So many in the world
today are experiencing pain,
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both physical and mental.
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We're going to talk
about pain and give suggestions
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to help those
experiencing it. Stay with us...
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I'm Dr. James Marcum...
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Are you interested in
discovering the reason why?
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Do you want solutions
to your healthcare problem?
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Are you tired of
taking medications?
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Well, you're about to be given
"The Ultimate Prescription"
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I'm Nick Evenson, thank
you for joining us today.
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You know, so many people
are experiencing chronic pain.
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Dr. Marcum, what do our
viewers need to know about pain?
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Yeah Nick, and the whole world
is full of pain now and it just
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breaks my heart when I
see so many people in pain.
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Just, you know, to think of
all different types of pain.
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Back pain - that's a big deal!
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And right now, in the
United States, 1 in 5 people
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have back pain -
about 20% have back pain.
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And of those who have back pain,
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1 in 10 become disabled.
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And some for people
that have back pain...
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it becomes a lifetime problem.
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But not only back
pain, there are pains
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from all different
other parts of the body.
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There's mental
pain that happens. Sure
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There are pains in our legs,
in different parts of our body.
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There's arthritis-type pain.
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Pain is a major issue in our
society and when I think about
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pain in an approach to
pain, the first thing we want
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to think about is -
well what causes the pain?
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If we can understand
what causes the pain,
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maybe we have a
chance to heal the pain.
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And there are some
things that we can do naturally
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to help with pain.
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There are some things we can
do mentally to help with pain.
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And what I try to do first
in an approach to a person with
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chronic pain is we
try to let them know...
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there's help
available and let's try to limit
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the exposure to pain
pills, if we can. Sure
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Unfortunately, chronic
narcotics are a big problem,
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and some people get on
these medications and they never
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get off these medications,
and they're addictive,
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and they take
more and more of them,
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and before they
know it, guess what?
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They're more
addicted to the pain pills,
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and the pain
really isn't an issue,
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the pain pills
are the issue. Right
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So that's a big issue that
we see and a lot of people's
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pain would heal,
especially back pain, Nick,
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if they would
quit using their back.
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But what's happened, especially
in men, they might hurt
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their back from lifting
too much or pulling too much.
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And then rather than
letting the problem heal,
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quit lifting, let it heal, maybe
do some physical therapy...
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they have to get back to work.
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They have to keep doing
what they're doing. Yeah
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So they might
take some medications
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or something temporarily
to get them over the hump,
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but the problem never goes away.
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So they never treat
the cause of the pain.
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Now if you were a baseball
player and you were throwing
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fastballs and broke your
arm, you would put your arm
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in a cast and let it
rest and heal. That's right
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One of the best
treatments for pain is to just
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rest the part of the
body that's having the pain.
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If it's your arm, rest your arm.
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If it's your
brain, rest your brain.
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If it's your toe, rest your toe.
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So rest is one thing
that we have gotten away from
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because we live in this
fast paced world that we
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never think we
have to rest. Right
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We're just going
24/7, we never need to rest.
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And lots of
people have headaches...
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One of the causes of headaches
is too much stress! Yeah!
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You know, stress
headaches is very common.
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A lot of people
have muscle pains.
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A lot of the reasons we
have muscle pains is because of
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stress and the
muscles get tight,
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we're not taking good things in.
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So pain is all around us
and one of the things that
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in Heartwise, in a
week, with lots of people that
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come with pain and I
found that a lot of people...
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we can't ever find out
the cause of their pain
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mentally and emotionally,
but prayer is so valuable.
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And we have a
prayer site, don't we?
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That's right - on our
website heartwiseministries.org
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We have a prayer form there
and we encourage you to visit.
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And you can list your
prayer request and lift you up
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in prayer and you can
also pray for other people
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who have listed their
request there as well.
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So we enjoy and
like to pray for people
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because God can heal in
ways we can't and God helps
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take away pain.
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But today, we're going to
talk a little bit about pain
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and answer some
questions about pain,
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but the real take-home
message is today for everyone
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in this is if you're in pain,
find out the cause for the pain.
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Is there something
that could be reversed.
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Pain is usually
caused by a nerve.
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Find out why that nerve is
unhappy and what can be done
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to help the nerve heal
because if a nerve can heal,
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the pain can get better.
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For instance, chiropractors...
chiropractors work
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and what they do is the
muscles and nerves are involved
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with each other and muscles
put pressure on the nerves,
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so they help relieve
muscle pressure on the nerve.
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So if a muscle gets tight
and puts pressure on a nerve,
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they help relieve that.
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Of course, there are
certain medications that help by
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helping with inflammation
so the body can heal itself.
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So I think that the goal
for people to understand is
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in pain management is to find
out what's causing the pain,
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see if the body can heal itself.
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And if we can't heal itself,
really work on helping the brain
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do better with the pain;
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helping the body do better
with pain because there are
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things that we can do,
Nick, that can help pain.
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For instance, in a
person that's under stress,
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their pain is
going to get worse.
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A person doesn't sleep well,
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their pain is
going to get worse.
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A person that
doesn't drink enough water,
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their pain will be worse.
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A person that
doesn't eat well...
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We know that people that
eat things like lots of animal,
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lots of fried products - they
have lots more inflammation,
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their pain will get worse.
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Also, their blood
vessels aren't as good as others
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so we can't bring the nutrients
we need in to help the body
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heal itself.
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A lot of chronic back pain
occurs because we don't have
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a good blood
supply to the disks. Okay
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If we don't get a good
blood supply to the disk,
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we can't help the
disk heal and do the things
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it needs to stay
healthy; therefore, the disk
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comes to have
inflammation. Right
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And the inflammation,
long-term, pushes on the nerve,
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causes that to hurt.
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Something as
simple as posture...
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I think you told
me to sit up straight,
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but didn't you hurt
yourself the other day...
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Yeah, I was
exercising and I took a fall,
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and it's
happened one time before;
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3 or 4 days later, I thought
my back should have felt better,
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but it was still sore.
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So I went to a friend
who is a physical therapist,
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and he said, "Yeah, your
hips, one of them is rotated,
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and it's not lined up properly."
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And so he did a manipulation
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and we got it back in
line, and everything was better.
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But I guess it was
causing some of the muscles...
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Yes, to stretch, push on the
nerves and it was hurting you.
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Yeah, yeah... But once that got
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straightened out,
you were fine, right?
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Yeah, there was a little
soreness for a couple of days,
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but then it goes
away and it's all better.
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Yeah, but a lot of the
back pain that we have in this
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world today - which
we read the statistics,
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a lot of that could be improved
just by good posture. Right
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Another thing that we've
talked about before is...
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We weren't
designed to sit all day,
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and how many of us sit all
day or drive a truck all day,
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or do anything in
the same position,
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and we don't have good posture?
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When we don't have good posture,
the skeleton and the muscles
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put pressure on the
nerves and guess what?
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Lots of pain. Lot of pain! Yeah
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Pain is not good and
it gets your attention.
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Pain is a sign that
something is wrong in the body.
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It's stress - chronic pain makes
chemicals go up in the body
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like adrenalin,
cortisol, inflammatory markers
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which damage the
body over long-term.
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Pain makes the
blood pressure go up. Yeah
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Pain makes the heart rate go up.
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So pain makes digestion change.
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Chronic pain
affects the way you think.
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So chronic pain
affects the entire body,
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so that's why it's so important,
but you saw the statistics
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for back pain - we have a
major problem here. That's right
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And one of the things we
have to be careful is, again,
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we've talked about
this over and over...
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Modern medicine best
serves itself by getting
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a person over a hump
until they can heal on its own.
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We were never really
made to be on pain medicines
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the rest of our
lives. That's right!
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Even though some people are,
some people have to have that,
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but we weren't really
designed to have that.
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So we were really designed
to find the cause of the pain,
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and there are lots of
other ways we can treat pain
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like posture,
chiropractics, massage, heat...
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There are certain
types of anti-inflammatories
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to give the body the
best chance to heal itself.
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That's what people should
focus on when they have pain.
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Now, there are
specialists that deal with this.
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They are called
"pain specialists,
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and there are some good ones
and there are some bad ones.
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If you go to one and the
first thing he wants to do is
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put you on a pain medicine
and not talk to you about it,
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that's a bad one.
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We really want to make
sure they understand the problem
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in its entirety
before giving a treatment.
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And we want to have them try
to get at the cause if they can.
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Also, you want a pain
doctor that's going to use
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things that are a
minimum risk to you.
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Maybe they can
have neural stimulators.
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Maybe they can use posture.
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Maybe they can use massage.
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A lot of people -
maybe they can use diet.
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I've gotten a lot of people's
chronic back pain better
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by just going to a
whole food, plant-based diet
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because that helps inflammation
which is chronically
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hurting the nerves because
the bones in the back don't
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let the nerves
out as well. Right
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The little things like
that and posture and exercise
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and movement - those are
all part of a comprehensive
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pain plan. Okay
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Now, we've been talking
about a first aid kit, right?
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That's right - I was
going to just ask you...
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What is this bottle here and why
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should it be in a first aid Kit?
00:10:08.84\00:10:10.77
Well we've been trying to
give everyone some examples of
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things that they can have in
the first aid kit to help out.
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Remember, just to
get people over the hump
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until they can get at
the cause. That's right
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One of the things that
I think a first aid kit is
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some different types of
very safe pain medications.
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Just to sort of get you over
the hump so you can function
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you know, get things moving on.
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There are many
different ones out there.
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This happens to be Tylenol.
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Now, all
medicines have side effects,
00:10:36.13\00:10:38.57
but Tylenol, if not
taking too many, seems to be
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fairly safe unless
you have liver problems.
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It doesn't cause a
lot of side effects.
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Another one that tends to
work well is Motrin or Advil,
00:10:46.61\00:10:50.38
those things like that.
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They are more of
an anti-inflammatory,
00:10:51.98\00:10:54.78
and you can actually use
things like Motrin and Advil
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in conjunction
with Tylenol to work on
00:10:57.59\00:10:59.45
two different
pain pathways. Okay
00:10:59.49\00:11:01.62
Those tend to work very
well for short periods of time,
00:11:01.66\00:11:05.23
and I think you need some pain
medicine in your first aid kit
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to help people get over
the hump because chronic pain
00:11:09.20\00:11:13.34
is not good either. Right
00:11:13.37\00:11:15.87
But, at the same time,
I've seen a lot of people
00:11:15.90\00:11:18.17
that are in pain that don't
rest the body that's hurting,
00:11:18.21\00:11:21.74
and they end up
making it worse. Yeah
00:11:21.78\00:11:23.58
They don't rest it,
it gets more inflamed,
00:11:23.61\00:11:25.98
more swollen, the
nerves get more damaged,
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and you have more and more
process going on. Right - right
00:11:28.15\00:11:31.39
Now, before we stop here, I
know we have some questions,
00:11:31.42\00:11:34.32
but another thing that's very
important for pain is the brain.
00:11:34.36\00:11:37.46
How's that? The
perception of pain.
00:11:37.49\00:11:39.93
Oh right - yeah!
00:11:39.96\00:11:41.66
You know, pain can be learned,
00:11:41.70\00:11:43.83
and pain can be turned
on and off and how the brain
00:11:43.87\00:11:46.97
handles it is very important.
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You make endorphins
which are natural pain killers
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when you're happy
and laugh and distracted.
00:11:51.07\00:11:53.64
I had pain for years in my arm.
00:11:53.68\00:11:55.64
I hurt my arm and I
damaged nerves in my arm,
00:11:55.68\00:11:58.21
and for like 6 years,
it felt like my funny bone
00:11:58.25\00:12:01.35
was activated and I
had chronic pain in my arm.
00:12:01.38\00:12:04.49
And then just one day,
the brain turned the pain off,
00:12:04.52\00:12:08.29
and I've never
had it ever since! Wow
00:12:08.32\00:12:10.39
So the brain is very
powerful dealing with pain,
00:12:10.43\00:12:13.60
and in our
perception of pain. Right
00:12:13.63\00:12:15.40
Some people can have
a low pain tolerance,
00:12:15.43\00:12:17.90
some have a high pain tolerance,
00:12:17.93\00:12:19.73
and there are things that
we can do to relax our bodies
00:12:19.77\00:12:22.37
whether it be deep-breathing
that helps with pain,
00:12:22.40\00:12:26.44
anything that cuts down stress
is going to help the pain. Sure
00:12:26.47\00:12:30.61
So that's why I think
that worship is also a very
00:12:30.65\00:12:33.18
good treatment for pain
because as we come to worship
00:12:33.21\00:12:36.32
we lower the stress,
stress is going to lower
00:12:36.35\00:12:39.15
and help us have
less pain, and, of course,
00:12:39.19\00:12:41.09
God can heal right away.
00:12:41.12\00:12:42.59
So those are just some
interesting things that we
00:12:42.62\00:12:45.36
have talked about
pain and I know we've had
00:12:45.39\00:12:47.26
some questions
come in. That's right
00:12:47.30\00:12:49.16
After the break, we're going
to get back to some questions,
00:12:49.20\00:12:51.63
If you have
questions about your health,
00:12:51.67\00:12:53.30
visit our website at:
heartwiseministries.org
00:12:53.34\00:12:56.57
where you can ask the
doctor your questions,
00:12:56.60\00:12:58.47
and we also have a
prayer form there where you can
00:12:58.51\00:13:00.71
list your prayer
request and pray for others.
00:13:00.74\00:13:03.31
We'll be back just after
the break, so stay with us.
00:13:03.35\00:13:05.71