Now you know, before getting into specific supplements and protocols to use as natural pain solutions, you first have to deal with the underlying inflammation. Otherwise, you will just be addressing symptoms and not the root cause, and as soon as you stop what you’re doing, the pain will return again.
You might want to get checked for inflammation biomarkers, which include:
Although there appears to be a strong link between inflammatory biomarkers, inflammation, and disease, there are many cases where the biomarkers are not high enough for detection, yet there is still inflammation and disease development happening. That’s why it’s better to look at the full picture, including physical symptoms, lifestyle, environment, and psychological state to determine if something is going on.
For example, certain types of hormonal imbalances, such as those experienced by women during key hormonal changes like pregnancy and menopause, are almost always accompanied by inflammation, even if inflammatory markers are not detected. That’s why many women develop an autoimmune disease shortly after such a big change, and why adopting an anti-inflammatory lifestyle before, during, and after these hormonal changes is key.
With hormone deficiencies, bio-identical hormones can be useful. But normally, the first things that need to change in order to treat inflammation are your diet and stress levels.
When considering possible food sensitivities, if you can’t correlate a specific food with an allergic reaction, this doesn’t mean that your body is okay with allergenic foods. It’s just that not all food allergies have immediate and obvious reactions, like a sudden rash or a tight throat. Sometimes it can take up to four days for the allergic reaction to occur. This is why doing an elimination diet is one of the best steps to take to weed out foods that are triggering inflammation.
To do this, you eliminate all possible allergenic foods, including sugar, alcohol, dairy, gluten, highly refined and processed foods, nuts, shellfish, and any other possibilities. You can look up a comprehensive list online. That will leave you with a very simple diet, but it shouldn’t be difficult to maintain. You should also refrain from using any non-essential medications and supplements.
Then introduce each type of food back into your diet, waiting at least four days before introducing the next one. Watch for any changes after the introduction of that food, and write them down. You will find certain foods, like sugar, may not trigger allergic reactions, but they are still not good for your gut. Sugar feeds the bad bacteria, and so makes it harder for the healthy bacteria to keep the bad bacteria under control.
After you complete this process, you will know all the different foods you should avoid and the ones you tolerate well. Plus, you will also have given your gut and microbiome a chance to reset, and you should already start to feel a huge improvement. This alone can be one of the best natural pain solutions. But there’s more.
After you’ve eliminated from your diet all the substances that can irritate your gut and create an imbalance in your gut flora, there are steps you can take to reinforce the anti-inflammatory process even more. Certain types of foods, spices, and supplements act link natural pain solutions helping calm inflammation and bring down pain. We’ll get into those in more details below.
But first, let’s look at how adrenal fatigue and the NEM stress response can help you in your fight against chronic inflammation and chronic pain.
When your adrenals are weak, their cortisol output is not balanced, and you can experience the symptoms of AFS, such as fatigue, easily gaining weight, difficulty losing weight, difficulty waking up in the morning, brain fog, mild depression and anxiety, food and drug sensitivities, hypoglycemia, food cravings, an inability to handle stress, low libido, and PMS.
Sensitivity to pain also increases, and pain increases your stress levels. When you experience pain, there is always a stressor that is causing it, whether an injury, infection, or inflammation. These stressors are usually met with a stress response that first tries to help you cope with the stressor, and then it initiates the repair process. Once complete, your system goes back into a state of homeostasis.
If you have AFS, your ability to handle these stressors is lowered, leaving your body lacking as it tries to deal with stress properly or get back to homeostasis. If you have chronic pain and chronic inflammation, that puts a lot of pressure on your adrenals and can dysregulate them and the rest of your NEM stress response. As you can see, these two issues feed into each other.
One way to interfere with this cycle, discussed above, is eliminating inflammatory foods. Another way to disrupt this cycle is by reducing psychological stress.
Learn ways to manage stress and even turn it into eustress – healthy stress. There are many methods and resources available, such as meditation, breathing techniques, therapy, biofeedback technology, certain types of exercise, support groups, journaling, and taking adaptogens.
Next, you’ll want to strengthen your adrenal glands so they can help you handle stress. This includes getting enough rest and good quality sleep and following the adrenal fatigue diet. The great thing about the adrenal fatigue diet is that it is anti-inflammatory by default, so you don’t have to overthink things. Also, consider trying adrenal breathing and adrenal yoga exercises.
Once your adrenal glands are back to normal, which will take time if you have AFS, especially in the more advanced stages, your sensitivity to pain will decrease and you’ll be more able to handle stress. It is another step on the path towards natural pain solutions.
Most people tend to think of pain as an active, sharp sensation, like a herniated disc or a sprained ankle. But pain comes in many different forms, in different intensities, and with different sensations. You can have a splitting headache, like a migraine, or a dull ache in the back of your head. You can have a sudden and electric pain, like a pinched nerve, or a pulsating and warm pain, like the day after closing the door on your hand.
Acute pain is not usually an indication of chronic inflammation, though some inflammatory conditions can cause episodes, or flare-ups, of acute pain, but then the pain slides down to a more low-level, ambient feeling.
Migraines, Lyme disease, fibromyalgia, neuralgia, and even chronic fatigue, all cause different types of pain, and each one has a trigger at some point. Looking for this trigger is an important step in finding the right natural pain solutions, instead of doing the usual: taking a prescribed opioid and then checking back with your doctor after a few months. These kinds of issues have many causes, involve many factors, and should be treated as such.
In mainstream medicine, pain is regarded as a nuisance, something to quickly get rid of and move on. But pain has a purpose, and it’s not the bad guy. It is alerting you to something going wrong that you need to pay attention to, and that something is not the pain itself. It’s what is causing the pain.
For example, with obesity, you can get chronic hip, knee, and ankle pain. Your adipocytes are signaling to your brain and creating inflammation. It’s not just to make your life miserable, the signal is a message: do something about the obesity. It’s actually a safety measure to help you overcome much more dangerous consequences later on. In that sense, the pain can save your life.
All of the different medical specialties have inflammatory conditions specific to them. For example:
If you’ve ever suffered from any of the above or had a loved one treated for it, what was the usual treatment? Most likely antibiotics, immunosuppressive drugs, anti-inflammatory drugs, TNN alpha inhibitors, and the like - each one bringing with it side effects and not really addressing the root cause. Furthermore, the gut is likely to suffer from these treatments, perpetuating the chronic inflammation that triggered these issues in the first place.
It’s no wonder people are now looking for natural pain solutions more and more. And thankfully, there are many.
© Copyright 2018 Michael Lam, M.D. All Rights Reserved.
