Participants: Don Miller, Agatha Thrash
Series Code: HYTH
Program Code: HYTH000128
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00:01 Hello! I'm Dr. Agatha Thrash from Uchee Pines Institute
00:06 and we're going to talk about pain during the next 00:09 half an hour, we hope you will join us. 00:31 Welcome to Help Yourself To Health 00:33 with Dr. Agatha Thrash of Uchee Pines Institute 00:37 and now here is your host Dr. Thrash. 00:40 At Uchee Pines Institute we deal with pain in a lot of ways 00:47 we deal with a number of different kinds of pain. 00:51 Pain can usually be categorized in two ways: We can talk about 00:57 chronic pain or we can talk about acute pain. 01:01 Acute pain is usually treated in a different way than 01:05 chronic pain, and this is Don Miller who will be talking 01:09 with me today in helping you to understand how we treat pain 01:13 at Uchee Pines Institute. 01:15 Don! - Well Dr. Thrash there are 01:18 various ways that we treat pain and one of the first things 01:21 is what we do within our own minds to make pain worse, 01:25 we call these things pain intensifiers, 01:27 It's basically our reaction to the pain perception. 01:32 The first and probably the greatest thing that intensifies 01:36 our pain is fear, fear does a number of things to the body 01:40 physiologically, fear does a number of things to the body 01:42 mentally. 01:44 Physiologically we tense up our muscles become more rigid, 01:48 you remember back in the days where you used to get 01:51 hypodermic needles shoved into your muscles, 01:53 they would say relax, yeah, really right, relax, 01:56 they have this great big long needle, they are going to ram it 01:58 into your muscle and they tell you to relax, 01:59 well normally you don't and you are all stiff, 02:01 they run this needle into your muscle, and that stiff muscle 02:06 hurts more than it would have or could have relaxed 02:09 in the first place. 02:10 But it is also the fear of the unknown, when we get a pain 02:13 we wake up in the morning and we've got a pain 02:16 and we self diagnose ourselves, hummm, what could this pain be, 02:20 and we start coming up with all types of horror stories, 02:23 we read an article yesterday, we heard a news broadcast 02:26 about this pain and this great disease caused by it 02:30 and pretty soon we are thinking that we have that disease 02:33 and the pain becomes much greater. 02:36 Then we go to a physician, he diagnoses our pain as being 02:40 we slept wrong and all of a sudden the pain is not 02:42 quite as bad anymore. 02:43 Because our pain is somewhat palliated by the fact that 02:47 our fear has been assuaged, it's a nice way to take care of 02:50 the fear and the pain. 02:52 Another thing that intensifies our pain is guilt, 02:55 these are for people who basically pain prone, 03:00 they are guilty, "oh I shouldn't have done that," 03:03 "if only I hadn't done that," if I hadn't eaten that, 03:06 if I hadn't done that, if I hadn't done this thing over here 03:09 I wouldn't have this pain right now, and so this guilt complex 03:12 seems to make the pain much much greater. 03:16 There is also the thing called anger, now we are talking 03:19 again about how the mind is reacting to the pain perception. 03:24 The pain is the same but now we are angry at somebody 03:29 or something, we are angry at the accident, why did that 03:33 happen to me, and often when we start asking those questions 03:36 we become angry at the very one who can take care of 03:39 our problems, that's anger against God. 03:42 So we are angry against God, or we are angry against our 03:45 spouse, or we are angry against our employer, or we are angry 03:49 against ourselves for doing that stupid thing, 03:51 falling down the stairs, tripping over whatever, 03:53 and we get angry and all of these things along the lines 03:57 are making our pain much much greater. 04:00 Really a great pain intensifier is a thing called loneliness, 04:06 people who are alone suffer more pain, we'll talk about 04:11 that a little bit more when I talk about things to assuage 04:13 and take away the pain, but people who are lonely 04:16 seem to have a greater preception of pain. 04:19 We find that those people who are alone suffer more premature 04:25 deaths, matter of fact, double the national average than those 04:29 who are not alone, divorced people are five times more 04:32 likely to commit suicide and die in fatal accidents 04:36 four times more if they are alone, these are sad 04:39 circumstances for a person. 04:41 They did some experiments back in 1956, they had in a hospital 04:48 ward, they had those people in open ward seemed to use 04:52 less pain medications by about.. they took bout 3.2 doses of 04:56 the pain medication to those in private rooms about 13.4 05:01 doses of pain medication. 05:03 Because there was more going on around them, they weren't 05:06 so lonely any more, so we take away the loneliness 05:10 we often take away the pain, the anger, the guilt, take away 05:14 some of these things and we find that they have far less pain. 05:18 So when you are looking at pain, we are not just dealing 05:21 with the physical response in the skin, in the bones, 05:25 in the muscles, we are looking at the minds perception, 05:28 of why do I have this pain, and as we can rest in the Lord 05:32 with this pain as we can accept it as Job says: 05:36 " Though He slay me, yet will I serve Him." 05:39 We need to get that attitude we will find that our pain 05:43 often times will be going away with giving it over and saying 05:48 I am going to accept this and get a right attitude about it. 05:52 Dr. Thrash! 05:53 - We only treat acute pain with drugs such things as anesthesia 06:01 or when there is a severe injury with intense pain, those can be 06:07 properly treated with drugs, but it is easy to see why we 06:11 would not want to treat chronic pain with a drug. 06:14 The person becomes dependent on the drug and increasing 06:18 quantities of the drug are needed until the person 06:22 is hysterical without it, and may even develop a sort of 06:27 personality problem or become a hypochondriac, and they may 06:31 describe their pain as terrible or horrible, but when you look 06:35 at them, they look as if they are coping pretty well. 06:38 So what we need to do is to find ways that we can 06:42 relieve pain and make the person quite comfortable 06:45 without using a powerful drug medication, and some of these 06:50 very important ways to treat chronic pain are heat and cold. 06:57 Or even alternating heat and cold, where we apply the heat 07:01 treatment and then right away apply the cold, even in the same 07:04 treatment or we can apply heat for one type of pain and cold 07:09 for another type of pain, or it can even be that one person 07:14 in one type of pain will enjoy having heat, but another person 07:20 finds that not pleasant, so you must sometimes treat with 07:25 heat for the same kind of illness that the last person 07:32 you treated with cold and it was quite satisfactory. 07:35 Sinusitis should be treated with heat for the most part 07:40 they can sit in a tub of very hot water and that often 07:44 relieves their pain very nicely. 07:46 But cold applied to sinusitis will sometimes make it worse 07:51 but the occasional patient will find the very reverse, 07:55 cold applied makes it better. 07:58 Now heat can also be applied for such things as a sprained 08:02 ankle, but sprained ankles for the most part will be 08:07 better treated with the cold, an ice pack, or something of 08:11 that nature. 08:12 We also find that pressure is good, pressure can be applied 08:19 by the hand when a person has been acutely injured, sometimes 08:25 if you press on the place that they've been injured and where 08:28 they feel pain, it will help a lot. 08:31 You may have noticed that if a finger gets crushed and you 08:35 put pressure on it that that can help quite a lot, 08:38 and then is such areas as tennis elbow we can put pressure. 08:43 I have asked my granddaughter Melissa if she will help me show 08:47 you this kind of treatment for a tennis elbow. 08:50 This is Melissa Thrash, and Melissa is let us say that 08:55 she has been doing some kind of activity that causes a 09:01 rotational movement of her arm, we can easily prevent this kind 09:07 pain from developing by simply applying something like an 09:12 Ace bandage, or if you prefer you can purchase from a 09:17 drug store a little band called a tennis elbow band. 09:23 So this is simply wrapped around the arm in this way 09:28 and the person wears it doing whatever activity they are doing 09:31 whether is shoveling or hoeing, or whatever they may 09:35 be doing, and it's a very simple and nice treatment. 09:39 Then when they have finished with the activity, they simply 09:42 take the band off and that enables them to avoid getting 09:48 the tennis elbow. 09:49 Now another thing that you will find is a real problem 09:53 is that of arthritis, and people have pain in their hands 09:59 and especially when they wake up the next morning 10:02 they have pain in their hands, so I am going to ask Melissa 10:06 to show you how she would handle that with these gloves, 10:11 they look as if they are child's gloves, but they are actually 10:14 large enough for an adult, so the treatment is very simple, 10:20 we simply use a pressure on the hands so that the next 10:26 morning the person wakes up and they will tell you 10:29 that their hands feel much better having just had that 10:34 little bit of pressure on them. 10:36 Now another things that is very important is that of water, 10:43 you might think that water is not a good treatment for pain 10:49 but we find it quite excellent, I don't know exactly why it is 10:52 that it works all the time, and it doesn't work in every kind 10:56 of pain, but in most kinds of pains people will find it better 10:59 if they are simply well hydrated, and you can take 11:03 a glass full of water every ten minutes for an hour, 11:06 that's a glass full of water every ten minutes for an hour, 11:10 and it will often relieve such things as a headache or 11:14 an abdominal pain, or sometimes skeletal pain. 11:18 I think it may separate the nerve fibers that cause those 11:24 kinds of pains and make the person feel a lot better. 11:27 Now Don Miller is going to tell you about some other ways 11:33 you can handle pain, Don Miller! 11:36 - I talked a few minutes ago about helplessness and 11:39 loneliness, loneliness is the one that really seems to get us 11:42 the most. 11:43 Picture this scenario, a child is running down the street 11:47 active with the friends, falls and skins up the knee, 11:50 a little bit of blood, the child sees the blood, immediately is 11:53 scared, runs home to mama crying, it hurts terribly, 11:58 what does mama do? Mama holds the child, 12:01 kisses the child, says it will be all better, and it is amazing 12:04 just those words seem to make it all better, and then puts a 12:08 band aid on it and sends the child back out to play, 12:10 and the child is perfectly fine, doesn't even think about 12:13 it any more, until that night mama kisses baby to sleep 12:18 lays her down, covers her up, turns out the light and now 12:22 what's left, in a dark room, no stimulation, and what happens 12:27 the pain comes all back again. 12:28 Because that is where the mind is, all during the day time 12:32 you had mama sitting there comforting the child, 12:35 you had activities going on all around, you had the other 12:38 playmates, things to do, now there is nothing left to do 12:43 but focus on the pain, and we need to keep from focusing 12:47 on the pain. 12:49 There are ways of doing this, I haven't quite gotten to this 12:53 place yet where you are going into the dentist office, 12:55 and I once tried it, I went into the dentist office and said 12:57 I can do it without the pain medication, thank you, 13:01 and so they put me way back there in the chair and he 13:04 opened my mouth and he went in there with that drill... 13:06 as soon as I heard that zzzz! I tensed and as soon as it 13:10 touched my tooth, he took it back out of my mouth 13:13 and he gave me the shot because everything in my body told him 13:16 that I was really going to be a bad patient that day, 13:18 but if you would find some way to divert the mind to other 13:24 stimulation. 13:25 You only can perceive so many things in your mind, 13:29 right now you are sitting there and you are not really 13:31 aware of the fact that you're back is pushed against the sofa 13:37 or chair and the watch band is pressing against your wrist 13:40 and the top of your socks are against your leg, you don't 13:43 feel or notice all of these things although you do have 13:46 true perception, so if we can get more stimulation going in 13:51 that's pleasurable, we will have a less tendency to focus on 13:55 the pain that's also coming in, and there are ways 13:58 of doing this. 13:59 One of these days I'm going to try going to a dentist office 14:05 with a friend and say as soon as that guy opens my mouth 14:08 and heads for it with the drill, without the Novocain 14:10 I want you to take something as simple as a hairbrush 14:13 and start stroking perhaps my arm or my leg, or you can reach 14:18 up and just take your fingers and give me a little scalp 14:21 massage, and at the same time perhaps take some type of a 14:25 perfume and put it on a handkerchief and let me be 14:28 smelling, so now I've got some olfactory senses coming 14:31 in here and I've got some senses here from touch, 14:34 and perhaps I can take a CD and turn on some music 14:38 so I'm hearing some music going on at the same time, 14:41 with head phones it is even better, you can't hear that zzz! 14:44 going on because basically if you have been inside a 14:47 dentist office, even sitting out into the waiting area when 14:51 you hear the drill you tense up, remember we talked 14:54 about this tensing up, which is one thing that amplifies pain. 14:58 Another thing that you can do is have some type of little 15:00 massage technique, now if someone can give you a massage 15:03 or you can take your foot, this is a little foot massager 15:07 and you just take your foot and you slide it back and forth. 15:10 This gives you a very nice sensation which will sort of 15:13 overwhelm the other sensations going into the body, and so if 15:17 you find ways of sort of over loading the brain with other 15:22 sensations will find that that pain that is usually rather 15:26 acute if we are just focusing on that, will seem to go away. 15:30 I had an experience one time I was in Ukraine in the winter 15:36 time and a neighbor of the place I was working had fallen 15:40 and severely twisted and wrenched his back, 15:44 this big Ukrainian man, 15:46 big burly guy crying, he was in so much pain 15:50 we got him laid down on this couch of the nearest house 15:54 he could not even go home he was in so much pain 15:56 so we put him on the couch of the nearest home and here he was 16:00 and I had a doctor from Ukraine with me, she examined him to 16:04 make sure his back wasn't broken because he walked in 16:07 so it wasn't broken, but now what to do with all this pain 16:11 and so I said well go out and get me an icecicle, 16:15 so they went out and broke a big icecicle, and they are big 16:18 icecicles in Ukraine, big Texas size icecicles, and brought 16:21 this big thing in here and I got a pot of hot water and I 16:23 dipped the end in and sort of smoothed off the edges 16:25 and then I started massaging that back area, well now you had 16:31 a different sensation going on that was cold, 16:34 but at the time I was taking another part of his body 16:37 and I was massaging another part of his body, I forget 16:40 whether it was his shoulder or his head, but I was 16:43 massaging this other part of the body while I was massaging 16:46 the back with the ice and pretty soon he was complaining because 16:50 it was cold. 16:51 But then he got up, he didn't have any more pain, 16:54 not that the situation was fixed he still had a sprained back 16:58 but the ice had taken the pain away enough that he could 17:01 go home that night, pain free and deal with it that way. 17:05 So as we find ways of diverting the mind away from ourselves 17:11 at night time when we are all alone is when we hurt the most, 17:14 so we need to be doing something and I like that saying if you 17:18 can't sleep don't count sheep talk to the Shepherd. 17:20 When you have pain talk to the one who knows all about 17:24 your pain, he went through the pain too, and He'll help 17:27 you through it and so as we talk to Him, as we get other 17:30 senses involved in this process we'll find that pain will be 17:36 saying Sayonara, and that's what we want it to do, 17:38 Dr. Thrash. 17:40 - Another kind of very good treatment for pain is that of 17:46 counter irritation, you may have heard your grandmother 17:50 talk about her liniments, or some neighbor about their 17:55 materials that they rub on come from a store such as Capsaicin 18:00 or Cayenne, it's a red pepper extract and you can get it 18:04 from almost any store, and this kind of red pepper when you 18:10 put it on the skin, will help you greatly with the 18:14 counter irritation. 18:15 Now there are many other liniments, liniments made from 18:18 camphor, from Menthol, and some other counter irritants 18:24 they are a little irritating or icy feeling on the skin 18:29 but when you use it in times of pain, it can actually take 18:35 the pain away. 18:36 Now another type of counter irritation is something 18:39 like this, you may not have seen this because I picked this up in 18:43 Korea and I like it very much because it can be 18:46 self administered if you have a pain in your back you can 18:51 just do this kind of thing and it helps enormously 18:55 for the back pain, and then you can just do it on the other 18:58 side as well. 19:00 But let's say that your pain is not in your back, 19:02 your pain is in your foot, or in your abdomen, will this help 19:06 with that? Yes it does! 19:08 Do the same thing, you can apply it here and here 19:12 or you can apply it on your arm or your thigh, or else ware 19:17 and interestingly enough, it is as Don Miller was 19:21 talking about with the gate theory, which is that you 19:25 simply overload the senses with as much as you can 19:28 in the way of other sensations and it is theorized that there 19:34 is a gate that goes up to the brain that allows a certain 19:39 number of impulses to go through and if you've put other impulses 19:44 in then the pain will not feel so bad. 19:47 Now another thing that you can do to help your pain 19:53 is that of control the diet. 19:55 I mentioned already about drinking water, a lot of water, 20:00 keeping well hydrated will also help you with pain. 20:03 The diet in pain control should be very simple, it should be 20:09 non-inflammatory, which means that it should not be heavy in 20:13 spices or vinegar, or heavy with salt or sugar or fats, 20:23 but in this way you can help yourself with diet. 20:28 The very best diet in pain is the kind of diet that we 20:34 recommend as the least inflammatory, the least likely 20:38 to be irritating, and the least likely to cause you to get 20:41 a chronic disease, and that is the totally vegan vegetarian 20:46 type diet. 20:47 That means fruits, vegetables, whole grains, nuts and seeds, 20:51 and as these are eaten in a very simple way, not to many 20:55 at one meal, then the person can find that a chronic pain 20:59 will be very much helped by that. 21:02 If you are overweight, be very careful not to over eat 21:06 and jus the very act of not over eating will also help you 21:11 to deal with pain. 21:12 Now Don Miller is going to talk with you a bit about 21:15 herbal remedies for pain control, Don! 21:20 Ok! I think one of the herbs that we like to use for pain 21:24 sort of works on the gate theory also, the herb is called 21:27 Valerian, and if any of you have ever worked with Valerian 21:30 it's the smelliest herb that I have ever smelled. 21:33 I think basically by drinking a cup of the stuff, your mind 21:36 is so overwhelmed with how bad it smells, that you forget 21:39 how bad you feel, and so maybe that's the gate theory, 21:42 but I'm sure it also has some type of analgesic effect. 21:44 But there are some wonderful pain herbs, we're not talking 21:48 about something that is going to work as fast or as numbingly 21:51 as one of the caines,Lidocain, Novocain, we are talking about 21:55 something that will take the edge off your pain, and I've had 21:58 experiments with these things and I will tell you one other 22:00 story, but some of the pain herbs are things like Angelica, 22:04 Black Hull, Blue Violet, some of the sedative herbs like 22:08 Chamomile, or Cat Nip are very very nice herbs to take away 22:13 the edge off the pain. 22:14 The one I like the best is White Willow, it is basically 22:19 called White Willow Bark, it is the inside layer of the 22:22 bark of the White Willow Tree, and it's been used for many, 22:25 many years, matter of fact centuries as a pain reliever. 22:29 The old folk medicines, that is how we found out about it 22:33 I say we, the drug manufacturers, they found 22:36 the salicylate in the White Willow Bark 22:38 was a pain reliever, so they sort of 22:41 extracted it and synthesized it and made a thing called aspirin, 22:45 but still the White Willow Bark works quite nicely. 22:48 A few years ago I was working on a table saw and I cut the 22:51 tips of two of my fingers off and quite painful experience, 22:55 right down to the bone, the nails the skin, the whole thing 22:57 was gone, and I was in a lot of pain but I wanted to do 23:02 everything just the way we were supposed to do it. 23:04 I had been in natural medicine for a long time, and so when I 23:08 walked into the Lifestyle Center the first thing they said, 23:10 "Are you allergic to any of the cains?" 23:11 And I said I don't want any of the cains, give me a glass of 23:14 ice water, so they took a glass full of ice and water and they 23:18 just stuck my fingers down in the ice water, and that is 23:20 a good pain reliever, and left it in there for quite awhile 23:23 brought it out and they scrubbed it off, because I had once read 23:26 that scrubbing a wound, of course we have to do that 23:29 anyway to clean it but some how lessens the pain, 23:32 I can't attest to that right now because it really did hurt 23:35 when they were scrubbing those little things, but from then on 23:39 someone had made me a quart of White Willow Bark tea 23:44 and I drank that and I got some White Willow Bark capsules 23:47 I would take those things each night and within 23:51 three weeks my fingers, using some other herbs for cell growth 23:55 proliferation, like comfrey, within three weeks I could 23:59 play the guitar again, and that was my fingers that you 24:01 push on the strings, in three weeks I could play, 24:03 with very, very little bit of pain, so I believe in the 24:07 pain herbs, I believe that God has given us everything 24:10 that we need to deal with it, as a matter of fact, I found out 24:12 just the other day that 40% of the drugs that we have today 24:18 came from plants in the rain forest, and so I think that God, 24:22 I don't think, I know that God has everything that we need 24:25 out there in nature, we just have to be patient enough first 24:29 to find it and patient enough for it to work in it's own time, 24:33 God does everything right in His own time, and so I encourage 24:38 you to look into the pain herbs and to try them when you have 24:42 the pain, and do the other things that we have been talking 24:44 about and Dr. Thrash has a few more suggestions, Dr. Thrash. 24:47 Not only is pain dealt with directly and as a particular 24:57 thing that we must say, this we must treat, but also for a 25:02 person who is in a chronic pain we will often need to treat them 25:05 for their depression, because they begin to think this pain 25:11 is not going to go away, I'm going to always have it. 25:14 As they begin to think that way I see the limitation 25:18 that they have with their lives with the things that they love 25:24 to do, and the way that they have always carried on their 25:28 affairs and now they are unable to do that because of pain, 25:31 as they see this then they are likely to get depression. 25:34 So what one must do for the person with depression is to 25:38 treat that, that should be treated with exercise, 25:41 it should be treated with extreme regularity, that is 25:44 going to bed on time, getting your meals on time, 25:46 doing exercise on time, all of those things must be done 25:50 with regularity. 25:51 But then I like also and herbal remedy for depression, 25:56 the one that I like the best is probably St. John's Wort, 26:01 St. John's Wort is characterized by the ability to relax the 26:07 body, it is also characterized by the ability to elevate 26:12 the spirits a good bit, so the person with depression should 26:17 always try to use some kind of relaxing herb like 26:22 St. Johns Wort. 26:24 Now don't sell exercise short, exercise for depression is one 26:30 of the most important things that we can do, every day 26:34 the person with depression should get out of doors 26:37 because being in the out of doors will also help the person 26:40 with depression, the diversion one gets from looking at the 26:44 birds and the trees and the flowers, all of these kinds of 26:48 things can help the individual who has depression. 26:52 Then some of the herbs like cat-nip tea, can also be very 26:58 helpful in depression, and so as we think about the total 27:05 treatment of person with pain we need to think also about 27:09 dealing with depression, and helping them do some of the 27:13 things that once they could do and now they cannot do. 27:16 Have you ever wondered what God is going to do with all the 27:21 pain receptors that we have in the body? 27:24 They are among the most numerous of all the nerves 27:29 that we have in the body, and God is a very conservative God, 27:35 He has some use for every part of the body that we have, 27:39 and while I don't know what it is that God has for us, 27:44 I do believe that He is going to do something very wonderful 27:48 with our pain receptors in the earth made new 27:52 it's worth waiting for. |
Revised 2014-12-17