pain Archives - Center for Holistic Medicine

If you wake up every morning with achy and stiff knees, hands, back, neck or other joints, you may be suffering from arthritis.

There are two main types of arthritis: osteoarthritis, which is often caused by old age, and rheumatoid arthritis, which is caused by an autoimmune disorder. But no matter which type you have, the end result is that the cartilage between your joints gets worn away, causing your bones to rub against each other, causing pain.

As the pain increases over time, people often rely on medications and daily dosages of NSAIDs (non-steroid anti-inflammatory drugs) to keep the symptoms at bay.

However, long-term use of NSAIDs can additional problems, such as gastrointestinal issues, heartburn, liver and kidney problems and more. And taking brand-name arthritis medications can be costly and have their own side effects as well.

That’s why many Americans are increasingly looking for holistic approaches to lessen their arthritis symptoms and even reverse some of its effects. Here are a few holistic approaches you can try that don’t involve medication:

Warm yourself up
If you’re looking for a simple, home remedy to ease your stiff joints, find ways to warm yourself up. The Arthritis Foundation recommends starting your day with a warm shower or bath to ease morning stiffness or head to the gym and relax in a hot tub. Try applying a heating pad for up to 20 minutes (just make sure you use a cloth barrier so you don’t burn yourself), or for an even cheaper option, just put a wet washcloth in a freezer bag, heat it up in the microwave, and wrap it in a towel before applying for 15 to 20 minutes.
Apply cold
If you are experiencing more acute pain, rather than joint stiffness, you might want to try cold therapy instead. Cold packs will reduce swelling and numb nerve endings, which should help dull pain. You can buy a gel cold pack at the drugstore and put it in the freezer so it’s ready when you need it. (These usually come with straps that make it easier to wrap around your joints). Or you can make your own ice packs using frozen vegetables or ice in a plastic bag, covered by a towel to protect the skin. And just like heat, keep the pack on for no more than 20 minutes at a time.
Adjust your diet
Rheumatoid arthritis is caused by an autoimmune condition where the body’s immune system starts attacking its own cells, a process called inflammation. So one of the best ways to counteract this type of arthritis is to focus on eating anti-inflammatory foods.

“Awareness of inflammatory foods is important for people with arthritis,” says Patricia DeAngelis, a functional medicine practitioner at the Center. “What we eat can trigger arthritis symptoms.”

She recommends eating lots of fresh vegetables and limited fruits, as well as foods that provide omega 3 fats. “Eat organic as much possible,” DeAngelis says. “Use the Environmental Working Group’s Clean Fifteen and Dirty Dozen lists as a guide for choosing healthy produce.”

Some good foods to eat include:

Wild-caught fish (salmon, mackerel, cod, tuna, and sardines)
Grass-fed lamb and buffalo meat
Almonds, walnuts, and flax
Dark, leafy green vegetables
Red and blue-colored fruits and vegetables
Extra virgin olive oil and olives
Spices such as tumeric, ginger, oregano, garlic, rosemary, cayenne, cloves, and cinnamon

DeAngelis also recommends avoiding trans fats, refined sugar, high glycemic foods, food with high omega 6 oils (such as refined vegetable oils), gluten, saturated animal fats from grain-fed red meats, dairy, and high-temperature cooking.

However, everyone’s response to foods can vary slightly, so DeAngelis recommends using an elimination diet to determine which foods trigger your symptoms.

4. Try Spinal Decompression Therapy
If your arthritis is causing back pain, one good option to try is spinal decompression therapy. Spinal Decompression Therapy is a safe and comfortable treatment that involves lying down on a special table and putting your spine in its proper position. This creates more space within each individual vertebra, which decompresses the joints and alleviates the pain of spinal arthritis.

What’s more, Dr. Mitchell Katz, a chiropractor at the Center for Holistic Medicine, says several studies have shown that spinal arthritis (also known as degenerative joint disease) can actually be reversed through the use of Spinal Decompression Therapy. “If you or anyone that you know is suffering from the pain and discomfort of spinal arthritis, Spinal Decompression Therapy might be extremely helpful,” he says.

5. Try Naprapathy
Another technique for relieving compression on joints is naprapathy. Usually, muscles and soft tissues become tight from overuse, and that tension can cause compression on the joints, making the bones rub together even more. By manually manipulating the soft tissue that surrounds the joints, naprapathy helps reduce that compression and relieve pain.

Dr. Richard Bisceglie, who practices naprapathy at the Center for Holistic Medicine, says he also gives patients suggestions for stretches and exercises they can do at home to help relieve pain, too.

6. Use Lasers
Cold laser therapy and infrared light therapies are another safe, non-medical way of reducing the pain associated with arthritis. “Both are frequency-based therapies that reduce inflammation between the joints,” explains Dr. Bisceglie, who administers both treatments at the Center. Both cold lasers and infrared lasers are FDA-approved medical devices that a medical professional holds over your affected area to sends photons of light through the skin. The light helps injured cells restore their mitochondrial function, resulting in reduced inflammation and a reduction in pain.

7. Try Acupuncture
According to Chinese medicine, pain is caused by energy blockages throughout your body, and Kenji Aoki, a licensed acupuncturist at the Center for Holistic Medicine, says acupuncture is extremely effective at reducing the pain of osteoarthritis simply by opening up all of your meridians and balancing your energy.

However, However, Aoki says we must distinguish the treatment for osteoarthritis from that for rheumatoid arthritis because the root causes are different. Just recently, Aoki attended a training in Japan on a new technique used to treat rheumatoid arthritis that has shown amazing results. In this technique, Aoki inserts an extremely tiny needle (0.3 mm) in a specific acupuncture point and then the patient wears the needle in their body for one week until they return back for a follow-up visit.

“Rheumatoid arthritis is a very deep issue, and the energy imbalance isn’t easy to correct,” he says. “So this technique is a very, very delicate treatment, but it is very, very effective.”

At the Center for Holistic Medicine, we believe that a combination of holistic treatments can often provide the best results. If you come in for pain relief, we usually suggest meeting with DeAngelis first, who can use blood testing to determine the root cause of your problems. She will then make suggestions about which other pain relief treatments may be best for you.

If you’ve ever suffered from chronic headaches, you know that the pain can sometimes be unbearable. The pressure in your head, in the back of your neck or behind your eyes can be enough to make you want to crawl back into bed and call it quits for the day.

When headaches strike, most people try to power through and take some Advil or Tylenol to deal with the pain. But taking too many NSAIDs (non-steroid anti-inflammatory drugs) over time can lead to serious side-effects, including gastrointestinal issues, heartburn, liver and kidney problems, and even, you guessed it, headaches.

Luckily, there are many integrative treatments that can help you improve your headaches without relying on medication. Here are five holistic treatments you can try.

Drink water
Did you know that one of the most common causes of headaches is simply dehydration? When we’re dehydrated, the brain can temporarily shrink due to loss of fluid, and that can cause the brain to pull away from the skull, causing a headache.

Dehydration can also increase tension in our muscles, and when the muscles around the spine are tense, it can cause tension in our neck and bring on a headache.

That’s why Dr. Richard Bisceglie, a doctor of naprapathy at the Center for Holistic Medicine, says the very first thing he recommends people do when they have headaches is to drink more water.

“People are often walking around in a dehydrated state,” says Bisceglie says.

According to Dr. Gore, founder of the Center for Holistic Medicine, you should aim to drink half of your body weight in ounces per day.

Go to the chiropractor
Another cause of headaches? Muscle tension. If you often work at a computer or do another activity over a long period of time (such as driving), you may be tensing up your shoulders, causing your neck muscles to compensate in the wrong way, which can cause a headache.

“The whole theory behind chiropractic is if you have restricted mobility in one area of the neck, the muscles compensate to that lack of mobility, and when they do that, they don’t work properly,” says Dr. Mitchell Katz, a chiropractor at the Center for Holistic Medicine. “Chiropractic can potentially help with that if you restore function to the spine or the neck.”

Try naprapathy
If you are more comfortable with a long treatment, and your pain is mostly in the muscles and fascia, naprapathy can release muscle tension in your neck and shoulders. Naprapathy involves gentle manipulation of your connective tissue, which runs throughout your body and supports and connects all of your joints, muscles, ligaments and more. When your connective tissue is constricted, it can limit your blood and lymph circulation and interfere with your nerve pathways, causing pain in your head.

“I work on the connective tissue (muscles, tendons and ligaments) to rebalance them to address those tightness patterns in the upper back, back, neck, shoulders and cranium,” explains Dr. Richard Bisceglie.

Try acupuncture
If your headache is due to emotional as well as physical stress, you might want to try acupuncture. Kenji Aoki, a licensed acupuncturist at the Center for Holistic Medicine, says long-term stress can affect blood circulation to the brain, which triggers migraine headaches.

Acupuncture works to affect the way that energy flows through meridians in your body, clearing away blocked energy in some meridians and restoring energy to meridians that are deficient.

Aoki says acupuncture is especially effective in treating headaches. “Usually the success rate is 90 percent. That’s higher than medication,” he says.

Long-term emotional stress can also require behavior therapy, and our integrative approach includes the physical and emotional treatment.

Adjust your diet
Sometimes, headaches can be caused by chemical, rather than physical symptoms. Recently, several studies have suggested that migraines could be caused by our gut bacteria, and that those who suffer from migraines may be more sensitive to certain foods, especially ones that are high in nitrate preservatives, such as hot dogs, bacon, lunch meats, pepperoni and ham. Other foods, such as those high in MSG (such as soy sauce), and sulfates (such as in red wine), have also been known to cause headaches.

In fact, our gut is often referred to as our “second brain” because it is where many of our neurons and hormones are produced, which affect our mood and our brain function. For example, our gut produces the majority of our serotonin, and those who suffer from migraines often have low serotonin levels.

If you’re interested in having your gut bacteria levels checked, schedule an appointment with Patricia DeAngelis, MS, APRN, a functional medicine practitioner and nurse practitioner, at the Center, who can make recommendations about what foods to add or eliminate from your diet to balance out your good and bad bacteria.

Have you ever been stressed about going on a job interview and felt butterflies in your stomach? Or felt so worried about relationship problems or financial fears that you start to feel nauseous?

It’s no secret that our mental health can have a direct impact on our physical health, yet many people don’t realize just how much anxiety and stress can make our physical pain even worse.

“Stress, fear and anxiety definitely have an impact on someone’s physical health,” says Dr. Mitchell Katz, a chiropractor at the Center for Holistic Medicine. “Stress is that hidden factor that sometimes is difficult to identify but is always lurking in the shadows.”

According to the Anxiety and Depression Association of America, people with anxiety often also suffer from chronic pain disorders, such as fibromyalgia, migraines, back pain, and arthritis.

And a 2008 study published in the journal Depression and Anxiety said that patients who complained of muscle pain, headache or stomach pain were 2.5 to 10 times more likely to screen positively for generalized anxiety disorder, panic disorder or major depression disorder.

But why, exactly, does stress and anxiety lead to physical pain?

The reason is two-fold: muscle tension and hormones.

According to the American Institute of Stress, when we are stressed, our muscles tense up, causing tension headaches and migraines as well as pain in the neck, back and shoulders.

Stress and anxiety also triggers our hormones to have a stress response, causing them to pump more adrenaline and cortisol into our blood stream. And this leads to inflammation, which has been linked to everything from irritable bowel syndrome to increased risk of heart attacks, strokes, fibromyalgia, arthritis and more.

Sometimes, having physical pain can actually be the cause of people’s anxiety as well, especially when they’re worried about how bad the pain will be, how long it will last and how much it may cost them in medical bills.

That’s one of the reasons Dr. Katz says he always tries to be positive with his patients and focus on how they will be able to get better, rather than amping up their fear.

“Doctors can create anxiety in a patient without even realizing it,” he says.

For example, Dr. Katz says he remembers one time when a teenage girl came into his office who had been told she had a bad case of scoliosis. “She came in hunched over with her shoulders rounded. Her body language basically screamed, ‘I have scoliosis. I’m ruined,’” he said.

Dr. Katz examined her spine, and then said, “I gotta tell you, just looking at you visually, whatever the degree of curvature you might have, I suspect that the x-rays will show it to be extremely minor.”

As soon as she heard the good news, it seemed like her pain miraculously disappeared, all because she wasn’t filled with anxiety anymore. “She left the office a completely different person,” he said.

That’s what made Katz realize how powerful an affect fears can have on our bodies.

“The mind is a very powerful instrument and it can be very helpful and it can be very problematic,” he says.

Want to relieve your pain by reducing your anxiety? Here are a few things to try:

Deep Breathing
Learning how to breathe deeply from your diaphragm and how to slowly and methodically count your inhales and exhales is a wonderful way of calming the body and reducing stress. Try breathing in for four and breathing out for a count of four, repeating until you feel very relaxed.
Mindfulness Meditation
Meditation is free, easy to do and you can do it pretty much anywhere, so there’s no excuse not to try it. Simply sit upright on a chair and set your timer for a few minutes. Try to empty your mind of its normal worry and chatter and instead focus on what is going on in the present moment – the sound of a car going by, the sound of the air conditioner, the feeling of your feet on the ground.
Yoga
Stretching doesn’t just feel good – it is beneficial, too. Stretching helps increase blood flow throughout the body and can help release toxins and reduce inflammation that may be causing pain. Read more about the benefits of yoga.
Progressive Muscle Relaxation
To do this technique, focus on one part of your body and try to squeeze it as much as you can. Then release it until it is fully relaxed. Then repeat with all of the other parts of your body until you feel completely relaxed.
Schedule an Appointment with a Therapist
Often, our worries can loom large in our heads, but when we share them with others, we can get a new perspective and feel less anxiety. Talking with a therapist one-on-one is a great way of feeling more grounded and can help relieve both physical and mental pain.

Are you suffering from back pain, knee pain, carpal tunnel syndrome or other types of physical pain? If you’re looking for relief without relying on medications, you may be interested in trying cold laser therapy.

The concept of using lasers to heal has been around for since the 1960s, and in fact, Einstein even suggested that lasers could be used to heal the human body back in 1918.

Unlike lasers that are used in surgery, which typically use 300 watts of energy to burn through your skin, muscles and soft tissue, cold lasers are non-thermal lasers that only use between 5 and 500 milliwatts of energy. They are completely cold to the touch, yet they are thought to have a powerful effect on the structures of the cells below your skin.

Cold lasers are FDA-approved medical devices that are about the size of a flashlight. A doctor or medical professional holds it over your affected area and sends photons of light through the skin, penetrating tissue that is two to five centimeters below the surface. When the light hits the cells, it causes a photochemical reaction (similar to photosynthesis in plants), which helps injured cells restore their mitochondrial function, resulting in reduced inflammation and a reduction in pain.

This non-invasive procedure only lasts a few minutes and is completely painless. Typically, patients return to the doctor two to four times a week to repeat the procedure for a total of eight to 30 sessions to have their pain completely go away.

Cold laser therapy can be used to treat a wide range of problems, including neck pain, back pain, knee pain, arthritis pain, tendonitis, carpal tunnel syndrome, fibromyalgia pain and more. It’s also especially helpful in treating sports injuries like muscle sprains and swollen ankles, helping to reduce swelling and promote healing of your joints.

Unfortunately, the medical community and insurance companies has been slow to embrace cold laser therapy because there have only been a few scientific studies about it, and those have been small and haven’t had many controls, so the data is still inconclusive.

But there are a few studies that have shown just how effective cold laser therapy can be.

One 1995 study looked at 119 workers from General Motors who were suffering from carpal tunnel syndrome. About 80 percent of those who received cold laser therapy saw their symptoms completely disappear and were able to return to work.

In another study in 1997 conducted on female office workers with carpal tunnel syndrome at St. Mary’s Spine Center in San Francisco and at the Head and Neck Pain Center in Honolulu, researchers found that 77 percent of those who had cold laser therapy experienced a complete resolution of their symptoms.

Pretty amazing, huh?

Dr. Richard Bisceglie, a doctor for naprapathy at the Center for Holistic Medicine, is certified in light and LASER therapies. He says he has been amazed at the effectiveness of cold laser therapy in his patients.

“I’m continually amazed by the results form LASER therapies in my practice,” he says. “We have avoided surgery, delayed it or accelerated the healing process.”

Tag: pain

Try these 7 holistic treatments for arthritis pain

Suffering from headaches? Try these holistic approaches

How Anxiety Can Make Pain Worse

How Cold Laser Therapy Can Help Relieve Pain