think before your medicine
It’s understandable when someone in pain seeks medication for relief. It’s a mistake to believe that relief is priceless, and it’s worth trying a little harder to treat bread naturally. Natural health care has no side effects. Natural health care practitioners seek to find and eliminate the cause of pain and often achieve very good results.
Researchers in the Netherlands discovered that some migraine medications cause the coronary arteries (the blood vessels that feed the heart) to constrict. Narrowing of the coronary arteries caused by heart disease can lead to chest pain or even heart attacks in a person taking certain migraine medications.
The research, published in Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association (July 7, 1998), studied the arteries of organ donors and measured each artery’s ability to contract and relax. They then tested the effect of each drug on the arteries. Drugs tested included older drugs such as ergotamine, dihydroergotamine, methysergide, and its metabolite methylergometrine, as well as newer drugs such as sumatriptan, naratriptan, zolmitriptan, and rizatriptan. The drugs cause the arteries in the head to constrict, to stop the headache. Unfortunately, the drugs also cause the coronary arteries to constrict.
People who regularly used acetaminophen or aspirin were 2.5 times more likely to be diagnosed with chronic kidney failure, compared with people who did not use these pain relievers. The risk increased with the amount of either drug taken over a lifetime, the researchers found. This is supported by an article in the New England Journal of Medicine (2001 Dec 20;345:1801-1808). An article published in the New York Times (January 29, 2002) covers the concern of NBA players over the regular use of these drugs. This is because Alanzo Mourning of the Miami Heat developed a kidney disorder and Sean Elliot needed a kidney transplant. To quote the article, “many doctors say that if someone uses anti-inflammatory drugs in excessive amounts for long periods of time, as some NBA players apparently have, taking three or four times the recommended dose, it can affect kidney function.” .
According to a recent survey of nearly 700 children and teens, more than one in five overused over-the-counter pain relievers to relieve headaches. Parents often did not know their children were using pain relievers. Of the children who participated in the survey, 41% had migraines, 28% experienced tension headaches.
The researchers defined pain medication overuse as pain medication use more than three times a week for more than six weeks. That standard was met by 22% of the children surveyed. The survey results mirrored similar studies conducted in adults.
Other research links pain relievers to high blood pressure, kidney failure, heart failure, ulceration of the GI tract, and some medications even interfere with bone repair. These drugs also break down cartilage. One study found that in 2,000 arthritic patients, the use of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) increased the risk of ulcers 10-fold. Nearly 25% of NSAID users have ulcers, most of which have no symptoms.
There are so many effective natural approaches that medications should be used as a last resort. There is a CD available from Whole Health America that will educate your patients on natural ways to relieve pain.