The Pain Edition | Episode 33
This week on the Health Made Simple Show, we’re talking about pain.
Learn what your pain means and how to manage chronic or acute injuries in the body. In this episode, Dr. Bart and Karen highlight how fear impacts our experience of pain and the direct way your gut health can help alleviate inflammation.
We explore common types of pain like arthritis, fibromyalgia, sciatica, pulled muscles, and headaches.
The good news is that you do not have to live in pain! Dr. Bart teaches simple health strategies to heal your pain and live a more vibrant life, where you’re able to be the best version of yourself.
Watch the live show below:
We aren’t ourselves when we’re in pain
Pain affects everyone, and it makes us all different humans. When we’re in pain, we’re focusing on the pain, and we aren’t able to show up as the sons, daughters, parents, or boss that we are.
Two Types of Pain
The two types of pain are chronic and acute.
Chronic pain can be distinguished as a pain you’ve had for a long period. If you wake up in pain frequently from an old injury or surgery, you have chronic pain. Arthritis and fibromyalgia are common types of chronic pain.
Acute pain is pain from an injury that happened recently. For example, if you fell off a bike and broke your arm, the pain you feel from the fracture is acute. If you know exactly what happened to cause the pain and the pain eventually stops, it’s most likely acute pain. After you heal the injury, you no longer have the acute pain.
Pain and Fear
Most people amplify their physical pain by their fear, worry, and concern. The fear comes from the unknown. When people don’t know where their pain came from or how they’re going to stop it, fear may begin to set in.
Adding the emotional component of fear changes the biochemistry of the human body. You should be cautious when adding the emotional elements of fear, worry, and concern to both chronic and acute pain.
Remedies for Chronic Pain
If you or someone you know is experiencing chronic pain, use heat. Heating pads and warmers build heat in the body, but you should also use movement.
Movement can include stretching, massaging, and physical activities. With chronic pain, anything that produces heat and activates tissues of the painful area will help alleviate your pain.
Remedies for Acute Pain
When you have an acute injury, use ice and do not move it. Many people’s first instinct when they have acute pain, like pulling a muscle, is to start moving. The fear, worry, and concern about your pain may lead you to think you need to start massaging the affected area.
However, adding heat and movement to acute pain is like adding fuel to the fire. So with acute pain, it’s best to follow the acronym RICE: rest, ice, compress, and elevate.
Pain as Feedback from the Body
Our bodies communicate with us via pain. At first, the pain may be minor, but if we ignore it or keep tinkering with the affected area, our pain will get louder. When you ignore pain or try to numb it, you may experience bigger health issues later on because the body was trying to tell you one thing, and you gave it another.
Inflammation
Inflammation also comes in chronic and acute categories.
With acute inflammation, the affected area immediately swells up. For example, if you just sprained your ankle, your ankle becomes inflamed as a self-casting mechanism two prevent you from moving.
Inflammation also sends a signal to your body. If your ankle swells, your body will send it additional nutrients like oxygen and hormones to begin the healing process. Because acute inflammation serves as a self-cast and a signal for more nutrients, it’s important to not take anti-inflammatory medicines when you have acute pain.
The number one place of chronic inflammation is in the gut. Chronic conditions like arthritis and fibromyalgia always involve gut health. This is why it’s essential to cleanse your gut and get sugar out of your diet, including simple carbohydrates. Taking care of your gut health does wonders for your chronic pain. “If you clean up your gut, you will reduce 50% of your [chronic] pain, if not more,” Dr. Bart said.
Headaches
Headaches are caused by inflammation in the brain, and to ease the pain from headaches, you must begin by reducing that inflammation. Brain dehydration is one major cause of headaches. To remedy things, make sure you’re drinking enough water and supplement with essential fatty acids, including Cod Liver Oil.
Another thing that causes brain inflammation is posture misalignment. If you’re at the computer all day, you constantly lean forward, pulling down the muscles in and around your head.
This is called a tension headache, and it restricts blood flow out of the brain, causing inflammation. Practice proper alignment to increase the flow of blood to and from the brain.
Some questions from the audience:
Are there pain receptors in the gut? Yes! If you’ve ever had acute gut pain, (think food poisoning) that means something entered your body and it’s making your way through your digestive tract. Your gut lining is a muscle, and it needs movement to remain healthy.
What about heel spur pain? If you have a spur anywhere in the human body, you have poor mechanics. When you have weight in that particular area and it’s not balanced in your posture, your body grows more bone. Anything bone-related is food-related, focus on eating healing foods. Also, see a doctor for exercises that focus on proper balance and posture.
Why does cleansing help with pain? Cleansing, in a safe way, helps get rid of toxins in your body. The more toxins in your body, the more inflammation you’ll experience. So we downregulate toxins through the three pathways, the three phases, of detox.
What’s Next?
We have put together a dashboard of all of Dr. Bart’s videos, based on health topics, in our Level-Up Health Membership.
This library of health content is low cost, so we can help you on your journey to becoming superhuman!
Not only is it extensive, but it will continue to expand with new videos each month. Also, you will have the opportunity to share these videos with your friends and family!
Medically reviewed and written by:
Dr. Bart Precourt
Founder of The Health Made Simple Show
Doctor of Chiropractic
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