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Pain relief…….at what cost?
There is no question that some drugs provide great defence against acute, short-term pain, which alerts us to an injury or disease, and then subsides during recovery. Chronic pain, however, is very different.
After an injury has healed, chronic pain may later show up as a variety of symptoms, from headaches to body aches to even crippling fatigue. This pain may stem from an underlying condition, such as osteoarthritis or multiple sclerosis, or may even have no obvious source. For some, chronic pain can begin with nerve damage from diabetes, chemotherapy, a virus, a car accident, or some other trauma. In these cases, the injured nerve fibres can mistakenly continue to send pain signals to the brain, causing what is known as neuropathic pain.
No matter how chronic pain starts, it is often seen to increase and spread, leaving many people reaching for even more painkillers. Unfortunately, higher doses of medication do not guarantee relief and can actually make matters worse. Patients build up a level of tolerance to drugs over time, so that it takes an even higher dosage to blunt out the same level of pain, and this higher dosage comes with the increased risk of dangerous side effects, such as addiction, or even coma and death!
As dramatic as this may sound, there is no other way to convey the extent of the outrageous ransom to which many people are being held, in that certain prescribed drugs can sometimes even intensify the very pain they are meant to be suppressing!!?!! Uhh!!! Explanation required NOW, please!!!!!
Whilst the responsibility for providing the medical rationale for the above may not lie with me, I do believe I owe it to my clients, and anyone else out there, to share my clinical observations, together with the benefit of my family’s rich lifetime of experiences in dealing with all forms of healing, both traditional and alternative.
We know that painkillers work extremely well in the short term because they mimic our brain’s own morphine-like molecules, in that they drown out incoming pain signals. When an injury is inflicted on the body, our natural opiates are released, and they go only where and when they are needed. When introduced synthetically, however, in the form of a pill, they go everywhere and this activates receptors throughout the entire body. As a result, these drugs can cause all manner of side effects:
- The brain’s circuitry recognises the pain is being dampened so it shuts down its own natural production of opiates. This means tolerance develops quickly and higher doses become the norm.
- In the gut, we see opiates moving very slowly, which invariably leads to constipation.
- The spinal cord reacts in such a way that people can develop intense itching in response to drugs.
- The reward pathway in the brain is stimulated, which means pleasurable sensations can lead to addiction.
- In extreme cases the brain stem can be affected where these drugs drown out signals from the neurones controlling our breathing, so leading to death by respiratory failure.
Please don’t lose heart because, despite these potential horrors, there is a way forward. By turning inward, instead of outward, we can find much more effective, and far less damaging, solutions:
- Complimentary therapies, including yoga, mindfulness-based stress reduction, biofeedback and acupuncture, have all shown brilliant results against chronic pain.
- Psychological interventions targeting anxiety and the tendency to catastrophise are also helping people to reduce their experience of chronic pain.
Remember, painkilling drugs may work well for acute pain, but this is not the case at all for chronic pain. The latter is fundamentally different and therefore requires a much broader and multi-pronged approach. Stay focused on staying well and remember……. stay happy!