June 17, 2009 by Bill.

Over the years, the right side of my neck has become very sore. I’m not actually sure why: probably a combination of factors such as leaning over to look into computer screens for years and years, improper posture when weightlifting, excessive chiropractic treatments, maybe even too much ibuprofen.

At any rate, during the last couple of years I had gotten to the point where I was experiencing tremendously bad headaches, manifesting themselves either at the top of my head, or at the base of my skull, where the muscles attach, often resulting in a tight headache band that wrapped my entire head in pain. The headaches were almost always on the right-hand side, seldom the left. Some of my headaches were so debilitating my toes quaked, and I could not perform any sort of movement without excruciating pain. Some were so terrible I spent the night fighting them and had to call in sick at work the following day. My headaches were so bad I was resorting to prayer: “Please God, take this headache away from me!”

Thanks to a previous injury–a minor back sprain–I had discovered ibuprofen, which my doctor at the time called a “miracle drug.” So to partially counteract my headaches, I would take ibuprofen at the least little sign of a headache coming on. I did not know ibuprofen is good for taking down inflammation and swelling. I just knew that it worked on my headaches. One of my doctors at Kaiser Permanente told me I could take three ibuprofen (200mg tabs) every six hours. That’s what I did.

I also found that pseudoephedrine (Sudafed) was also helpful. One doctor prescribed Imatrix for me–a well-known and popular migraine headache drug–but it did not even faze my headaches. When I came down with a barn-burner of a headache, I would take aspirin, ibuprofen, the Walgreens clone of Sudafed, and anything else I thought would work. After the headache had subsided (several hours later) I would have a stubborn residual ache, and would just generally feel like crap for a complete day following.

Interestingly, I also noted that my headaches would often come around when there was a barometric pressure change, from high to low. You would think that the opposite would be the case, that I’d get headaches when a high pressure system came bearing down on me. But no, my headaches came when high pressure was moving out and the low was coming in. Doesn’t make sense from a physics point of view, but that is the way it seems to happen. I’ve never noticed if my headaches come on when there isn’t anything unusual happening weather-wise, so I can’t comment.

I do know that excess wine (especially wine with sulphides in them) and beer can bring them on. Because of that and other reasons, I’ve really cut back on alcohol consumption, typically only drinking a glass of wine, or a beer on the weekends.

Because the headaches were getting worse, I was starting to become afraid that I had brain tumors or other equally horrible disease. So I went to the Kaiser Permanente doctor, explained my case and he prescribed an MRI and a CAT scan of my neck and head. The CAT scan revealed that I had arthritis in my neck, some bone spurs and a slight bulge between C2 and C3 (the upper bones in your vertebrae). My doctor pooh-poohed the notion of brain tumors.

The conversation then went to topics like seeing a physical therapist, taking a muscle relaxant (Flexiril) and a mild narcotic (Tramodol) and if things didn’t get better, perhaps even paying a visit to the neurologist.

One visit to the physical therapist told me I wouldn’t get anywhere with those people. We talked about things like proper workplace ergonomics and other stuff to which I’d already been paying attention. The therapist also performed an ultrasound on the area, which felt wonderful but did nothing for the pain. She noted that I tended to lean slightly to the right. While I took away some good stretching exercises, I knew for sure my healing wasn’t going to come about by PT.

It’s important to note that years earlier I had started visiting a chiropractor regularly for the pain, and continued visiting him on a semi-monthly basis.

Because my doctor wanted me to try a full course of PT before he’d refer me to the neuro folks, I felt I was out of options with respect to Kaiser. And besides, I wasn’t sure how crazy I was to have neurosurgeons fusing neck vertebrae. Sounds dangerous. I would much prefer a naturopathic approach if possible.

So I tried accupuncture, which did truly help, but did not completely alleviate the pain. I’m now a big believer in accupuncture’s powers and will continue to see an accupuncturist when I feel they are the best choice for what ails me.

Headaches unabated, in desperation I turned to the web. I began an Internet search: surely there must be others out there who were having the same kinds of problems. And there were.

In my research I found out about a type of treatment called prolotherapy. Here’s the idea: You experience some kind of injury, then begin to suffer chronic pain as a result. The reason for the pain has to do with your muscles and ligaments not being able to adequately repair themselves. It’s not a bone problem, it’s a muscle problem. Which is why chiropractic visits helped some, because an adjustment would take some of the pressure off of the muscles, giving them a chance to recover somewhat. But, as soon as my bones began working their way out of adjustment, the muscles would again become the ones who paid the ticket. The trick was in fixing the muscles, not the bones.

Upon visiting my prolotherapy doctor (Dr. Jo Douglas)  I learned that my top of head and neck headaches were related. The pain would start in my neck, then traverse its way up a path to the top of my head. In 15 seconds she opened a prolotherapy book she had and turned to the drawings of various pathways like this in the human body, showing me the neck/top of head relationship. It was very easy to see, even from a layperson’s perspective, that there was a causal relationship. She asked if I occasionally had an ache in my eye socket, which I did.

She felt the muscles and ligaments in my shoulders and neck, and was quickly able to put her finger on the exact spot where I was feeling the most pain. If she pushed on it and then turned my head, I could hear a clicking sound. She noted that this was not a healthy situation. She showed me on a skeleton she had in the office how the bones, joints, muscles, tendons and ligaments connect, how chiropractors perform their adjustment, and why prolotherapy would help me with my pain.

She then went on to explain what prolotherapy is and how it works. The idea is very straightforward: Your muscles, ligaments and tendons can become worn down due to an injury and never getting a chance to properly heal. But the miracle of prolotherapy is that if you inject a liquid into the injured tissue, it will be “like sending it to the gym for a rigorous three-hour workout” (in Dr. Douglas’s words). Over the course of 3 - 6 treatments, these injections give the tissue a chance to regenerate and build back up.  She uses a naturopathic solution manufactured in Italy which, I believe, consists primarily of dextrose and glycerin (look here for more detailed information).

The science behind prolotherapy is this: If inflammation is purposely introduced to the offending area, this causes regeneration and healing. That’s why ibuprofen isn’t allowed during prolotherapy, because it cuts down on inflammation, precisely the thing I wanted happening during my healing.

Here’s the thing: The procedure hurts.  Though the doctor rubbed my skin with a local anasthetic, she actually had to insert the needle into my muscle/ligament/tendon and inject the solution in there. And, she had to do it in several places, so there were several sticks. So it’s not a walk in the park. But it’s not that bad either. No pain, no gain, as they say.

Repeat procedures must be spaced out several weeks so the healing has a chance to work. During that time, I was not allowed to have any ibuprofen - only Tylenol, aspirin, or Tramadol. (Side note: Evidently, there’s more to the ibuprofen story than we’re being told, as Dr. Douglas’s office was pretty solid on staying off it for good. Sounds to me like ibuprofen may not be the best thing in the world to use for fighting pain. So now I’m curious about that and will have to do some more research.)

Here’s the great news: Prolotherapy works! After going through four treatments, I felt much better in my neck area. I was able to get up and move around without having to first resort to pain medications.  My headaches stopped, and I was able to sleep better. If I did experience a minor ache or pain, standard off the shelf medications like apirin and Tylenol would help.

The procedures are expensive ($400/session) and medical insurance typically does not cover them (go figure).

In between procedures, the doctor put me on a daily whey protein drink (which was yummy) and collagen I & II. I’ve since stopped the whey protein, but continue to take collagen tables twice a day.  Dr. Douglas is also quite intrigued with the role that amino acids play in keeping one’s body from aging. Though not by her recommendation, I’d begun taking L-Arginine and L-Ornithine supplements as a part of a cleanse I’ve been going through. When I asked her about them she said they were good, well-known amino acids, and evidence showed that they were best taken separately, as opposed to the combination tablets one can buy at Natural Grocers.

If you are suffering from chronic pain, and (short of becoming addicted to oxycodon) you’re quickly running out of options, I think prolotherapy is so worth the money. The procedures are expensive yes. But what price do you put on your happiness in life?

There’s a good story about the guy who invented Cortisone and the doctor who perfected prolotherapy both going to an AMA conference at the same time one year. Guess which therapy got the nod from the AMA? The one that causes pain and introduces inflammation to the muscle in order to permanently heal it? Doubtful! But that hasn’t stopped the AMA and pharmeceutical companies from venturing headlong into the practice of shooting Cortisone into people for short-term relief. The Journal of Prolotherapy recently published an article that discusses the findings that too many corticosteroid injections actually contribute to arthritis, which seems consistent anytime there is a story in which pharmeceutical companies are involved. Here’s an abstractof the article.

I’ve learned several lessons from this experience:

1) Don’t go to the chiropractor as often as I had been going. While I value the work chiropractors do, they can actually contribute to a muscle’s injury by working the skeletal structure around during an adjustment. It’s best to keep chiropractic treatments few and far between.

2) Slow way down on the use of ibuprofen, select other medications instead.

3)Trust my naturopathic instincts and do my research before going along willy-nilly with whatever an MD tells me. It’s not wise to trust everything a doctor says as the truth, partially because doctors, like everyone else, have natural biases, and partly because of the indoctrination by pharmeceutical companies which doctors routinely undergo.

One of the bigger players in the field of prolotherapy is Ross Hauser, who maintains several different web sites devoted to the subject, and was the author of the prolotherapy book mentioned above. Here’s the place to start when researching Dr. Hauser.

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June 8, 2009 by Bill.

A couple of articles I’ve read recently have made me think about how international policies are doing relative to our own US economy. As a regular reader of the UK Economist magazine and other online sites, I like to keep in touch with what is happening internationally, for starters because I don’t believe everything the mainstream US media elitists are telling us, and secondly, because it’s good to get a variety of opinions in order to more readily facilitate one of your own. If you’re merely parroting what CBS, NBC, ABC and yes, even Fox, are telling you, then you don’t have a keen grasp on what’s really happening in the world. And, as my students will tell you, what’s new in the world is extremely important.

The first article came from the Drudge Report which subsequently pointed me to Yahoo News. In this article we discover that there seems to be a trend away from “center-left” politics in the EU toward center-right, as per the findings of the recent elections for EU commissioners. I find this interesting because some countries in Europe have served as a bellwether for the “socialism experiment,” namely the UK and France, among others. As US leaders watch whether these countries are successful in their trending away from capitalism and movement toward more socialistic tendencies, even going so far as to implement Sharia law for their Muslim inhabitants, I find it interesting that some European leaders seem to be slowly moving away from these now-entrenched policies back toward more conservative ideals. French prime-minister Sarkozy is a notable example. He has had more than his share of trouble in managing such a diverse and complicated nation. And Chancellor of Germany Angela Merkl, who has been the president of the EU in times past, is also a strong conservative leader. Even Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi has encountered high numbers over  his center-left opponent, despite corruption charges, a “deep recession,” and a fling with a model.

Looking askance at the leaders themselves and more at the notion of conservatism over liberalism (I don’t favor the so-called “progressive” tag liberals like to put on themselves) it appears that people may be getting fed up with paying so many taxes for so much bureaucracy and big-government initiatives, coupled with political double-speak, lying and corruption. We must never forget that the Beatles left the UK in favor of the US partially because they wanted to escape the 90% tax rate for millionaires.

Nor should we forget, to the disdain of our liberal brethern, that we in the US have a Constitution, which was deliberately and precisely written to constrict the advent of big government.

At the end of the day, it is firstly about peoples’ wallets, and after that it’s about ethical, judicial, legal, moral and social sensibility. It may be that people in Europe are fed up with the wild swing left and are looking for a simpler lifestyle.

On the other hand, I found this article in the Sunday, June 7, 2009, print edition of The Denver Post to be quite informative. In this article, a clinical psychologist living in Castle Rock, Colorado–one Rhonda Hackett–had some insights and “facts” to share regarding how well the Canadian health care system performs relative to the US system. We’ve see the TV commercials and heard the rumors about Canadian citizens coming to the US for health care because they can’t get it in Canada. She addresses that “myth” and others in the article, which I found quite compelling.

My wife, without reading the ariticle, had this to say about that: “Well, I can tell you that if it works out like Army health care,” (she was an Army brat), “people will wind up waiting months to get an appointment, standing in line for hours when they finally do get one, and not receiving adequate care upon seeing the doctor.”

May be. But our psychologist friend Hackett claims that in Canada it is independent doctors who manage their client base, not government, which pokes a stick in the eye of my wife’s theory because in the Army it is Army brass who decide what Army doctors will and will not do.

Hackett goes on to cite a table of some interesting medical statistics, such as Canadian average life expectancy of 80.4 years versus the US 77.8, though she does not say where these numbers came from.

The problem with articles like these are that they have an internet feel to them. They sound official and actual and important, but they may just be someone’s ranting and raving with regard to something they’re passionate about. If there is anything the internet has desensitized in all of us, it is the importance comparing and contrasting so-called “facts” with what others are saying. One person cites it, it’s all good and we run with it. The internet has done a great job of moving urban myths onto the global stage.

On the other hand, as I said, Hackett makes a compelling argument, one that’s worth more investigation. If indeed Canadian health care is as she says it is, then maybe it won’t be so bad.

Who knows?

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