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Pills, Potions and Lotions

Written By SunCoast SpineCare on September 28, 2017

Pain Killers, anti-inflammatory agents, and analgesics are all terms to desribe drugs that relieve pain.  Notice the word used is RELIEVE.  Pain KILLERS.  No where does any doctor or advertisement use the term, cure or correct.  The reason being is that these drugs do not correct or cure your problems.  They simply numb the pain.  By removing the pain, the patient is happy.  The doctor is a hero.  And a happy life is enjoyed by all......right?  Wrong.   Pain develops for a reason.  I am not discussing obvious physical trauma that has damaged your skin and underlying tissue and muscles.  I am talking about pain that develops for no known reason.  There is an underlying cause, however you may not know what it is or your doctor may not have found it or he/she has found it and you are taking painKILLERS to relieve it.  However you are not getting to the cause of the pain.  Therefore, once the medication wears off, what happens?  The pain returns.  Why?  Because you did not treat the problem.  You covered up the symptom.

Let me put it another way.  A buidling is on fire.  The fire alarm is going off.  Instead of calling the fire department to douse the fire, you shut off the alarm.  What happens?  Yes, it is a juvenile question but needs to be asked.  What happens is the FIRE IS ALLOWED TO GET WORSE AND THE BUIDLING BURNS DOWN.

Let's relate this to your body.  You eat a food that does not agree with you so you get indigestion.  You take an antacid and feel better.  Next time you want to eat the same food, you do what the commercial tells you to do and take some Pepsid AC.  After eating the food you feel fine.  Terrific!  What you don't realize is that antacids and prescription hydrogen proton inhibitors reduce the acid in your stomach.  This accomplishes three things:

  1. Relieves the pain
  2. Lower the acidity in your stomach which is needed to properly digest proteins.  So now you can't digest them too well.
  3. Once the body realizes that there is not enough acid, it produces even more so you have to take more hydrogen proton inhibitors.

This results in a more severe problem and eventually may cause an ulcer.  

A relatively minor problem has resulted in a more serious one because you wanted to relieve the pain rather than listen to your body which was telling you not to eat that food.  

I can say the same about headaches.  What do headache sufferers do for their headaches?  Do they find the cause?  In most cases, no.  They take Tylenol or aspirin or some form of ibuprofen.  Eventually they are popping pills all the time as the headaches get worse because they were not treated properly.  Then they must move on to prescription drugs and sometimes narcotics.  

Note: In most cases headaches are cervicogenic, meaning that they result from irritated nerves in the neck that supply the head.  The most common cause of pinched nerves in the neck is subluxations.

If you remember one thing from this article, remember when you develop a health problem, don't stop until you find the underlying cause and then treat the cause and not the effect of the cause or the symptoms.