Natural Treatment For Pain

Natural Treatment For Pain

- Jonny Browden, PhD, CNS

Q: I’m on a strong prescription drug for chronic pain. Is there a better way to treat it? — Taryn Johnson , Ft. Worth, TX

A:Theologian and physician Albert Schweitzer once said, “Pain is a more terrible lord of mankind than even death itself.”

Pain affects everything, including your ability to work, which affects your ability to maintain health insurance, which affects your economic security. It also affects your stress levels, your sleep, and even your weight. A 2006 survey for the American Pain Foundation found that pain affected concentration, energy level, and overall enjoyment of life. More than 75 percent of patients surveyed reported feeling depressed. And 86 percent reported an inability to sleep well, which, we know from voluminous research, can impact everything from hormonal health to obesity.

While most of us are familiar with acute pain—a normal sensation that alerts you to a potential injury—chronic pain is a whole different animal. Chronic pain persists for weeks, months, or even years. A National Institutes of Health survey found that the most common type of pain is lower back pain, followed by neck pain and severe headaches or migraines. Chronic pain affects approximately 100 million people—more than diabetes, cancer, heart disease, and stroke combined. It’s a problem that costs society somewhere between $560 and $635 billion a year, which comes out to about $2,000 for every single person living in the U.S.

“In 2010, enough painkillers were prescribed to medicate every American adult every four hours for a full month,” says Holly Lucille, RD, ND. Indeed, pain drugs are the second-largest pharmaceutical class globally, after cancer medications.