some of them: in some patients, certain food items supposedly produced symptoms akin to drunkenness. It invariably turned out that the food concerned was a major ingredient of the drink the patient had formerly favoured – potatoes for the vodka alcoholic, wheat, barley or maize for the whisky alcoholic, grapes for the confirmed brandy drinker.

These discoveries were first made by Dr Theron G. Randolph, one of the founders of the clinical ecology movement in the United States. Dr Randolph interpreted the findings as follows:

The patients concerned were primarily intolerant of/addicted to a food. (Addictive eating is often a feature of food intolerance. Small amounts of food protein remain in an alcoholic drink, and can pass through the gut wall and into the blood much more readily than food proteins that are eaten in the ordinary way – simply because of the alcohol. The alcoholic is addicted both to the food and to the alcohol. When die potent combination of the two are withdrawn, the reformed alcoholic is still eating the culprit food. So his ‘addiction’ is kept alive, and he continues to crave his favourite drink – the ‘jet-propelled’ version of his addictive food, in Dr Randolph’s words. If he can identify the culprit food, and avoid it for some time, this lingering addiction is broken.

The revolutionary implication of Dr Randolph’s theory is that reformed alcoholics can drink again, as long as they avoid the drinks that contain their culprit foods. Because this goes against the conventional wisdom on alcoholism – which forbids the reformed alcoholic to ever drink again – Dr Randolph’s work has been rejected out of hand by organisations such as Alcoholics Anonymous. There have been no scientific studies of his claims, although his basic findings have been confirmed by several other doctors working in this field.

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If you are not in a happy mood when you wake up, think of something joyful. Open your windows, breathe deeply for about five minutes and the lingering tiredness will soon leave you. This exercise will put a different, happier face on things, even though you got out of bed on the wrong side. Moreover, if you do something for the body at the same time, you are well on the way to acquiring a positive mood. According to your nature, this may be washing yourself down with hot or warm water or taking a shower. Additionally, it would be useful to do some exercises, resulting in a pleasant feeling of warmth and a good start to the day. You will enjoy breakfast more than usual if you clean your teeth properly beforehand and gargle to cleanse and refresh your throat thoroughly.

Take pleasure in your food and make sure that it is both tasty and natural. Do not be a slave to time with one eye always on the clock. Eat peacefully and slowly, chewing your food well. In this way you will extract all the nourishment possible and your internal organs will benefit from the work your teeth and salivary glands have done for them. Those who enjoy and value what nature’s garden so generously gives us should remember to be grateful and not take the well-laden table for granted. There are so many things in which we can rejoice that there is really no time left for discontent.

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I learned about the danger of television to our health some years ago when staying with friends in the United States, where I noticed that their children sat in front of the screen for hours at a time. The parents usually had great difficulty in persuading them to come to the table to eat or to go to bed. The consequences of this unnatural enthrallment were not in the least welcome; in fact, they were disturbing and difficult to combat and overcome. The children were in an overwrought state, with a poor appetite; their scholastic achievements had dropped; they were absent-minded, lacked concentration and were much more subject to infectious diseases. Indeed, even at such a young age their health had already been undermined.

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The beekeeper, a simple, unin-fluential man, has decided not to sue for compensation; he could not risk losing the case and facing bankruptcy as a result.

Today, totally untouched places in nature are few and far between, and their number continues to, decrease, so that we wonder where it will all end. I remember talking to a zoologist I met in Guayaquil, Equador, as he was preparing to travel to the Galapagos Islands to study the iguanas, large lizards, living there. He poured out a tale of woe about the devastation being inflicted and how, soon, he would hardly know where to go anymore to study certain animals in their natural habitat. Wanton destruction and killing and the advance of civilisation were changing the environment so drastically that these animals were being robbed of their habitat and chance of survival. Something or someone has to pay when short-sighted, one-sided measures are taken and the biological balance of nature is disturbed.

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However, the hardening process has a detrimental influence on the quality of the product since metallic compounds can remain in the fats, even if only in homoeopathic dilution. Furthermore, the unsaturated fatty acids are transformed in the process into high-melting stearic acids, which do not have the same health value. If you want to remain healthy, avoid the hardened fats, even though they may be easy to use and store.

Why, then, do the unsaturated fatty acids have the above-mentioned advantages, whereas the hardened fats have lost them? The answer is quite a simple one. They are not saturated and therefore able to become saturated. That is, the unsaturated fatty acids are still able to combine with other elements. Figuratively speaking, they are still single, unmarried, and therefore ready and willing to enter a relationship. They will combine with the minerals, proteins and oxygen in the body and in this way encourage normal cell metabolism and oxidation. If these functions are interfered with over a period of years, even decades, the cells degenerate and disease will inevitably manifest itself. Cell growth may become abnormal and malignant, cancerous. The phospholipoids may degenerate and this can lead to thrombosis. Where there is a lack of polyunsaturated fatty acids and in their place an excess of saturated ones, the cholesterol in the blood will combine with the fats and deposit itself on the walls of the blood vessels, giving rise to hardening of the arteries (arteriosclerosis), high blood pressure and the danger of apoplexy or a stroke.

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Celery juice is distinctly alkaline and eliminative. It is therefore recommended for all disturbances caused by the accumulation of wastes and toxins, for example rheumatic and arthritic ailments. Celery juice regulates the water balance and puts new life into elderly people.

Tomato juice is recommended as a protection against premature aging, as well as the symptoms of overtiredness and unpleasant body odour. It is refreshing and cleanses the body.

Unlike the other juices, which are good for health but also delicious taken before meals to stimulate the appetite, potato juice is strictly remedial, and is particularly indicated for the treatment of stomach ulcers.

Vegetable juices enhanced by lacto-fermentation have a stimulating and balancing effect on our vital intestinal flora.

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