Taming My Arthritis

The symptoms of lower back pain vary from mild discomfort lasting for a short period to severe pain that is long term. Therefore if you are undergoing pain in your back and don’t seek some kind of treatment for backache, the pain could become a recurring one which would be harder to prevent. Back pain can be caused by excessive stress on the back, fractures, or arthritis of the spine; however, the most common cause is a sprain or strain.

A women gains an average of 25 pounds during pregnancy and loses most of it in the weeks following birth. As your uterus grows, its size causes your canter of balance to shift. To compensate for a heavier abdomen, you throw your shoulders back. This puts pressure on the lower back and gives pregnant women the “duck waddle” in their walk. Ligaments connect the uterus to the lower back and to the groin; as the baby grows, these stretch and cause pain. The pelvis is the bony structure through which the baby passes as he is born; in order to make room for him, the ligaments in the pelvis must stretch during pregnancy.

Causes of Low Back Pain

There are many diseases and injuries that can cause back pain. If back pain comes on suddenly, it’s usually a sign of a muscle tear, sprained ligament, or ruptured disc. The spine contains intervertebral discs, a kind of cushion made of cartilage that fits between two vertebrae (bone segments). A slipped disc occurs when pressure on a disc causes it to bulge or rupture, pushing cartilage sideways. The cartilage presses on the spinal cord nerves, causing intense pain.

Nutrition for a Healthy Back

Backache prevention and treatment are also connected with diet. Daily meals of a person taking care of their back should contain plenty of raw vegetables and fruits (except bananas). The backache sufferer should have three to four meals every day, which include, apart from fruits and vegetables, wholewheat products, milk and fruit juice. One suffering from back pain should avoid fatty and fried food, sugar, spicy condiments, strong tea and coffee.

Evening primrose and borage seed oils may help. A study in the Annals of Internal Medicine reported that tender and swollen joints were reduced in patients taking the gammalinolenic acid dose as opposed to a group taking a placebo (sugar pill). Black currant seed oil may also may reduce inflammation and joint tissue injury. The study was published in the British Journal of Rheumatology. If you are taking medication for arthritic pain, you may wish to combine it with either vitamin E or C. A study reported in Arzneimittelforschung reported that combining antioxidants or vitamin E with indometacin, sulphasalazine and/or indometacin controlled symptoms more effectively than drugs alone.

Remedies

Rhus toxicodendron: This remedy can be useful for pain in the neck and shoulders as well as the lower back, when the pain is worse on initial movement and improves with continued motion. Even though in pain, the person finds it hard to lie down or stay still for very long, and often restlessly paces about. Aching and stiffness are aggravated in cold damp weather and relieved by warm applications, baths or showers, and massage.

Sulphur: This remedy is often indicated when a person with back pain has a slouching posture. The back is weak and the person feels much worse from standing up for any length of time. Pain is also worse from stooping. Warmth may aggravate the pain and inflammation.

peterhutch
http://www.articlesbase.com/wellness-articles/how-to-get-rid-of-backache-healthy-back-372659.html

More than 20 million Americans take Prozac, Ritalin, Xanax, Valium or other potent psychotropic (brain altering) drugs prescribed on the basis of DSM labels. Most of these patients – and their physicians – honestly believe that these drugs constitute “treatment.” But many of these patients would be better off receiving no treatment at all than taking drugs.

If you really dig into the facts it is obvious that we are being fed a bill of goods when it comes to depression.

•Depression is not a disease – Drug companies promote depression as a terrible disease that could lead to suicide if left untreated by their product. This has led to millions of people being over medicated with drugs that have serious side effects including the potential for suicide.

•Antidepressants do not fix anything – the biochemical imbalance theory is a myth concocted to justify the prescription of antidepressants. These drugs are not nearly as effective as we are led to believe and can lead to addiction.

•Doctors are not doing their jobs by writing a prescription – instead of finding the cause they are merely covering the symptoms. In most cases an antidepressants causes more problems because of the side effects.

•The Government can’t and won’t protect us – The current FDA admission that antidepressants can cause suicidal thoughts should concern everyone taking these drugs. The FDA had the information all along but refused to acknowledge it. The recent problems with other drugs such as Vioxx and Celebrex demonstrate clearly that the government is not watching out for the consumer.

•People’s lives are being ruined by a medical system out of control -

Psychiatrists have a history of using inappropriate drugs. At one time LSD and Ecstasy were used to “treat” patients.

•An even bigger crisis is coming – Children are now being targeted as the next big market for antidepressants. The federal government has launched a program that recommends screening school children for mental illness to promote the use of antidepressants.

There is nothing more important than taking care of your health. This is particularly true of taking care of your brain’s health, because a person can lead a fulfilling life with a bad kidney or an arthritic knee, brain dysfunction by its nature takes away the very substance of an individual. There is nothing more important than protecting your brain’s integrity.

It’s ironic and tragic that these drugs, which people take in the hope of lifting their depression, can cause both depression and mania while they are being taken and during withdrawal from them. The tragedy is compounded when doctors fail to realize that the patient is undergoing a withdrawal reaction, and instead conclude that the patient is suffering from a primary case of worsening depression or mania. The patient may even be put back on the drug, and other drugs may be added to the regimen, when the patient really needs to be withdrawn from the offending drug.

Picture for instance, a patient visiting a general practitioner for treatment of a swollen hand. A quick evaluation by the physician reveals that the hand indeed is twice its normal size, feels hot, and is turning an unpleasant color. Now suppose that the physician – instead of diagnosing the patient’s life threatening infection and treating the infection with antibiotics – simply prescribes pain killing drugs and sends the patient home! “Treating” a patient’s behavioral symptoms with an antidepressant is no different. Although the patient may be lulled into a temporary sense of wellness, the disease processes that created the patient’s symptoms are still present and often growing worse.

Jeffrey Wilson
http://www.articlesbase.com/diseases-and-conditions-articles/the-misinformation-of-depression-99093.html