Pain Management and Naturopathy

PAIN MANAGEMENT & NATUROPATHY

Dr Abe Abrahami, ND, FBIH, ORM

DISCLAIMER:

This paper is for educational purposes only and it contents are not a substitute for medical diagnosis and treatment.

Neither the conventional treatments nor the Naturopathic approach may always provide a full answer to pain alleviation. However, working in conjunction with one another, they do offer a more complete and robust answer to controlling pain whilst minimizing side effects.

1. Introduction
Pain is an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience that is normally associated with injury or threat of injury to body tissues. The behaviour of a person in pain must be understood as a complex interaction of physiological, psychological, and sociological factors. For example, differences can be observed between individuals and between members of different cultures in their degree of response to injury. In everyday life, acute pain performs a valuable function in minimising the harm of accidental injury or minor disease. Persons who are born without the ability to feel pain or who develop such an inability through disease are at great risk of the consequences of unrecognised injury.

2. Sensory Mechanisms
The basic elements of pain are the sensory impulses generated by injury-sensitive receptors in the NERVOUS SYSTEM. These sense organs, called nociceptors, convert mechanical, thermal, or chemical stimulation that injures or threatens tissues into impulses that are transmitted along peripheral nerves to the SPINAL CORD, and from there to higher brain centres. Nociceptors occur in the skin, blood vessels, muscles and fascia (the fibrous sheaths that cover muscle), subcutaneous tissue, periosteum, (the tissue that covers bone), internal organs, and other structures.

3. Spinal Cord Pathways
At junctions called synapses, the sensory nerves transmitting injury signals connect with spinal-cord pathways that carry information to higher brain centres, where sensory, emotional, and thinking mechanisms produce the conscious experience of pain. Two kinds of pathways carry injury signals in the spinal cord. One has long nerve fibres that connect directly with a central relay station, the thalamus (in the MID-BRAIN), from which other neurones reach to the cerebral cortex. This system conducts injury information rapidly and transmits information concerning the site, intensity, and duration of damaging stimulation-information that is perceived as a sharp, localised pain.

INFLAMMATION at the site of injury produces chemicals that sensitise the nociceptors, for example, so that they fire in response even to minor mechanical stimulation. Thus inflammation enhances injury signals. In contrast, damping occurs in several ways at the junction of the peripheral nerves and spinal cord, as when repetitive signals from nerve endings that detect touch and pressure close a "gate" in the spinal cord that blocks the transmission of injury impulses. Gating also occurs when certain pain-inhibiting neurones that descend from the base of the brain (brain-stem) are activated. The gate they control in the spinal cord is activated by MORPHINE and similar opium related (opioid) drugs, and by certain naturally occurring substances called ENDORPHINS that are produced within the brain. This natural pain activation process is thought sometimes to act spontaneously during emergencies such as accidents or combat. This process may also be activated by NATUROPATHIC means.

4. Chronic Pain
Sometimes the pain of an injury or disease never completely disappears with healing, or HEADACHES or other pains appear for no apparent reason and then recur or never subside. Such chronic pains are a major health problem in the entire industrialised world; in the United States and the UK, about one-third of the population would at some time experience persistent or recurring pain that requires medical therapy.

5. Pain Relief and Analgesic Drugs
Many ways exist for controlling or relieving pain. The use of ANAESTHETICS for surgery is familiar, and ACUPUNCTURE and HYPNOSIS have also been tried. For other relief of pain, ANALGESIC drugs such as ASPIRIN, ACETAMINOPHEN, and IBUPROFEN can be used in cases where inflammation is present. Opioid drugs work by mimicking the naturally produced substances that activate pain-inhibiting systems in the brain-stem and spinal cord. These drugs bind themselves to sites throughout the brain and body (OPIATE RECEPTORS) and can cause undesirable side effects such as nausea and confusion. With prolonged usage, patients also require larger doses and might become addicted. Historically, such addiction fears have led doctors and nurses to treat acute pain rather sparingly. In consequence, acute-pain services now often include patient-controlled analgesia through installed intravenous pumps, as well as physician injection of morphine directly into areas adjacent to spinal receptors thus reducing side effects.

6. The Naturopathic Approach
Herbal-nutritional supplements are a part of Cognitive-Synergy Therapy, which embraces among other things meditation and visualization exercises described in the book COGNITIVE-SYNERGY YOUR POTENT HEALING POWER by Dr Abe Abrahami.

6.2 Biochemical Approach
We have been using a unique herbal-mineral formulation which was designed by the renowned Naturopath Dr Jan de Vries.
This unique formula consists of following natural substances:
• Zinc (as Amino Chelate)
• Valerian Officinalis (Valerian root)
• Humulus Lupulus (Hop)
• Mellisa Officinalis (Lemon balm)
• Crataegus Oxyacantha (Hawthorn berry)
• Passiflora (Passion flower)

Zinc
Zinc acts like a “traffic policeman”, directing and overseeing the efficient flow of body processes, the maintenance of enzyme systems and cells. Zinc is important to maintain the body’s acid-alkaline balance, blood-sugar balance, muscle contraction-ability, the synthesis of DNA. Recent research suggests it is important to brain functions, including secretion of substances such as ENDORPHINS, the body’s own natural pain-killers. Some cases of schizophrenia and epilepsy are reported to have improved as a result of treatment with Zinc.

‘Communications’ - the journal of the European Science Foundation (ESF), winter 1998/99 edition contains an exciting article about the role of metals in biochemistry, following a successful research programme which began in 1991 under the auspices of Professor Jens Ulstrup, ESF vice president. Metal ions [such as Zinc] have a key role in biochemistry both by contributing to protein stability through their presence in the centre of large molecules, and in catalysing a wide variety of reactions, by providing the vital transport for electrons within a process, or in the reduction of oxides.

Examples of the vital processes that depend on metal ions include the transmission of nerve impulses where Sodium and Potassium ions play a big part by maintaining correct concentrations of positive ions.

Says Dr Hugo Nielsen, a Danish acupuncturist who practices electromagnetic therapy and won the International Congress’ gold medal in 1978: “The combative action of white blood cells to combat the attacking substances is by the way of a chemical reaction which creates very high voltages in the body’s electrical control system. The result is that all the affected cells lose their Sodium/Potassium balance.”

Thus one may re-balance the altered state of cells and relieve pain by applying a combination electromagnetic therapy, and administering Zinc, as we practise at the Peach Rejuvenation Clinic.

Valerian Root
Valerian is a powerful nervine, stimulant, carminative and antispasmodic. It has a remarkable influence on the cerebro-spinal system, and is used as a sedative to the higher nerve centres in conditions of nervous unrest, St. Vitus’ dance (a nervous tremor disease), hypochrondriasis, neuralgic pains, and the like.

This herbal substance allays pain and promotes sleep. It is of special use and benefits to those who suffer from nervous overstrain, as it possesses none of the serious after effects produced by narcotics. During the Second World War it was successfully used to calm civilians during the Nazi air raids on London.

Valerian has been used among other things to control insomnia, cardiac palpitations, and epilepsy.

Hop
This is anodyne, diuretic, febrifuge, hypnotic, sedative, and tonic plant. Hops have been commonly used for their calming effect on the nervous system, against restlessness, and insomnia. It is commonly used in combination with Valerian.
It also helps to stimulate appetite, dispel flatulence, and relieve intestinal cramps.

Lemon balm
This is an antispasmodic, calmative, carminative, diaphoretic, emmenagogue, stomachic plant. It is useful against common female complaints, hysteria, melancholia, insomnia, stomach cramps, dyspepsia, flatulence, migraine, tooth-ache, and some forms of asthma.

Hawthorn Berry
This is a cardiac, diuretic, astringent, and tonic plant. It is mainly used as a cardiac tonic for organic and functional heart troubles, and also for kidney problems.
Passion flower

The plant is known to be a depressant to the motor side of the spinal cord, slightly reducing arterial pressure, though affecting circulation but little, while increasing the rate of respiration. It is used for epilepsy, and its narcotic properties cause it to be used in cases of diarrhoea, dysentery, neuralgia, sleeplessness, and dysmenorrhoea.

6.3 Electromagnetic-Crystal Therapy
Electromagnetic-Crystal therapy was developed in the middle eighties by a physics teacher and scientist; Harry Oldfield, principal and founder of the School of Electro-Crystal therapy in London. The therapy has had noticeable success with a variety of health disorders, and has been reported numerous times in the press, on radio and television, both in the UK and abroad.

In their book; ‘The Dark Side of the Brain’, the authors explain the history and latest state of the art in energy medicine, notably electromagnetic treatment, from early in the 20th century to-date. In this book the authors reiterate that the body is not only a biochemical mix and balance of fluids and solid material. It is very much also a complex network of electromagnetic impulses, of which balance is affected by environmental, nutritional, and psycho-physical stresses and strains.

We already know that the disturbed Sodium-Potassium cell balance, which is expressed in pain, caused by electromagnetic imbalance, can be reversed and re-balanced by the application of electromagnetism. We also know that electromagnetic disturbance within living organisms can alter their DNA structure, and cause deformity and ill health.

Therefore, just as pain and disease may be caused by electromagnetic disturbance within the body, so it may be reversed by electromagnetic energy.

According to Albert Einstein, a gram of matter is equivalent to 24 million kilowatts of energy. Imagine a minute fraction of this energy being excited and channelled in a very subtle way by a 9 volt battery operated electromagnetic generator to stimulate the body to activate its own healing pain-repair mechanisms.
This is done with by Electromagnetic-Crystal therapy, whereby a sealed glass tube filled with saline water and natural quartz crystals, is connected to this portable electromagnetic generator.

Crystals and their therapeutic effects have been known for thousands of years - since ancient Egypt, and were documented on ancient parchments and pyramids. Electromagnetic-Crystal therapy combines ancient wisdom with modern technology.

WHAT TO DO NEXT:
For more information go to www.Peach-Rejuvenation-Clinic.org