We live in a world where we cover up the pain that is not painful…

Watching Sanjay Gupta’s CNN special on pain medicine abuse in the US, inspired me to write this blog. Americans consume 80% of all prescription pain medication in the world. Clearly, there is a problem and a deadly connection to overdose, pharma-political dominance, and their blatant denial about the reality of the epidemic on hand. There is no honest, long-term study on taking, stacking, or long-term consuming these opiates; the lack of such studies is squashed by greedy corporations, although today’s results of addiction study and the staggering overdose-death rates indicate clearly that our ways of prescribing pain killers are wrong.

Read Empire of Pain by Patrick Radden Keefe!

Through helping people in recovery with food, I have become convinced that what we eat and drink strongly influences how these opiates react in our system. During the many years of aiding friends and clients with healthy choices, there has been a stunning realization that most synthetic pain prescriptions did not effectively aid them during long-term consumption. Eating healthy choices at the correct time – combined with exercise and a positive adaptation to learn to cope with the pain – seems more successful as a long-term solution.

Nature offers us great solutions to deal with pain. To understand what “bothers” us, we need to go back to the origin of the discomfort. In TCM, we treat pain, not as an isolated area in the body. We embrace that the physical and psychological aspect of the entire being needs attention. Besides the addiction chance of Western medicine, we have a “remove the band-aid” – fear; Afraid that if we stop taking serious pain killers, the original discomfort will still be there…  Psychologically we are trimmed to doubt that our bodies could actually bounce back into a harmonious balance of norm.

It’s so easy to pop a pill without having to adjust our lifestyle. We don’t think chemicals in our breakfast cereal or the pesticide in the early morning apple could influence the opiate? The plastic particles consumed daily, the household chemicals, and the toxic air in a busy city is hardly concerns when we quickly subdue a pain that might be nothing more than our body indicating bad positioning or forewarning us about disharmony. I watch a young generation in high school slurping with great ease sleep-depriving power drinks, washing down a codeine and thebaine combination…

A true addict will crush whatever pain pill combo they get their hands on and either sniff it or even inject it for a quicker rush… there is a problem, the most commonly used binder of these medications (crospovidone) might shut down their lungs’ oxygen exchange: Crospovidone is an insoluble polymer of N-vinyl-2-pyrrolidone that is used as a disintegrant in pharmaceutical tablets. We all know by now that taking modern medicines most likely can cause a chain reaction of illness… But we trust the doctor prescribing us meds, encouraged by pharma reps, endorsed by commission and bonus – even if there is scientific study pending on drug interaction. Nobody studies what food contamination can cause, other than it’s well established that certain items are not ideal, i.e., grapefruit interacting with heart medicine, etc. There will never be a study published for people misusing these pharmaceuticals; they’re not intended for intravenous injections; tens of thousands of people consume it in such a manner. This is great for business!

All we consume causes a reaction in our bodies. Clearly, mixing chemicals to the variation of our intake complicates the reactions. With healthy, natural choices alone, we can cope with most of what causes us pain. Opiates should be considered with a conservative approach. Breathing exercise, controlled healthy food and liquid consumption, and maybe even natural pain killers – even marihuana – should be the first choice. We do adapt to pain. We can perceive pain as less as much as we fear it to be more… It is often a choice. Leave the serious drugs to people with serious handicaps.

TCMchef Raphael