It makes sense that the quickest and easiest fix to a problem will always be the most desirable option. This is exactly the goal of modern medicine, to seek out the fastest way to get people back on their feet and back into the world (work force).
Anyone living with chronic pain or condition will tell you that this doesn’t work. Modern medicine’s approach is just a temporary fix. The goal is to make you feel as drastically better as fast as possible to prove the legitimacy of their treatments. To prove that their way is the best way because who else can provide that kind of relief?
The next chapter of this story is almost inevitable. The pain returns, and so do you to your physician for something new. Not to your surprises, the newest pain relieving drug on the market lives up to its promise and decreases your pain again! How wonderful are the latest developments in science and medicine?!
They were for a couple of weeks until that new wonder drug stopped working. The cycle continues of trying this new drug and that new injection until you’ve had enough. But you can’t have enough because there are no other options they can provide you. By now you’ve ignored the bodily damage long enough that when you swear off your medications, the pain is worse than ever.
Modern medicine’s priorities are all wrong!
There is no such thing as a quick fix for a chronic condition. Not if you want to actually fix the problem and have lasting relief. Modern medicine decided it was easier for them to become middlemen for the pharmaceutical industry instead of continuing their education on the human body and what it actually needs to heal. Otherwise known as medicine.
Drugs and injections, synthetic interventions, are not medicine which is why we cannot keep expecting them to be the solution to all of our ailments. The reason for this is because drugs are not designed to fix the problem. They are only meant to suppress your symptoms, which makes them look like they are working at fixing the problem.
How drugs work and, therefore, why they don’t
Your body is made up of cells, approximately 30 trillion for the average adult. Every one of these cells is coated with a protective membrane that also acts as the cell’s brain. The cell membrane is the brain because it does all of the communicating with the outside world. The membrane processes all of the information inside and outside of the cell and directs the rest of the cell’s components to respond accordingly.
For most cellular functions to occur, the cell needs the green light in the form of an outside stimulus. All around the cellular membrane are receptors that take in information from the outside world and relay it inside the cell. Just like one key opens one door, a particular stimulus binds to a receptor which causes the inside of the cell to react.
Normally, the stimulus, the ligand, is something like a vitamin, mineral, or hormone that your body releases. But in the case of pharmaceuticals, the stimulus is usually a synthetic chemical that forces the cell to do what your doctor wants it to do. When it comes to pain, your doctor wants your nerves to stop firing pain signals to your brain.
Notice the goal is just to stop the nerve from doing its job, alerting the brain that something is wrong, not addressing why the nerve is firing pain signals in the first place.
Nerves contain positive and negatively charged ions. When at rest, the ions and charges are balanced. No signal is sent. Nerves fire a pain signal because they receive a chemical or physical stimulus. When that happens, the nerve depolarizes and becomes more negatively charged, just like an electrical wire. The negatively charged electrons travel through the nerve, from nerve to nerve until it reaches your brain to alert your brain of the pain. After a nerve fires its pain signal, it repolarizes, allows more positive ions back in, to balance the charge and go back to rest. But the nerve repolarizes too well and enters a refractory period where no nerve conduction can occur.
The goal of pain relieving drugs and injections are to keep your nerve in a hyperpolarized state, in the refractory period for as long as possible. Therefore, the nerve cannot fire another pain signal. It does so by delivering a chemical to the nerve cell receptor which keeps the nerve in this refractory period.
No where does the drug or injection treat the cause of your chronic pain, it only stops the messenger, allowing damage to persist.
But after a while the receptors on the nerves get tired. They stop accepting and responding to the same old stimulus, the pharmaceutical intervention. Therefore, it takes more and more of the drug to have the same effect, or a new drug with a different chemical to once again trick the nerve. This is called dependency. You need more and more of a substance in order for it to have the same effect. Which is how addiction occurs for many, especially on opioids. This is a dangerous game because in the case of opioids, they affect every nerve in your body. They don’t just halt pain signals from firing, but in strong enough doses prevent nerves from firing all of their information signals. In particular, the signal from the brain reminding you to breath. The nerves stop working and so do your lungs.
For some, taking a drug and feeling temporary relief is enough. They don’t want to put any more effort in and do not mind the harmful side effects.
But for everyone else that wants a real solution to their chronic pain, they are left feeling helpless by their chronic pain “specialists” because the only options they have for them are drugs.
Just because your current doctor doesn’t have a solution to your pain doesn’t mean there isn’t one out there. Real solutions exist and they are obtainable for everyone. They just take a little more time and effort. But the results are impactful and lasting.
True Health can be a reality when you find and treat the causes of your chronic pain!