Early morning conversation with a patient about joint pain.

People often think that chiropractors must love a good ice storm, with all those people slipping and falling.  Well, that’s not the case.  It is actually very rare that people come in from falling on the ice, maybe 2x a year.

What does bring more people to the office than anything else is… rain.  Lately we have been getting more than our fair share of it.   One of my best weather predictors is a patient.  His joints are so bad that he can tell if the rain is coming 2 days early.

So what’s going on with those joints?

When rain comes to town we get a low pressure system.  There have been many theories tested about humidity, temperature, etc, and it boils down to pressure.  When there is less air pressure, the arthritis joint (meaning: joint inflammation) swells to add more pain to the surrounding tissues.

The most common form is Degenerative:

This is why 18 year old don’t complain about the weather.  Through out life your body takes it’s shares of trauma.  I’ve seen them as severe as snowmobile accidents, and serious car accidents to slipping on the ice or getting hit by your dog.

Injuries can even come from carrying kids, talking on the phone or writing long blog posts for patients at a computer.  These are called microtraumas.  Little stressors over time can build up and cause problems later.

As a chiropractor, I see degenerative joints every day.  Heck, mine started to degenerate when I was about 10.   Yes, you heard that right.  I had massive back pain at 20 years old and even at 20 years old I had bone spurs developing.  They were big enough to date back about 10 years.  Did I have pain back then, NO.    The injuries can start early (I played lots of sports) and pain only comes when there is enough damage.

As people get older those joints keep deteriorating and eventually there is so little space left that a simple change in air pressure causes them to hurt more.  So what do you do?

If you are younger than 50…get to the chiropractor regularly or move to Yuma, Arizona (sunniest place on earth)

Try and stop the progression before the damage is permanent.  The 2 major things that cause a joint to deteriorate are:

• Lack of water
• Lack of motion

Water is needed to keep the joint spaces slippery and quiet.   But the ringer is you need enough water coming in to satisfy you heart, lungs, brain, nervous system,  muscles, bones, etc.  Your joints are last on the list.  Good clean water is needed, and soda doesn’t count.

You could drink all that good water and it may not be doing your joints any good.  Huh?

The second half of the equation is MOTION.  The joints have to move to pump the water inside.  There are no blood vessels going inside, they would get crushed by the weight.  This is less evident in the extremities but very easily seen in the spine.   If one joint is injured the ones next door will pick up the extra work and you’ll never know.  A chiropractic adjustment is the only way to get individual damaged joints moving again.  People often ask how often they have to come.  Really, that depends on the individual and their needs and desires.

If you drive from New York to California,  when should you change the oil?  I’m active and tough on my body and I have a history of many injuries.  I like to feel great every day, and I personally feel the best getting adjusted every week.  That allows me to do what I want and still feel great.  Some people feel the best at 2 weeks, others feel the best at 4 weeks.  I even have a guy who only comes 2x a year.  But, he feels great.  It really depends on age, damage, time, and desires.

Between 50 and 65 there seems to be a grey zone.

Some people are really doing fantastic, others seem ready for the bone pile.  Once again, it all depends on how well you take care of yourself.  Aches and pains really start to ramp up in this age range.  It isn’t too late.  One of our patients with severe low back pain had almost no space between his last 2 vertebra.  I worked on him regularly for 3 months and he was pain-free and the best part was you could now see daylight between the bones on x-ray.  So his spine was repairing itself.

Over 65… and not using a chiropractor, you need to be thinking about trying to stop it from getting worse.

Many times there is 20-50 years of damage layered in here.  Plus, the body has compensated into new forms and muscle patterns.  You can see this when people are hunched over or bent to the side.

Often we can stop the progression with lots of regular work, but it becomes a matter of just helping people live a pain-free life.   This kind of deterioration feels the rain coming.   One other problem that this age range faces is a significant slowing down of healing.

My point is this, if you are feeling aches and pains, those are signs that there is trouble.  Even if it is only when the rain comes.  That is a good indicator that your joints need help.  So often the joints need to get adjusted and moving again.  Here is one of the secrets to growing old gracefully.   Joints that move properly don’t hurt.  When joints deteriorate and become stiffer they actually send pain signals to your brain.  How great would that be to get older and NOT take any pain pills!  Pain pills just hide the problems and let them get worse.  I’ve seen amazing things happen, so it is worth a shot to try.

Just in case you thought about waiting to take care of yourself, you can’t wait until you are 75 and aching all over to start preventing problems.  Too late… start when you are young.

• Get adjusted regularly… not just when you hurt.  That’s like exercising when you are 60 lbs. over weight.  It helps but not nearly as well.
• Drink water…not tap water, yuck!
• Exercise…anything helps.  I like H.I.T.
• Eat more raw foods…  Arthritis is often said to be a cooked food disease.  Comment on our site if you want it and I’ll send you his diet.  It isn’t on our website, yet.

Speaking of food:

Arthritis does have a strong nutritional component.  If you want the arthritis fix diet from Bruce West just leave a comment on our site.  If you are looking for supplements you can check out Bruce West’s End Your Joint Pain.

Jack gives you some sound advice on health, chiropractic, and exercise.

Jack can save your life with this video about eating better.

Kids with tremors

What would you do if you couldn’t get Tylenol at the store?  What if you had to see a medical doctor for all of your pain killers, just for arthritis, headaches, back pain, or your husband.  The idea is being floated by the FDA.  This is serious enough that the pharmaceuticals pet monkey (the FDA) is actually, maybe, growing a backbone.  They put together a 35 person panel to investigate new restrictions to the sale of acetaminophen over the counter or even removing it all together.

Why?

Acetaminophen is the leading cause of liver failure.

What happens is people are combining multiple drugs and not realizing they are getting an unsafe and potentially toxic dose of acetaminophen.

Such as:
Tylenol - pain
Percocet - pain
NyQuil - colds
Theraflu - colds

10% of the deaths involved cold medications.   Since 2 billion dollars is at stake.  Plus, Johnson and Johnson, the makers of Tylenol, are suggesting that if people don’t have Tylenol they will use more non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs which can cause intestinal bleeding and fatal kidney injury.
-(6-30-09 AP)

So what to do?  Tough conundrum.

I recognize that there is a time and place for pain killers.  They are most often needed for short term duration.  Where I see the problem is on the long term use of these drugs.  The everyday use is going to catch up with you.  They all have side effect.  Most people think of Tylenol as harmless, right.  Hospitals brag that they use it because it is so mild.  Now we have the FDA talking about yanking it from the counters because it is hurting too many people.  OK.

What to do?

For those short term uses most people are going to probably turn to some kind of pain reliever.  I recognize that.  I order two bottles of our most potent pain killer last week for patients and often don’t think to tell people that it exists.  So here goes.  Mediherb makes “Saligesic”  which is white willow bark, basically Indian aspirin.  The original aspirin that the modern drug was derived from.  As usual “people” screw stuff up.  Turns out that the natural aspirin doesn’t cause stomach bleeding like the drug version.  We use it primarily for low back patients who just can’t wait for some relief.  I don’t advertise or generally start off recommending it because I would prefer the body to heal naturally.  But sometimes the pain is to great.

To give you an example,  the last time I had to use it was a few years ago.  Our patient had never had back pain before and wham, out of the blue she was practically incapacitated with pain.  As fate would have it, one of her good friends was hit with back pain during the same week.  Now, I realize people are different and you can’t compare them, but I will anyway.  Within a week of chiropractic adjustments and “Salegesic” as needed she was about 90% better.  Her friend who didn’t seek any natural help, was still in alot of pain and using MORPHINE.  We still laugh at that.  Her morphine friend could comprehend that she was just getting adjusted and using white willow bark.

Back on topic.  Even with white willow bark it is a short term thing.  What about chronic pain?  This is a problem indeed.  Based on patients in the office here are my top choices.

#1 Chiropractic.
For a lot of people with pain that has been going on a long time it often goes away with 2-6 weeks of adjustments.  Mine did.  A couple things are happening here.  If there is joint damage, a stuck joint hurts, pure and simple.  Joint damage can occur with a big hit in football, a car accident, falling or any kind of sudden impact.  It can also occur with slow repetitive things like carrying kids on the same hip, talking on the phone with your head holding the phone, repetitive jobs, Looking off-center for long periods of time, etc…  A stuck joint sends pain signals to the brain telling your brain there is a problem here.  A healthy joint that has been recently damaged will instantly feel better after an adjustment.  If it has been going on for years, then it can take a few weeks to get enough motion back into the joints.  This is one of the secrets to growing old gracefully and pain-free.

#2 Food allergies or intolerances.  Bruce West first wrote about this last year in a newsletter and the patients who have done it have had excellent success getting rid of pain.  If chiropractic doesn’t give you pain relief you need to look at your diet.  There are actually three parts to this.

Part 1: Omega-3 fatty acids.  Most people don’t get enough, especially if you eat lots of grain products, which the dieticians tell you to eat with the moronic food pyramid.  Grains have lots of omega-6 fatty acids.  These little gems cause pain and inflammation.   So if you eat lots of grains and don’t eat ocean fish or take some kind of fish oil supplement, you need to start here.   Eat more proteins, good fats, and veggies.  Now add some fish oil supplements or my favorite, cod liver oil.

Part 2: Certain foods themselves can trigger pain.  You can do an expensive allergy panel, or take some time and see how food effects you.  Spen 4 days only eating watermelon and zuccini.  They are the least allergenic foods.  After that, evaluate your pain.  If it is better but not gone, keep doing the diet until your pain is gone.  It could be 10 days.  If you are pain-free start adding one new food a day.  If your pain starts to come back you know right there that it isn’t a good food for you.  This is not easy.

Part 3: Drink water:  lack of water alone can cause pain.  Lots of pain, drink 10 glasses a day (~80oz.)

These three tips can keep you pain-free for the rest of your life.  You may need the odd painkiller after being out all night, but that isn’t the problem here.  We don’t want long-term pain killer use.

Doing things the natural way may take longer, but it is much healthier for you, and worth the time.  I am a living example.  I used to be miserable until I fell into chiropractic and a good diet, and I was only 21 y.o. and miserable.  The longer you wait the harder it is.

Get adjusted, eat some good food…til next time.

Alternative medicine, supplements, herbs, and alternative treatments are becoming more common with doctors and even hospitals.  There seems to be a lack of information and communication about quality and uses of medical alternatives.  Interesting article in today’s paper about alternative medicine.  It even lists the University of Maryland Medical Center as using Reiki therapy.  It must be working because “the anesthesia chief Dr. Richard Dutton calls it ‘mystical mumbo jumbo’.  Still he is a fan” -Associated Press 6-8-09

“People are turning to unconventional therapies and herbal remedies for everything from hot flashes and trouble sleeping to cancer and heart disease.  They crave more ‘care’ in their health care.  They distrust drug companies and the government.  They want natural, safer remedies.” -Associated Press 6-8-09

A study was done in 1990 by Dr. Eisenberg that seemed to highlight a sleeping giant.  This study was very eye opening to medical community and those of us in the alternative community.  They estimated visits to unconventional therapy provider at 425 million, while at the same time there were 388 million visits to medical doctors.  The majority of the use was for chronic conditions and not life-threatening thing.  83% were also seeing their medical doctor for the same condition and…

Here is the ringer…

72% of patients never told their medical doctors.  I actually experience this same phenomenon quite often.  I find that people are generally afraid to tell their medical doctors because they feel like they will be yelled at.

As more and more people turn to aternatives there are some integration problems.

One of the main problems we will all face with acceptance is highlighted in the article when medical schools are looking for “evidence-based, non-judgemental care”.  Alternative therapies aren’t cut and dry like medicine.  For example: a drug over rides the body and tells it to do a certain action.  A herb gives the body choices.  It lets the body choose what it wants from the herb.  Therefore doing double blind clinical tests will very difficult.  The medical world thrives on studies.  Alternative therapies are more clinically and history driven.

I know our herbal company, before they formulate a product they look at how it has been historically dosed for thousands of years and take that into account along with scientific studies.

Studying nutrition poses a similar problem.  It is very difficult to keep people locked up and monitor everything they eat.  The two studies I can think of were very dramatic.  One was right here at the U. of Minnesota.  It was a severe calorie restriced and carbohydrate based diet, that drove the participants crazy with many mental and physical problems.  The other was overseas, and looked at the opposite with a high fat diet and the participants had no physical or mental breakdowns.

One other note to keep in your back pocket about alternative therapies.  There are very few studies done.  Why?  Because drug companies have zero interest in studying them.  Government and doctors want supplements to be regualted and in a way I would like that too, but not by the medical community or the governement.  That is like the fox guarding the hen house.

“When it says ‘natural’ the perception is there is no harm.  And that is just not true” -Associated Press 6-8-09

Horse poop…

That’s natural!  By definition it could be in your supplement.  In the supplement industry there is a lot of deception and misguidance.  There should be some manufacturing guidelines and labeling guidelines.  The one thing I have learned over the years is that the labels on products are often wrong and I never buy herbs manufactured in America.  The guidelines are very sloppy and the studies I have seen have not been good, when they analyze the contents it often is less than the label would indicate.  Our herbs comes from Australia, where they have a pharmaceutical grade standard.  So what it says on the label is in the bottle.  Not so in America, where there is a food grade standard.  There are a lot of thing s to know about herb and I will write another post on those later.

This should change but likely won’t. 

The definition of vitamins is so loose it considers antioxidants as vitamins, which is not true in the real world.  A recent study by Boston and German researchers found that “when young male exercisers took moderate amounts of vitamins C and E, the vitamins shut down the body’s natural defenses against cellular damage.  The study author Dr. Ristow says ” If you exercise to promote health, you shouldn’t take large amounts of antioxidants”.

To the average researcher and person shopping for supplements on store shelves they aren’t using healthy products or real products for that matter.  That’s why when the researchers studied the C and E supplements they caused harm.  If it is not a whole food supplement it is going to cause you harm.  Look on the label.  Do you see foods listed?  Or a bunch of names you can’t pronounce.   I  don’t buy vitamins off the store shelves because quality matters to me and the chance of finding a high quality vitamin off a store shelf is very, very low.

The researchers tried to nourish the exercisers with banana peels instead of the fruit on the inside.  The Antioxidants as they were used, and listed as vitamins, are like eating banana peels.  They are meant to protect the good fruit on the inside, not to nourish and heal a body after exercising.

Thats why Dr. Ristow recommends fruits and vegetables, “which provide a more moderate dose of vitamins and also contain natural micronutrients that help keep the body in balance.”

Alternative therapies are here to stay, but be smart about using them.

#1 If you are not using any alternative doctors.  The largest group of licensed professionals are chiropractors.  I get adjusted once a week and every time I get adjusted I think about how many people have no clue about how good they can feel.  I went from writhing in pain, unable to walk, to rollerblading in 2 weeks when I started.  Chiropractic is an experience.  Unless you have been, you don’t know.   In a survey we did, 70% of patients preferred to get adjusted once per week or more often if they could come whenever they wanted and had no time or money restrictions.

#2 I take whole food supplements, nothing off the shelf.  There are very few absolutes in health, and this is one of them.  As early as the 1920’s vitamin deficiencies were being documented in the general population.  In the 1940’s -1950’s when food processing began to really take off, vitamin deficiencies soared.  Now, it is even worse.  It was nice to see medical doctors embracing the fact that people need supplements.  The problem is that they don’t understand the difference yet between the current recommendations of mass-produced mega-dose vitamins and whole-food supplements.  This is why I take Standard Process supplements and Mediherb herbals.  I can tell from my own personal experience and my families, they work.  I don’t need a volume of scientific studies to tell me they work or that the foods in there are good for me.

#3 Don’t expect overnight miracles.  People see immediate effects with drugs because they take over the body, sometimes it is necessary.  There is a cost to this and all drugs have side-effects.  Alternative therapies don’t work like that.  For example: Herbs often take 3 months to start taking effect.

#4 Alternatives aren’t meant to be last ditch, life saving alternatives.  It is more about prevention and long-term management of chronic problems.  If you aren’t in a crisis, you might be surprised at how great your health can be with alternative therapies.

#5 The best source of information about alternatives are not medical doctors or the government.  You are obviously on our website (docaltman.com), you can also use mercola.com (the vitamins aren’t as good as Standard Process, but better than the grocery store) and my favorite is westonaprice.org.