Healing Headache Pain Naturally
Headaches are a source of pain that bothers all of us at some time or another, but they can almost always be avoided with a bit of alertness to what might bring them on. Of course, nobody outside of yourself can help you solve the problem of “too much” headaches, as in too much alcohol, sugar, staying up late, TV watching, or Internet use.
How you cure your chronic headaches is a matter of uncovering the cause, and that will take some sleuthing. Once you have a few leads, you can track down the perpetrator and say goodbye to pain. It will be up to you to put together your own personal headache profile, but once you do, avoiding headaches will be a matter of commonsense solutions.
Headaches are an extremely personal matter, in the sense that the cause tends to be a little bit different for everyone. Harry cured his headaches by eliminating certain foods from his diet. Sarah started using natural progesterone cream and tak-ing magnesium, and her migraines disappeared. Francine banished her tension headaches by swimming at her local YMCA three or four times a week and taking a yoga class, where she learned some breathing exercises for muscle relaxation.
Your Brain Has a Mind of Its Own
The human brain may be the most miraculous creation on earth, aside from life itself. Its inner workings are so complex and instantaneous that it puts even the most sophisticated computer to shame. And computers don’t have our rich interplay of thoughts, emotions, creativity, intuitions, and instincts.
An entire field of scientific study, known as psychoneuroimmunology, is devoted just to studying the connection between our emotions, our brains, and our bodies. For example, did you know that serotonin, one of the brain’s neuro-transmitters that affects mood, is also found abundantly in the small intestine? Have you ever gotten bad news or been about to perform in front of an audience and clutched your stomach because it was suddenly and violently queasy? That’s right, your brain lives in your stomach, as well as in your head. In fact, it lives all over the body. The gray matter in your head is just the main terminal.
In his book Healing Back Pain (Warner Books, 1991), John Sarno, M.D., an expert who has spent more than 20 years in his field, explains how feelings such as anger, fear, and anxiety that we don’t want to be aware of can be the cause of pain almost anywhere in the body. He says we create pain in the body to distract us from these unwelcome feelings. Try reading Sarno’s book if your headaches don’t respond to the other treatments mentioned here. Everything he says about back pain can also apply to headaches.
Stress factors such as overwork, lack of sleep, anxiety, and depression can all cause or contribute to headaches. Stress causes us to tense muscles we don’t even know we have, which deprives them of oxygen and causes pain. Any type of tension that centers in the shoulders, neck, face, or head can affect muscles and blood vessels, causing pain. It is estimated that 50 percent of tension headaches are caused by stress.
For most people, headaches are caused by a sequence or combination of triggers. It might be a combination of emotional stress and chocolate; too much time in front of the computer combined with low blood sugar; or a glass of red wine with Chinese food containing MSG. Ultimately, you will be your own best headache detective.
Preventing and Treating Headaches. There are some very simple, basic steps you can take both to prevent and treat headaches. Following the Six Core Principles for Optimal Health is your best bet for a headache-free lifestyle.
• Exercise. This is such a simple solution to headaches that it’s often overlooked. Moving your body improves circulation and increases oxygen in the blood, improves hormone balance, reduces stress and is relaxing, reduces anxiety and depression, and stimulates our brain’s natural mood enhancers and painkillers called endorphins.
• Magnesium. If there had to be one magic bullet for both migraine and tension headaches, it would be the mineral magnesium. It’s not clear whether magnesium banishes migraines by relieving muscle spasms or changing brain chemistry, but there have been many, many successes curing migraines with this simple solution. If you get migraine headaches, include magnesium in your daily vitamin regimen. You can take 400 mg twice daily (one with breakfast and one before bed), and if you feel a migraine coming on, take 400 mg immediately. In one study done in Germany, 81 migraine sufferers were given 600 mg of magnesium daily or a placebo. After two to three months, those taking the magnesium had 42 percent fewer migraines, while those in the placebo group had only 16 percent fewer migraines.
• Feverfew. The herb feverfew is another safe, natural, and effective remedy for both tension and migraine headaches. If you tend to get migraines, it’s best to take feverfew daily as a preventive until you’ve found the underlying cause. You can use it in capsule or tincture form, but since it tastes absolutely terrible, you might want to stick with the capsules! Follow the instructions on the container.
• Coffee. If you feel a headache coming on, a cup or two of coffee can constrict your blood vessels enough to prevent it. On the other hand, too much coffee can cause a headache, as can coffee withdrawal. Coffee is a stimulating drug and should be treated as such.
• Relaxation. Almost anything that helps you relax will help prevent and treat headaches. That includes massage, breathing exercises, visualization techniques, and meditation. Soothing herbal teas such as chamomile, skullcap, and passionflower can be helpful, and when necessary, you can use the more powerful antianxiety and antidepressant herbs St. John’s wort or kava.
Treating Arthritis Pain Naturally
Sometimes you can take care of arthritis naturally, covering all your bases with nutrition and exercise, and still get a painful flare-up that leaves permanent damage to joints. Mary is a good example. A couple of years ago, Mary’s pain and stiffness had been increasing in her hands and her hips, and the aspirin she had been taking to keep it under control was causing stomach pain. She started taking glucosamine and EFAs (essential fatty acids) and started easing off the aspirin gradually, over a period of two weeks. She also tried an elimination diet. Within a few months her arthritis was virtually gone.
But a few months after that, Mary experienced a painful flare-up of her arthritis that left her with a permanent knob on the knuckle of one of her hands. After closely examining her lifestyle changes during the flare-up, Mary realized that during the summer months she had been eating fresh tomatoes at least once a day, sometimes twice. Tomatoes belong to the night-shade family (along with potatoes, eggplant, bell peppers, hot peppers, and tobacco) and are renowned for aggravating arthritis in some people. As soon as Mary stopped eating the tomatoes, her arthritis symptoms eased up entirely.
To avoid permanent damage caused by a severe flare-up of arthritis, it’s important to treat the symptoms immediately, as well as look for the underlying cause and eliminate it as soon as possible. For immediate treatment of symptoms, you can keep a cortisone cream on hand and rub it on the affected area every few hours until the pain begins to subside. (Cortisone creams are easily available at your pharmacy. They are not for long-term use, but are very effective in reducing inflammation for the short term.) For minor flare-ups, you can also use a cream containing capsaicin (cayenne).
In addition to the cortisone cream, you can take the supplements listed at the end of this section. Most important is to play detective and make a list of everything you’ve done differently in the week preceding the flare-up, to track down the culprit.
Other factors besides dietary allergens that may cause an arthritis flare-up are primarily related to inflammation. These can include exposure to environmental toxins such as pesticides, excessive estrogen caused by hormone replacement therapy (HRT), a leaky gut caused by taking NSAIDs (e.g., aspirin and ibuprofen), overdoing it with exercise or some other type of physical exertion, or a sudden onset of stress such as can happen when traveling and visiting family.
If the culprit is stress, resist the temptation to blame the stress on the outer cause (e.g., travel, family, illness of a loved one) and
work on your inner response to the stress. You can’t control your outer environment much of the time, but you can always control your inner environment, and that is one of the great secrets to serenity.
Delayed Food Allergies Are the Biggest Culprits. Alternative health care professionals are finding that nearly all of their patients with arthritis can be helped at least some by eliminating food allergens from the diet, and some patients can be cured this way. You can find out how to accomplish elimination of food allergies in detail in Chapter 11. According to a Scandinavian study, delayed food allergy tests (such as the ELISA) do not seem to be good predictors of foods that cause arthritis. This means that the very best course of action at this time is an elimination diet. This is one step that everyone with arthritis should take.
Glucosamine. A natural treatment for arthritis in clinical studies relieved the symptoms of osteoarthritis and in some cases reversed the disease. This substance is glucosamine, a naturally occurring compound in the body that can help keep cartilage strong and flexible, and can also play a role in repairing damaged cartilage.
Like bones, the cartilage found in tendons, ligaments, and other connective tissue is very much alive. When it becomes damaged in a healthy person, it is slowly but surely replaced by new cartilage. As we grow older, our bodies become less efficient at repairing cartilage.
Glucosamine is a key substance in the cartilage rebuilding process. It provides basic cartilage building blocks and stimulates the growth of cartilage. Animal studies have also shown that through a presently unknown mechanism, glucosamine reduces inflammation.
There have been at least five excellent studies done comparing the effects of glucosamine versus NSAID drugs such as acetaminophen, ibuprofen, and aspirin. In each study, the NSAIDs group improved faster during the first two weeks, but after a month the effectiveness began to wear off and side effects such as stomach and digestive problems began to appear. In contrast, after four to eight weeks, the glucosamine group showed a high degree of relief from pain, joint tenderness, and swelling. A study that did before-and-after electron micrographs of cartilage taken from both a placebo and a glucosamine group showed continuing arthritis in the placebo group and nearly healthy cartilage in the glucosamine group. In one recent study that compared the effects of glucosamine sul-fate and a placebo on the progression of knee osteoarthritis, it was found that three years of treatment with 1,500 mg a day of glucosamine sulfate halted the progression of cartilage deterioration and joint space narrowing. Those who took the placebo showed progressive joint space narrowing, to the tune of 0.19 mm over three years. Symptoms improved 20 to 25 percent with glucosamine sulfate and only modestly with the placebo. Other studies have shown glucosamine therapy to be as effective at relieving arthritis pain as the NSAID ibuprofen. None of the glucosamine groups reported any significant side effects.
If you are suffering from osteoarthritis, bursitis, joint pain, swelling, or tenderness, you might want to try glucosamine. Take one 500-mg capsule three times a day for eight weeks, and then taper it down to one 500-mg capsule daily for maintenance.
Fish Oil Continues to Be a Winner. Research continues to indicate that omega-3 fatty acids found in fish oil can reduce arthritis pain considerably. A study from the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle that looked at diet and arthritis found that people who ate baked or broiled fish more than twice a week had less risk of rheumatoid arthritis. Other kinds of fish, such as fried fish, didn’t have an effect. You can take fish-oil capsules, but watch for rancid oil, which will do you more harm than good. (Refer to Chapter 9 for guidelines on choosing the best fish-oil supplement.) Whether or not you supplement, make a point of eating cold-water fish two or three times a week.
You can also get omega-3 fatty acids from flax oil, but it’s not recommended in high doses for the long term, as it can suppress both “good” and “bad” prostaglandins, the hormonelike substances that create or subdue inflammation. Flax oil is also notoriously unstable, meaning that it goes rancid almost immediately, which is counterproductive. If you would like to add flax to your diet, take it in the form of whole flax-seeds ground to a powder with a coffee grinder just before you add it to your food. Try it in smoothies, in yogurt, on cereal, sprinkled over salad, or mixed with nut butters.
DHEA May Be Good for Arthritis, Too. A researcher from the National Institutes of Health was the author of an article in the Journal of Rheumatology stating that men and women with rheumatoid arthritis tend to have lower than normal levels of DHEA (dehydroepiandrosterone), and men have low testosterone levels. For many of the chronic problems of aging, including arthritis, you can try taking a DHEA supplement of 5 to 10 mg daily or every other day for women and 25 mg daily for men.
Vitamin C Saves Joint Tissues. A study from a researcher at Boston Medical Center in the journal Arthritis and Rheumatism reported that people with rheumatoid arthritis who had higher levels of vitamin C had significantly less progression of the disease and less knee pain, due to a reduction in the loss of cartilage. Cartilage is made from collagen, and vitamin C is a key component of collagen. You can take up to 3,000 mg daily in divided doses to prevent and treat arthritis.
Other Supplements to Reduce Inflammation. One of the first steps in cooling down an arthritis flare-up is reducing inflammation, which should be done as quickly as possible. Following are some herbs, vitamins, and other nutrients that reduce inflammation. As a preventive measure, you can take them in one of the many arthritis formulas that contain combinations of these supplements. For flare-ups, increase the dose of the formulas or take them separately.
To prevent both chronic arthritis and flare-ups, it’s extremely important to follow the Six Core Principles for Optimal Health, taking the vitamins, drinking plenty of water, and getting some exercise. Keeping muscles strong will support joints better, and movement helps move toxins out of the joints.
• Pregnenolone, a steroid hormone, can be very helpful in treating arthritis. Most of the studies were done decades ago, but interest in it as an arthritis treatment was dropped because it can’t be patented. It has no known side effects and often improves memory as well. You can take 100 mg two to three times daily.
• Bromelain (from pineapple) is an enzyme that helps heal tissues and speed up the removal of inflammatory waste products from the joint. Other digestive enzymes such as papain (from papaya) can also be helpful.
• Turmeric or curcumin (curcumin is the active ingredient of turmeric), which you mainly know as a spice, is a powerful anti-inflammatory that works as well as cortisone for some people during arthritis flare-ups. For a flare-up, you need to take 300 to 600 mg of curcumin, three times a day in capsules. (If you take turmeric, you may need as much as 50 grams a day, which is overdoing it!)
• Cat’s claw or una de gato (Uncaria tomentosa) is a South American tree. Its inner bark is used to treat arthritis. You can take it as a tea (the way the natives take it), in capsules, or in tincture form. Take 1 to 6 grams for a flare-up, or drink a cup or two of the tea a week as a preventive measure.
• Ginger is one of the best healing herbs that is effective in reducing inflammation of all kinds. Experiment with adding fresh ginger to foods. Ginger tea is delicious with a touch of honey and is great for relieving nasal, sinus, and chest congestion.
• Vitamin D is essential for healthy joints. Recent research has shown that low levels of vitamin D can contribute to the progression of osteoarthritis. Be sure you’re getting out in the sunlight for at least 15 minutes a week, summer and winter, and if you live in a cloudy climate, you may want to include 1,000 to 2,000 IU of vitamin D in your daily vitamin intake during the winter months.
Treating Carpal Tunnel Syndrome Naturally
Although the general wisdom is that carpal tunnel syndrome is caused by repetitive movement, our great-great grandparents did plenty of repetitive movement—just think of plowing, spinning, sewing, and churning butter, to name a few—and yet carpal tunnel syndrome was relatively unk
nown until the past few decades. Repetitive motion may just be the final insult to already aggravated wrist nerves.
It’s very likely that there are nutritional and hormonal factors associated with carpal tunnel syndrome that are important to pay attention to. It’s clear that a vitamin B6 deficiency is involved in carpal tunnel syndrome, and a B6 deficiency may have even more to do with carpal tunnel syndrome than repetitive motion. Pyridoxal-5’ -phosphate, the active form of vitamin B6, is a cocatalyst for a large number of enzymes. It reduces inflammatory reactions in connective tissue and promotes collagen repair. Vitamin B6 is also essential to the production of progesterone, a hormone that balances excessive estrogen.
Women get carpal tunnel syndrome more than men do, some women get it when they’re pregnant, and both sexes get it around middle age, leading us to suspect that hormonal imbalance may aggravate or precipitate carpal tunnel syndrome. We also know that low thyroid and birth control pills are associated with carpal tunnel syndrome.
When estrogen is present in excess, it can cause salt and fluid retention, interfere with thyroid hormone, reduce the level of oxygen in all cells, and reduce vascular tone. All of these conditions aggravate carpal tunnel syndrome. We’re living in a sea of xenoestrogens (environmental estrogens) from pesticides, plastics, and even soaps, not to mention exposure through hormone-treated meat, so that even men are exposed to excessive amounts of estrogen.
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