How to Treat Chronic Pain Naturally

Female Speaker: What are the natural ways to treat chronic pain? Dr. Todd Ferguson: Well, first of all you have to look at the cause. Pain is a huge issue. It's one of the number one issues we have to go to the doctor. So, look at the cause and find the cause of your pain. And that cause then affects how you treat it. Well let's state for instance, the general category of inflammation. That is an underlying factor in many causes of pain. So, if you look biochemically at the whole inflammatory process, it's really interesting. There is a molecule called NF-kappa B and this is a kind of the like the conductor of an orchestra when it comes to conducting inflammation expression in the body. It actually tells your genes what to produce and express in regards to the inflammation, and so there are different causes that can upregulate NF-kappa B which then tells your genes to upregulate cytokine production and enzyme production that affects inflammation down the road. So, you have a pathway of what are these causes, so things like dysbiosis or an imbalance in the bacteria in your gastrointestinal tract. Things like hormonal imbalance having too much or too little of a hormone, things like excess toxic exposure in the environment or poor liver functioning or too much stress or nutritional deficiencies or too much sugar. All these things can upregulate NF-kappa B and when that upregulate, it upregulates the expression of cytokines, cyclooxygenase, lipoxygenase of tumor necrosis factor of all these different things, that eventually lead to inflammation. And so when one is that an approaching inflammation, we look out what are the things that modulate NF-kappa B? What are the things that modulate cyclooxygenase? What are the things that modulate lipoxygenase? And medically speaking, aspirin affects cyclooxygenase and inhibits cyclooxygenase. Corticosteroids inhibit the pathway of arachidonic acid, 3-cyclooxygenase inflammation. they inhibit an enzyme called phospholipase A2 and interestingly of there are herbs, nutrients, supplements, modalities that affect the same pathways although with less force and side effects. So, NF-kappa B what inhibits, NF-kappa B modalities. Vitamin D inhibits that and many people especially in the northern latitudes are deficient in vitamin D. A high dose of selenium and zinc can affect that EPA and DHA, which are fatty acids found in fish oil can affect NF-kappa B, alpha folic acid, and ALA, which is a fish oil or which is an oil found in flax oil? Hops, which is an herb can actually modulate NF-kappa B of resveratrol, which is found in red wine or red grapes can down regulate NF-kappa B leading to less inflammation. Now, inflammation is a good thing. It's a normal thing your body makes and so, sometimes it is a good thing as needed for life. If you couldn't make inflammation, you have some issues. But the issue in chronic pain is long term inflammatory production and that's what's our problem is long after the incident that originally cause the inflammation it continued on. And so, now let's look at those other end, cytokines and enzymes. What affects those? There are many herbs that herb are very effective for pain and inflammation. A Harpagophytum on this one, which is called Devil's Claw, a willow bark is another one and that is originally where aspirin came from, and they are actually had the head trials of willow bark with Vioxx, which is COX-2 inhibitor medication showing that willow bark was just as effective, safer and cheaper. Now, incidentally, Vioxx has been taken off the market due to some side effect issues with cardiovascular disease, but the point is that herbs can do really effective. Another herb would be turmeric is these anti-inflammatory although you have to take a lot of it for it to be effective. A ginger is both a cyclooxygenase and lipoxygenase inhibitor, and ginger itself contains you know over 400 known chemicals that's very complex herb and many of those are anti-inflammatory. So, it is not working as powerful on a one specific enzyme that says aspirin, but it's working on many different pathways. So, as more of a modulating affect it's not going to turn off a system, but it's going to help down regulate pain and inflammation and there were actually studies showing musculoskeletal pain, rheumatoid arthritis, osteoarthritis, ginger helping that. Unless it goes on and on of herbs, garlic, onion, bromelain, which is an extract from pineapples, all these things have been shown to be helpful with pain and inflammation. And, also and that same biochemical pathway, there are -- laser has actually been shown to modulate that pathway to down to speed the cell through the healing process and get over that inflammatory expression and the exciting thing about all these things I'm talking about is when NF-kappa B is stimulated and all these enzymes are stimulated, they lead the pain, inflammation that eventually lead to disease like cardiovascular disease like depression, like osteoarthritis, rheumatoid arthritis, the -- that inflammatory process feeds back into the loop and actually stimulates NF-kappa B again. So once it's gets going, it can't be the cycle and so the idea is to break that cycle to get a self-perpetuating cycle and Female Speaker: But, it can be broken. Doctor: But it can be broken, yeah. Female Speaker: Thank you very much. Doctor: Thank you.