Saturday, October 3, 2009

Alternative Medicine And Natural Pain Management

By Richard Ealom

Constant Pain conditions are a rising problem in the US. And while the discussion still rages about whether or not chronic pain should be managed as a independent condition or just a symptom of a different problem it is apparent that pain managing has become a thriving segment of the healthcare business.

Consequently, the use of pharmaceutical drugs for pain restriction has also reached an all time high point. Drugs such as Oxicontin, Vicodin and methadone, are front page news flash in causing Americas latest drug predicament, as a result, the consumption of cocaine and heroin have also reached levels not observed in this nation in 3 decades years.

Due to the economic and scientific phenomena of the pharmaceutical transformation of the twentieth century, thousands of yrs. of knowledge were rapidly dumped. Herbal medicine has safely and effectively treated pain for millennia, and is far safer than the synthesized, processed medications that todays doctors seem to be all too ready to pass out like so much candy.

In the sphere of alternative medicine, there are numerous types of natural pain management that are in reality, the source of where many of our oh-so-popular pharmaceutical drugs come from.

Codeine and morphine are opium derivatives that may be useful but are also extremely addictive, and even aspirin is a derivative of willow bark. Scores of other plants have been used in natural pain management since olden times, such as lavender and chamomile for minor pain issues and these plants have the additional advantage of also assisting with the emotional element of pain such as apprehension and difficulty sleeping. Plants like henbane and mandrake are so useful that they are even used extremely effectively throughout labor to ease the pain of childbirth.

Some wonderful and potent herbal medicine can also be found in the spice cabinet. Spices like turmeric, and ginger are two of the most powerful anti- inflammatories on the globe. These plants are natural COX-2 inhibitors; they are the alternative medicine answer to the ever popular pharmaceutical drugs Celebrex and Vioxx. In the middle east, India and all over Asia where the diets are rich in spices like turmeric, and ginger and cayenne, where life is also far less well-located then our own, inhabitants have a far less occurrence of arthritis and on going back pain, and yet continue to work very labor intensive jobs such as farming and agriculture work even into their nineties.

There has continuously been an established school of thinking in allopathic medicine that it is all right to damage one part of the body to heal another, as a consequence even ordinary over the counter NSAID pain relievers such as acetaminophen and ibuprofen, can bring about long term injury, acetaminophen to the liver and ibuprofen to the kidneys, in natural pain management many plants, roots, barks, and other herbs not only antistetic in nature but they are also anti-inflammatory and anti-spasmodic as well, and herbal medicine is easier on the system and is more synergistic with the body allowing for greater absorption of the essential constitutes.

So you see that alternative medicine goes further than the usually established ideal of treating merely the symptoms and goes farther to treat many of the fundamental causes as well as some of the other components involved in recurring pain conditions.

More and more persons are turning to herbal healing methods to treat medical disease while alleviating destructive side effects posed by chemical pharmaceuticals. These methods have been used and confirmed effective, for 1000,s of years.

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