Ultimate Prescription

Pain FAQ

Three Angels Broadcasting Network

Program transcript

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

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Series Code: UP

Program Code: UP000091B


00:01 Welcome back you are watching the "Ultimate Prescription".
00:02 I am Nick Evanson here with Dr. Marcum
00:04 and today we are answering some of the most frequently
00:06 asked questions that we receive on our website at:
00:08 heartwisemininsties.org.
00:10 Dr. Marcum we've started through our list of questions
00:13 but we got plenty more, so I am going to
00:15 jump right into it here.
00:16 Yeah and all of these have to do with pain...That's right!
00:18 We've tried to...Talk about pain in the series.
00:20 We didn't catch them with some of the other programs that were
00:22 catching up here. That's right!
00:24 So the first question coming back is "What are some natural
00:28 treatments for pain?" Ok. And I only get one...
00:30 Ok. Because I have been listening and learning
00:32 something here. What's that "Water"
00:34 That's good...When you drink water because our body always
00:36 needs water and it helps reduce inflammation.
00:39 So the first thing is you want to find out natural treatments.
00:43 It's natural to find out what's causing the pain and remove it.
00:46 Okay. So if you are banging your head or out in the sun
00:49 you know, get rid of the trauma if you can.
00:52 Now I am talking about pain that you can't find out what
00:55 it is. Here's a gigantic list of things that can help.
00:58 Now this is for chronic pain, maybe you can't find out...
01:01 You can't get at the underlying cause, maybe Neuropathy type
01:05 pains, things of that nature.
01:07 Increase your circulation, okay, get better blood flow
01:11 to the area to improve the nerve and the whole organ
01:14 function. How do we increase circulation?
01:16 The best way is we can increase it by exercise,
01:20 that's a great way. Eating the right foods.
01:23 We know that greens and beans have things...They have nitrates
01:27 that convert to nitric oxide which makes the blood vessels
01:30 bigger. Try to avoid fats. Fats are in everything now,
01:35 if you can move towards your whole food plant based diet
01:38 that will improve your circulation along with exercise.
01:42 Including natural fats like avacados...
01:44 Yeah, that would be as long as you don't eat to much of those.
01:46 So that would be ok as long as I don't eat too much?
01:48 Right! We don't want it to go about 15% of
01:50 your total calories. Ok. So that's good, that's what
01:53 we can do to help the circulation to the organs
01:57 as well as the nerves.
01:58 Another thing, you mentioned water, hydration, inflammation.
02:01 Light can help, vitamin D might be involved.
02:05 In fact any type of stress that we can turn down
02:09 will help our bodies. So if you are under work stress,
02:12 mental stress, stress from not resting well,
02:15 getting more rest will help. Music helps make endorphins,
02:20 pets help endorphins and oxytocin, which are natural
02:25 pain killers. What's the best medicine?
02:27 That's a big quiz. Laughter.
02:29 Yes! Laughter is the best medicine, it helps chronic pain
02:33 by making endorphins.
02:34 We talked about specific things that our nutrition that
02:38 turns down inflammation. Probiotics might help,
02:42 cause it helps the bowel not have all...make all these
02:45 inflammatory chemicals in the body. Right.
02:47 A natural substance like ginger turns down inflammation.
02:51 Flax, the Omega 3 substance turns down inflammation.
02:55 There has been some studies with root Turmeric,
02:59 okay, that can help with inflammation.
03:02 We know Aloe Vera, we talked about that, Willow Bark,
03:05 we talked about the hydration and then finally Worship.
03:10 Worship also turns down chronic stress.
03:14 Chronic stress helps our brain tolerate pain better.
03:17 These are all different natural things, there's many many more,
03:21 but those are a list of a lot of things that change our
03:23 chemistry and if we start moving... If we have pain
03:26 and start adding these one step at a time,
03:28 then it's not going to get worse, okay.
03:31 And if we move this... On that list, where would I start,
03:34 I would start with "Worship".
03:36 I am going to talk about worship a little bit more here
03:38 because that's an interesting concept that maybe some people
03:41 haven't considered before and people worship in a lot of
03:44 different ways and the way I worship may not be
03:48 stress reducing to somebody. Right! So explain that for us
03:52 a little bit. How does worship reduce stress?
03:56 Matthew 28:11 Come unto me and I will give you rest.
03:59 Okay! Come to me, worship Me and God's going to give you
04:04 this rest. The opposite of stress is rest,
04:07 so God gives us this rest. Um, you know we see people that
04:12 do better that have one day a week of rest, that rest
04:15 at night, it helps our Circadium Rythyms,
04:17 and when we worship God, that might be many way...
04:20 Adam and Eve worshiped just by being with God,
04:22 being out in the garden, serving the animals,
04:25 that's the way they worshiped. I don't know how Noah worshiped
04:30 you know, he was working on the boat during the day
04:32 I'm sure on the weekend he talked to people and tried
04:35 to serve them, that's how he worshiped.
04:37 Remember they didn't have a Bible at that time. Right!
04:40 Now days of course, we can worship through Bible Study
04:42 and prayer. Some people worship out in nature
04:46 seeing God's beautiful creation, He speaks to them there.
04:49 Some people worship through service, some people worship
04:53 of course through thanking God, and praising Him for all the
04:57 good things He has done. Some people worship by taking care
05:01 of His creation, including our body, you know, that could be
05:04 considered a type of worship. So there's many types of
05:08 worship, so when we come unto Him, we worship Him
05:11 and He's promised to give us "rest".
05:14 He changes our chemistry, now we have proof that people
05:17 that do worship turn on the part of the brain that
05:20 turns down stress. We upshift our brain to the higher
05:23 functions, we turn off inflammation,
05:26 we turn off adrenalin, down Cortisol, some of the things
05:28 that damage us chronically it turns down also...
05:31 We've had some studies that rest and relaxation actually
05:36 changes our very DNA, we call this changes our epigenetics.
05:40 So if I had chronic pain, I think the place I would start...
05:44 what I would find out. How do I connect with God
05:47 the best, worship there, and develop that worship.
05:51 One of the best places to start is just opening the Bible,
05:55 reading the Bible, praying, coming unto Him,
05:58 seeing how God did things. You know, meet with Him
06:01 and finding Biblical prescriptions and
06:04 applying them to your life to improve your health. Yea, yea.
06:07 Now that's some great advice. Now let's move on to another
06:10 question, um, "Medications," that's something that you've
06:13 actually written a book called "Medicines That Kill".
06:15 Yea, it's back there, the "Medicines That Kill" book.
06:18 It sounds kind of scary right? Yea!
06:20 Well, it's not that medicine should... It's a good title.
06:22 Yea. It's a place. Modern medicine has it's place
06:25 and it's mainly used to get people over the hump
06:29 till they can get at the cause as long as the risks are worth
06:32 the benefits. In that book I talk about a lot of the risks
06:35 and how to use medicines successfully, and then for
06:38 chronic pain. You know there's some people that have
06:41 chronic pain either to it's severe malignancy,
06:44 severe neuropathies, severe accidents, and the pain...
06:48 the risk of the pain is just enormous and treating that pain
06:52 is definitely worth the risk of the strong medications that are
06:55 out there. Some of the medications that are out there
06:58 are the stronger ones or they are "Narcotics" and we see
07:02 "Vitanil" and "Percocet," and "Oxycodone,"
07:04 and some of those. There is a place for that, unfortunately
07:08 people have not paid attention to that Nick and they
07:11 started using it because it does make you sort of
07:13 feel better and euphoric so people are using it for
07:16 off label treatments. Um hum. You know, they might
07:19 just have life that is not to good and they are under stress
07:22 and they want to escape it all, so guess what,
07:24 they reach for this type of stress. Right! Ok!
07:27 The people are heavy laden, okay and stressed,
07:32 and instead of worshipping, they pick up a pill.
07:35 Right! That's not the way to deal with stress.
07:38 As a result they do not have healing...
07:40 they do not have true rest. They might feel better in the
07:43 short term, but in the long term they don't.
07:46 Many people are addicted to pain medicines now,
07:48 but for chronic pain, for people that are truly in
07:51 deep pain, the benefits are definitely there.
07:54 So you would advise people to be very cautious when
07:56 it comes to using strong pain medications.
07:58 Yeah, a long term... to avoid it at addictions,
08:00 and also there are a lot of side effects we avoid.
08:03 But the side effects, it's addiction, it can change the way
08:07 you think, it slows down your respirations,
08:09 it can slow down your bowels. I would try to find out
08:13 the cause first and then treat the cause if you can for pain,
08:16 and then work on natural things to treat pain, and then I would
08:19 save narcotis for the very very last treatment for severe pain.
08:23 Yeah. So aside from the narcotics, what are some of
08:26 the other treatments that are common with pain.
08:28 I think we've talked a little bit about physical therapy,
08:30 what are some other thing else? We talked about
08:31 physical therapy, we talked about all the big chronic
08:34 list that we went through, but there is a class of medicine
08:36 called Non Steroidal Anti- Inflammatories... Umm...
08:40 Motrin, they work by lowering inflammation in the body.
08:45 Okay, they can block prostaglandin and things
08:47 that cause inflammation. Acetaminophen is another
08:50 pain killer that's out there. Sometimes pain is treated by
08:55 muscle relaxants, that relaxes the muscle that might be
08:58 putting pressure on the nerves. Sometimes it's the brain is not
09:02 handling pain very well. People are giving people
09:06 anti-anxiety medicines to help with chronic pain.
09:09 One that is commonly given is called a
09:12 Tricyclic Anti-Depressant. One that has been around
09:14 for years is one called amitriptyline,
09:17 that people sometimes give for chronic pain.
09:19 If it's due to inflammation, sometimes people give steroids
09:23 for a short time. There's creams that can be put on
09:26 the body that have special chemicals that also might
09:29 with pain as well. Sometimes some people...I've seen think
09:33 that pepper, you know is an active ingredient in pepper
09:35 it's one thing that can help with pain.
09:37 Charcoal, we talked about some of those things. Right.
09:39 There's many different way to deal with chronic pain
09:42 and we've mentioned some of those, and you just got to
09:45 get with your provider, but I want to encourage people
09:47 first, let's see if we can find out the cause of pain,
09:50 and if you don't remove the cause of pain, you are sort of
09:53 chasing your tail. Right. The pain never goes away.
09:56 I think I gave this analogy in a previous program,
09:59 if you ar banging your head on the wall,
10:01 the treatment is not going to be Turmeric,
10:03 it's not going to be a non- steroidal,
10:06 it's not going to be physical therapy.
10:07 You got to stop banging your head against the wall.
10:09 Stop banging your head against the wall, and sometimes
10:11 believe it or not, people do those things and it creates
10:15 chronic problems for them.
10:16 Now you mentioned anti- inflammatories... Yep...
10:19 and we discussed that every treatment has a benefit
10:21 and there is also a risk. What are the risks
10:23 when it comes to anti- inflammatories?
10:25 Well anti-inflammatories, they can increase the risk of having
10:29 ulcers in the stomach, they increse the risk of bleeding.
10:33 In fact there are some anti-inflammatories around
10:36 for awhile that were actually pulled off the market
10:38 because they increased the risk of heart attack actually.
10:41 So every medicine... everything we do to our body, every input,
10:46 either has a benefit or a risk, and we have to assess
10:50 whether that risk is worth taking.
10:52 I would imagine that maybe when you get the stronger
10:55 medications like narcotics, are there even stronger risks
10:58 that are associated? We talked about addictions and what not,
11:00 what are some of the other side effects that can come?
11:03 Well, I think that the largest one is they take so much
11:06 that eventually they quit breathing,
11:08 they don't think well, their bowels can shut down,
11:11 their blood pressure can go low, because it affects the
11:15 entire body, you know, because when you are taking
11:17 pain medications, it affects the way the nervous system
11:20 works, it doesn't work quite as well, so it does affect
11:24 everything, and when you take the stronger medicines of course
11:27 have stronger side effects. Yeah. So my advice to people
11:31 that do take narcotics is try to find other medications
11:34 so they don't have to take as much,
11:35 try to find natural remedies that you can do so you don't
11:38 have to take as much. Have more water, more relaxation,
11:42 of course more worship, those things so you don't have to
11:45 take as much. You get by on just as little as you need
11:48 to take the severe pain away.
11:49 We've got time for just one more question.
11:51 Is it possible for someone to be injured
11:54 but not feel pain, and what would cause that? Yes!
11:57 It is possible to be injured and have no pain
11:59 and a couple of thing that I have seen can cause that is
12:02 that the damage to the injured part... we see that in diabetic
12:05 neuropathies, the feet get damaged, infections,
12:09 their nerves can't sense it, and they have damage there.
12:12 In some cases I've seen people that are trying to save...
12:16 or I haven't seen it myself but you hear about stories...
12:20 someone is trying to save someone's life,
12:22 that because they are doing that, they are so focused
12:24 on doing this that the brain somhow turns off the pain,
12:27 and you are able to do amazing things.
12:29 So it is possible to do that in certain situations.
12:32 Right! Well Dr. Marcum, thank you for sharing
12:34 the wealth of information there,
12:35 and if you are watching at home, we want to pray that you
12:38 will feel no pain and that God will restore healing
12:41 in your life and thank you for joining us,
12:43 and we are going to be back in just a second
12:45 as Dr. Marcum prays with us.
12:54 For those suffering from chronic pain,
12:58 I want you to realize that Christ and worship
13:01 is a potential, and the solution to this problem
13:06 at least in the long term, so don't forget your worship
13:09 or relationship with God. Let's all pray together.
13:12 Heavenly Father, I want to pray especially for those who might
13:16 be suffering and in pain, come to them,
13:19 enhance their worship, give them the rest,
13:22 and let them know that you are going to heal them and
13:25 just where, when, and how. Comfort them and help them
13:28 find relief from this pain is our prayer.
13:31 Amen!
13:33 If you might have more questions,
13:35 we talked about some complex topics. I want you to go to
13:38 our website and that's heartwiseministries.org
13:42 where we have a prayer page, and we want to wish you
13:45 the best of health.


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Revised 2016-07-21