Ultimate Prescription

Muscle Pain

Three Angels Broadcasting Network

Program transcript

Participants: Nick Evenson (Host), Dr. James Marcum

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Series Code: UP

Program Code: UP000085B


00:01 Welcome back to the program.
00:02 I'm Nick Evenson, here with Dr. James Marcum.
00:04 And on today's program
00:05 we're discussing muscle aches and pains.
00:07 You know, there's a lot of different reasons
00:10 as we discussed before Dr. Marcum
00:11 overuse, stress, lack of water, those can all be common causes
00:17 and we've had a lot of people
00:18 write in with questions to our website.
00:20 And if you have a question,
00:21 we want you to visit at heartwiseministries.org.
00:24 You can ask the doctor your questions.
00:26 You can submit prayer requests for your health issues,
00:29 and we encourage you to visit the website
00:30 and give us some feedback.
00:32 Dr. Marcum...
00:33 Before you go to those, I'm gonna interrupt you here.
00:34 Okay, let's hear it.
00:36 I just got an epiphany, a thought
00:38 which just crossed my brain.
00:40 You know we talk a lot about pain
00:42 and a lot of people are out there that have pain.
00:45 But I really think if you break it down
00:48 and you think about it logically
00:49 and you understand a little bit about pain
00:52 where it's coming from, what's causing it,
00:54 I think that lowers your stress level.
00:56 Yeah.
00:58 You know, it turns off those
00:59 what we call worry, stress, anxiety type pain.
01:02 Remember that text
01:03 the biblical prescription in Philippians,
01:05 "Be anxious about nothing."
01:08 When we're anxious,
01:09 it creates all of these chemicals
01:11 that make it more likely to have pain,
01:14 and if we have pain it makes it that much worse.
01:16 Yeah.
01:18 And then we don't think
01:19 with the higher part of our brain
01:21 which actually has more control over pain than the lower part.
01:24 See, if you were really tuned into the higher parts of brain,
01:27 we can understand and we can actually turn off pain.
01:31 Have you ever seen people that are so focused
01:33 that on something's
01:35 that they turn off pain pathways.
01:37 I don't know if I recognize that.
01:38 Okay, okay, but anyway,
01:40 you know, we think in the Bible about,
01:42 you know, how God worked with people.
01:44 And you know, I do think that the people
01:46 that are so tuned in
01:47 and they have really good brain health,
01:49 really good worship health,
01:50 I think that only helps deal with chronic pain
01:54 including all these pains
01:55 we've been talking about, muscle pains.
01:57 And as they learn more about it and they know how to avoid it
02:00 and how, what to do if they get it
02:02 and what the algorithm is in knowing.
02:05 And then there're some people
02:06 that will never get rid of all their pain.
02:08 Right.
02:09 But that's why we're so glad that we have a God
02:11 that's a ultimate physician that's gonna heal us,
02:14 it's just where, when and how.
02:17 And everyone out there can have hope
02:19 that there's a God,
02:21 that if you have a relationship with Him,
02:22 He's gonna work things out for you in your life.
02:26 And that gives such hope and just that hope
02:28 and that reassurance helps
02:31 cope with the pain we might be having.
02:33 And we just talked about some of the physical pains,
02:35 but there's mental pain
02:37 that's a real issue as well, Nick.
02:38 Yeah, that's right.
02:40 So now we can get to the questions.
02:41 All right now...
02:42 The epiphany, the epiphany is over.
02:44 That was a good epiphany. That was a good epiphany.
02:45 Yeah, just hit me there,
02:47 you know I don't know where it came from.
02:48 So yeah, it's a good thought because sometimes
02:50 when we're not in control
02:51 and we don't know what's going on,
02:53 it's easy to just get more stressed out
02:54 on the whole just causes worse problems.
02:56 It's like a snowball. Yeah.
02:58 A snowball, but when we, our brain,
02:59 we let our brain control
03:01 and we turn it over to God right up front...
03:02 That's right.
03:03 Say God, you know, we worship You,
03:05 I know that worship's gonna help me get through this.
03:07 I know there's real chemistry behind worship
03:09 that deals with stress and chronic pain.
03:12 Let me jump in that first and get that going.
03:15 Because even if we can't understand it,
03:17 if we just trust in God and have peace...
03:19 Yes.
03:20 That will help us physiologically.
03:22 A healing belief. That's right.
03:23 A healing belief.
03:25 There's real chemistry even though
03:26 we can't explain it.
03:27 That's right, that's right.
03:29 Well, let's get to a few of these questions
03:30 on muscle pain.
03:32 The first one is from a viewer who asks,
03:34 what is the treatment for a muscle spasm?
03:36 Okay.
03:37 So first, what is a muscle spasm
03:38 and what causes the spasms?
03:40 Yeah.
03:41 You know, muscle spasms is just what it says,
03:43 the muscle spasm, it contracts
03:44 when you're not telling it to contract.
03:46 Okay, it usually balls up and it hurts.
03:49 Yeah. Okay.
03:51 The first thing is you know, if you have it, you know,
03:53 you're not gonna say, well, what's causing my...?
03:55 No, you want to do something right now.
03:56 Right, yeah.
03:58 And the things that you can do right now is usually
03:59 stretching it into a position.
04:01 You know, you've seen in the leg cramps
04:03 how you change the position of the foot.
04:06 A massage helps with that. Yeah.
04:08 Ice will also help with that.
04:10 And then once you get it to go away, you know,
04:13 fluids will help.
04:14 Then you say what caused it to happen,
04:16 overuse,
04:18 I'm not having enough water,
04:19 I'm not having enough electrolytes,
04:21 those are some of the more common causes
04:23 of acute spasm.
04:24 So is the spasm the some thing as a cramp?
04:27 Yes. Okay.
04:28 Cramp, spasm, we're talking the same...
04:29 Same kind of thing. The same verbiage, Nick.
04:31 Except one's a little bit higher
04:32 and you know spasm.
04:34 You know, and the other one's a little bit lower in cramp.
04:37 And we're counting.
04:38 But it's the same verbiage.
04:39 But those are the, you know, the stretch to relieve
04:41 that spasm to take pressure off the muscle.
04:44 And then of course, you know, massage to sort of work that,
04:47 you know, that muscle, you know, that's contracting,
04:51 work that contraction out.
04:52 Yeah.
04:54 You know, some can be so bad, it's like a really solid muscle
04:56 that's like really cramping so you can feel
04:58 a ball of muscle there that's contacting.
05:00 It's kind of a knot.
05:01 Well, it's not supposed to be doing that.
05:03 Right, right. Yeah.
05:05 Another viewer writes in and asks
05:07 when should muscle pain
05:08 prompt a visit to the emergency room?
05:10 Yeah, that's a good question,
05:11 I think we alluded to that earlier.
05:14 If you have, you know, severe, you know,
05:16 these severity hydration, you going on a walk,
05:19 you pass out.
05:20 But you know people are gonna take you there anyway.
05:21 Yeah.
05:23 If you find grandma that's been on the floor for three days,
05:25 you know that's a trip to the emergency room to see
05:26 if they have muscle breakdown.
05:28 Right.
05:29 But as usually the bane what I wanna tell people
05:32 is if you find someone with a stick stiff neck,
05:35 muscle pain in the neck and a fever,
05:37 that could be a serious infection
05:39 called meningitis.
05:41 So that's muscle pain, stiff neck and a fever,
05:43 that could be a meningitis type situation.
05:46 That would be a trip to the emergency room
05:48 to get that treated right away.
05:50 Right, right.
05:52 What are some...
05:53 So that's a trip to the emergency room.
05:55 That's right.
05:56 There're different places to go when you have muscle pains.
05:57 That's right. That's ER.
05:59 So I was gonna ask, if you're gonna stay at home,
06:00 what are some of the things you can do if your situation
06:02 is deemed not serious enough to go to the ER?
06:05 What are some things you should try at home?
06:06 Okay.
06:08 Well, you know to self treat it rest it, massage it.
06:12 Hydrate it.
06:14 Hydrate it, put some ice on it,
06:16 compression and we have this
06:19 and we call it the RICE treatment.
06:20 Okay, the RICE treatment rest, ice, compress, elevate.
06:26 Okay.
06:27 Okay, if that, now what would require muscle pain
06:31 and a trip to the doctor's office?
06:32 Now I'm not telling you the emergency room,
06:34 a doctor's office.
06:35 If you have a rash with it with muscle aches, okay,
06:39 a tick bite, you've heard of rickettsia and lymes
06:43 that can sometimes a tick bite can cause muscle aches.
06:46 Okay.
06:47 If the muscle aches lasts longer than a week, okay.
06:51 If it's a combination of the muscles red and has pain
06:56 those might be the trips to the doctor
06:57 to dilate a little bit more.
06:59 Okay.
07:01 So that sort of let you know which one should you do it
07:02 at home RICE, what you do if it's little more involved
07:06 because of the doctor and then if it's a lot involved
07:08 you know, this extreme weakness,
07:10 stiff neck then maybe
07:12 that's a trip to the emergency room.
07:13 Right, so another viewer asks,
07:15 what tests might help diagnose muscle pain,
07:18 say at the doctor's office?
07:20 Yeah.
07:21 Well, one of the test that help a lot.
07:22 When a muscle breaks down,
07:24 it spits out protein into the blood
07:26 because the muscle is breaking down.
07:28 Okay. Mm-hmm.
07:29 And so we can measure the muscle products in it,
07:31 and one of the ones
07:32 we measure is creatine phosphokinase or CPK.
07:35 Okay.
07:37 Sometimes we can have,
07:38 when we have muscle break down,
07:40 we can have elevated inflammation.
07:41 We can measure that with a sed rate.
07:43 If we think the muscle is breaking down
07:44 for lots of overuse,
07:46 we can see if there's lactic acid doses developing.
07:48 But that is severe, a severe case.
07:51 Sometimes when there's cancer in the body
07:54 and the cells are metabolically turning over quickly.
07:56 Uric acid in the blood might be a clue for that.
08:00 If we think that the body is attacking itself, you know,
08:03 fibromyalgia or some of those.
08:05 We can measure chemicals like that.
08:07 One that we measure is called "antinuclear antibody,"
08:11 ANA we can do that too.
08:12 And then there are some diseases
08:14 we haven't talked about where the muscles aches
08:16 and there's diseases in the muscle.
08:18 You've heard and we haven't talked much about these
08:20 conditions like muscular dystrophy.
08:22 You know, other things that are going on
08:24 where the brain can't control the muscles.
08:26 We can diagnose those things
08:27 with test like electromylogram.
08:30 We measure how the muscle contracts,
08:32 where we can do a biopsy
08:34 to see if there is some inherit thing
08:36 wrong with the muscle.
08:37 Some infections can make the muscles very, very weak.
08:40 I wrote a paper years ago about a patient
08:43 that presented with polymyositis, okay.
08:46 He was a young person that was, his muscles were so weak
08:50 that he couldn't even brush his hair.
08:52 That's how weak all his muscles were.
08:54 And we went through all of these causes
08:56 and they were weak and they were sore.
08:58 And usually they're not sore, they're just weak.
09:00 And his cause was he had AIDS, he had an HIV infection
09:04 and that was causing all these muscles
09:05 all over the body.
09:07 He wasn't sore but they were weak.
09:08 Right, yeah.
09:09 So those are some simple things
09:11 that we can do to sort of diagnose
09:13 what these muscle problems
09:14 and whether they're real serious
09:15 or it's something that's gonna pass.
09:17 Now you mentioned lactic acid doses earlier.
09:20 I ride bikes a lot
09:21 and we always hear about something
09:23 called lactic threshold and it's usually associated
09:25 where your heart rate gets up to a certain number
09:29 where you're producing more lactic acid
09:31 than your blood stream can clear.
09:33 Is that same thing?
09:34 That's the same thing and then guess what?
09:36 And why is that dangerous?
09:37 Well, because you change the pH in your body.
09:40 Yeah, more acid.
09:41 Yes, more acidic, sometimes you can't breathe fast enough
09:44 to burn off the acid.
09:46 And then the muscle can actually break down
09:48 under acidotic conditions.
09:50 So you can't exercise too much.
09:53 Yeah. And it's sort of rare.
09:55 But for instance,
09:56 that's why people that exercise,
09:58 they have to make sure they get their glucose,
10:00 they have to make sure they get their water,
10:02 they make sure that there's a rest.
10:03 And if they start having symptoms
10:05 just stop, don't do it.
10:07 Don't do it, it's not worth becoming dehydrated,
10:09 because a lot of people don't realize it, Nick,
10:11 but when their extreme exercises,
10:13 your temperature
10:14 because your metabolism goes up.
10:16 Right.
10:17 And that high metabolism starts to break down things.
10:19 Remember the body operates
10:21 under a fairly narrow temperature range.
10:23 Hmm, right.
10:24 So when you go above 102 degrees
10:26 above that hyperthermia, okay.
10:27 If you, your body can't regulate that temperature,
10:30 you start breaking down.
10:32 Your brain doesn't think well,
10:33 you start breaking down the body parts...
10:35 Your organs will quit functioning as well.
10:37 Acid doses, it could be real serious
10:39 because hyperthermia is not a good thing to have.
10:41 Yeah.
10:43 But a little bit of rest
10:44 before you get to those serious stages.
10:46 A little bit of rest will help reduce that lactic acid doses.
10:47 Yes, rest, hydration get your body,
10:51 give it what it needs basically.
10:52 All right. All right. Don't abuse it.
10:54 All right, let's talk about
10:55 just a few general suggestions for muscle health.
10:57 We've talked about rest and trying not to overuse them,
11:00 what are some of the few other things.
11:01 We talked about water.
11:02 Yeah, water, resting,
11:04 don't overdo it, lots of greens,
11:06 greens and beans, muscles like that...
11:08 Mmm, Good nutrition.
11:09 Kind of stuff, stretching as we go through life.
11:11 Simple things like making sure
11:13 your hormonal levels are good especially vitamin D level,
11:16 all the things of that.
11:17 Those are just some general things
11:19 that might help.
11:21 Some people get severe muscle pain
11:23 and they need something to help them over the hump.
11:25 And I think an occasional use of a non steroidal
11:28 like you might get at over the counter
11:30 just for one or two doses might help that as well.
11:33 And then if pain doesn't go away, you know,
11:35 like the times we cause, see your doctor.
11:38 Yeah, sound like some good advice,
11:40 and I'm gonna try and take it to heart
11:41 and make sure I don't overuse my muscles.
11:43 Thank you for joining us on today's program.
11:46 Visit our website at heartwiseministries.org.
11:48 There's a lot of good health articles
11:50 that Dr. Marcum has written there,
11:51 radio programs,
11:53 prayer form where you can ask for prayer,
11:55 and you can also ask the doctor your questions.
11:57 Visit the website
11:59 and we'll be back in just a minute
12:00 with Dr. Marcum's closing with prayer.
12:12 I hope you've been learning
12:13 a little bit about pain in this pain series.
12:16 We've been talking about pain from all over the body.
12:19 After you have made a lot of programs about health,
12:21 sometimes it's little bit more challenging to find
12:24 something that's interesting and helps our viewers,
12:26 but I hope this is helping you
12:28 and I hope you learned a lot about muscle pains today.
12:31 Now what are the take home points?
12:33 Well, lets prevent muscle pains
12:36 and the way we do that is by drinking water,
12:39 eating a healthy diet,
12:40 lots of greens, moving our parts,
12:43 making sure we don't overuse them
12:46 and taking good care of them
12:47 making sure we don't put toxins on them.
12:50 Well, if we have muscle pains it's unexplained,
12:53 we need to see the doctor.
12:54 Specific pains that are worrisome,
12:56 if pain with fevers, pain with rashes,
13:00 those are things that we want to look at sooner.
13:03 You might want even go
13:04 to the emergency room if you have pain
13:07 and you're passing out or you can't breathe.
13:10 Those are some big time pains.
13:12 We've learned a lot today.
13:14 Let me say a prayer for all those
13:15 that might need a special blessing.
13:17 Let's bow our heads.
13:18 Heavenly Father,
13:20 thank You for being our ultimate physician.
13:23 And for healing us, Father,
13:24 and for giving us love and care,
13:26 and thank You as we've learned about our bodies
13:28 and how we can honor You
13:30 and worship You better
13:32 by taking care of our body that You've given us.
13:35 Now go with us and stay and be with those Father,
13:38 especially those that need an extra help and extra boost,
13:41 extra encouragement is our prayer, amen.
13:46 I want you to join me at the website,
13:47 if you have a question, heartwiseministries.org.


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Revised 2016-12-26