LifeCare Chiropractic

The Best Chiropractic Care in Mesa, Arizona

NSAIDs Dangerous

Back Pain Chiropractor Mesa AZ

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Chiropractic Hospital –

CHIROPRACTIC CARE OF LOW BACK PAIN IN HOSPITALS IMPROVES CARE?  There have been many stories of the better outcomes and happier patients when chiropractic care is added to the ER care for patients with low back pain, but this is the first study that I’m aware of that actually proves it.  It makes sense.  I can’t tell you how many times patients went to the ER with their neck pain, headache, shoulder pain, mid back pain, low back pain before they came in to see me.  Rarely do they ever feel the visit produces any real benefit.  What if that patient had a chiropractor to see after everything else had failed (actually…it should be BEFORE everything else failed, but that’s an even larger hurdle to jump..)?  Reports from hospitals that have added chiropractic care to their ER consistently shows happier and better satisfied patients who presented with low back pain. Read More…

Pain Relief Chiropractic Mesa AZ

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Anti-Inflammatories lead to Alzheimer’s? ANTI-INFLAMMATORIES LIKE IBUPROFEN LEADS TO ALZHEIMER’S?  Is it just me, are has there been a deluge of research looking at all the bad side effects of anti-inflammatory drugs?  We’ve always known that they lead to kidney and liver problems, as well as destruction of the joints that most people are taking the NSAIDs for in the first place.  But the new long list is likely a result of the fall of Vioxx and the strong links with heart attacks in this drug.  After all the documents became public, researchers started wondering….if this happens with selective COX-2 inhibitors like Vioxx, what about all the non-selective COX inhibitors like NSAIDs??  It’s looking like this wasn’t such a good question to ask…  We should never ask the question if we aren’t ready for the answer…  Bottom line?  See your chiropractor first… Read More…

Afib Risk and Ibuprofen

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ANOTHER BAD EFFECTS OF ANTI-INFLAMMATORIES??  Is it just me, or is the list of side effects of NSAIDs getting longer and longer?  And we really all have Merck and Vioxx to thank for this direction of the research after well over 100,000 cardiovascular events were estimated to have occurred as a result of the new blockbuster drug when it was released.

As way of comparison, does chiropractic care increase the risk of atrial fib, chondrocyte death, heart attack, kidney dysfunction, liver dysfunction or bleeding ulcers?  Funny that adjusting ONLY (which would not include all of the soft tissue work, stretching, lifestyle changes and use of Graston that we do in the office) fares just as well for most conditions as this class of drugs but a handful of misguided critics still feel that chiropractic care is “not worth the risk”…

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Pain Relief Chiropractic Mesa AZ

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ANOTHER BAD EFFECT OF ANTI-INFLAMMATORIES? Is it just me, or is the list of side effects of NSAIDs getting longer and longer?  And we really all have Merck and Vioxx to thank for this direction of the research after well over 100,000 cardiovascular events were estimated to have occurred as a result of the new blockbuster drug when it was release. As way of comparison, does chiropractic care increase the risk of atrial fib, chondrocyte death, heart attack, kidney dysfunction, liver dysfunction or bleeding ulcers?  Funny that adjusting ONLY (which would not include all of the soft tissue work, stretching, lifestyle changes and use of Graston that we do in the office) fares just as well for most conditions as this class of drugs but a handful of misguided critics still feel that chiropractic care is “not worth the risk”…

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Back and Neck Pain Chiropractor Mesa AZ

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COMMON OVER THE COUNTER DRUG FAR MORE DANGEROUS THAN ANYONE THINKS

Your back or neck are a little sore after doing some yardwork this weekend.  Just pop a few ibuprofen and everything will be fine.  Better yet, saunter on over to the neighbor who had back surgery a few months ago and borrow one of his prescription strength ones.  They’re safe, right?  Sure, they’ve been strongly associated with liver problems, kidney problems, joint problems and recently heart attacks.  But my brains’ still safe, right?  Not even close.  Even the use of ibuprofen under 1200 mg is associated with a 50% greater risk of stroke in this study.  The numbers just get worse from there.  This is NOT a benign class of drugs and it remains frustrating when opponents of chiropractic care say that chiropractic care is “dangerous” and not worth the “risk.”  The risk of chiropractic vs common treatments like NSAIDs is like comparing the person on the ground watching the skydiver attempt to land without a parachute.  And let’s not even talk about surgical risks!  So, next time you consider just popping that ibuprofen, maybe you should reconsider with a call to your chiropractor instead…

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Natural Treatments for Arthritis Go Head to Head with Dangerous Drugs

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Natural Treatments for arthritis
Natural Treatments for arthritis

There are lots of claims about natural treatments for arthritis, but which ones work?

Without any good answers, all too many of us drop back on drugs for arthritis pain.  The list can include drugs like steroids and NSAIDs.  These drugs come with a list of side effects that you would not want to experience (if you’re really up to learning all about why NSAIDs are so bad for your health, feel free to check out my eBook on the topic by clicking here).

A few years back, the drug companies were able to come up with a new version of the most common class of anti-inflammatories, the cyclo-oxygenase inhibitors.  This NSAID class includes drugs like ibuprofen, and indomethacin.  The problem with this class of drugs is that one of the enzymes they block just so happens to protect the lining of the stomach.  This is why the big risk with these drugs is bleeding ulcers and why some 20,000 people per year die as a result of taking these drugs.

Because of this tiny little side effect, researchers developed a class of drugs that do not block the one version of the enzyme that protects the stomach lining.  Thus was born the selective cyclo-oxygenase inhibitors that rose to the top of the drug food chain to become one of the most financially successful blockbuster drugs of its time.

At least, until it was determined that, while this drug was a wee bit safer on the stomach,  unfortunately this drug DID block one enzyme that protected the heart, leading to some 100,000+ heart attacks and who knows how many deaths from Vioxx alone.  To make matters worse, Merck hid this data for years until it blew up in their face, resulting in hundreds of lawsuits from families that lost their loved ones.

Luckily (for the drug companies) the public has a short memory and Celebrex is still available on the market and prescriptions are still being written today for patients with arthritis pain who probably forgot about the entire Vioxx debacle.

So, if you happen to be one of those patients whose primary care doctor also has a short memory and wrote you a prescription for Celebrex, there may be an answer.

This particular article pits the natural combination of glucosamine and chondroitin up against Celebrex in 606 patients with knee arthritis and severe pain (Kellgren and Lawrence grades 2–3 knee osteoarthritis and moderate-to-severe pain based on the Western Ontario and McMaster osteoarthritis index-WOMAC-score ≥301 an a 0–500 scale).

Patients received either 400 mg chondroitin sulfate, 500 mg glucosamine combination three times a day or 200 mg celecoxib (Celebrex) every day for 6 months.  Here’s what they found:

  • The natural arthritis treatment group dropped 50.1% (WOMAC score).
  • The drug-known-to-kill group had a matched 50.2% decrease.
  • At 6 months, 79.7% of patients in the natural arthritis treatment group and 79.2% in the toxic arthritis drug (Celebrex, in case you’re not following along) group fulfilled OMERACT-OARSI criteria.
  • Both groups had more than a 50% reduction in joint swelling and effusion.

Sounds like a pretty even match, right?  Yeah–except that neither glucosamine nor chondroitin, in the history of its use, has been associated with even a single death (that I’m aware of–I’m sure there’s a patient or two who choked to death taking the supplements…), while Celebrex is in a class of drugs that is so bad for the heart that cardiology recommendations now state that NO heart disease patients should be on NSAIDs.

Oh..and it’s WAY cheaper.  So which one are YOU taking?

NSAIDs, Prediabetes and Your Liver; Dangerous, but Not Like You Think

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elevated liver enzymes
creative soul/Dollar Photo Club

There is pretty much no chronic disease that prediabetes does not contribute to.  Fatty liver is on the list.

It goes by many names: non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH), fatty liver, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD).  It can start with just a mild elevation of liver enzymes on a routine blood work panel.  This may prompt your doctor to order a viral hepatitis panel just to make sure that hepatitis is not at work.

When the virus panel comes back normal you just get kind of a mention of it not being anything significant and that we’ll just keep an eye on it.

This is how it starts (I’ve covered this concept in a previous blog article that can be read by clicking here), but it can progress to something far more severe with time, leading to scarring of the liver (fibrosis, cirrhosis) and liver transplants.

Currently, there is a rather large amount of research being published on this topic because this elevation of liver enzymes is on the rise.

As always, the answer comes down to that condition that about half of the Westernized world has prediabetes.  There are some very, very strong links between the diabetic progression and NASH.  It boils down to the accepted fact that the diabetic process pretty much pisses off the liver cells, ultimately killing them off slowly (leading to the elevation in liver enzymes in the blood).  Inflammation that is generated by the diabetic lifestyle likely plays a pivotal role as well.

This means that living an anti-diabetic lifestyle is the ONLY real answer (despite the rush to try to develop a drug for this condition).

(While it is beyond the scope of this article, feel free to check out my Diabetes eBook for a complete outline of the necessary lifestyle changes to combat diabetes by clicking here.)

Or at least, an anti-diabetic lifestyle was the only thing that USED to be on the list.  This particular article adds another aspect to this condition.  In it, researchers looked at the relationship between the activation of the enzyme cyclo-oxygenase 2 (COX2) and the development of fatty liver.

You may recognize the name of the enzyme because COX1 and COX2 are the enzymes that are blocked by the use of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs like ibuprofen and naproxen.  And we can’t forget the Vioxx debacle, a drug that was designed to block only COX2, along with Celebrex and Bextra.

Vioxx was pulled off the market because it greatly increased the risk of heart attacks, causing at least tens of thousands of heart attacks in the time it was being prescribed.

Why?  Because, while we know that COX1 and COX2 produce inflammatory chemicals in our body, they also do things like thin the blood via the enzyme prostacyclin.  The problem is that we don’t find out about these other enzymes functions until we block it in large numbers in a brand-new-to-the-market blockbuster drug.

Here’s some interesting things that the researchers found:

  • Adult liver cells do NOT turn on the COX-2 enzyme when the rest of the body is in an inflammatory state.
  • This lack of expression of COX2 may leave liver cells vulnerable to the development of insulin resistance / prediabetes.
  • If the baseline production (constitutive) COX-2 in liver cells is forced (in the lab in mice), they found that this protects these cells against adiposity, inflammation, and, hence, insulin resistance.
  • This increased production of COX2 leads to decreased fatty liver, adiposity, triglycerides and free fatty acids, increased adiponectin-to-leptin ratio (an anti-diabetic marker), and decreased levels of chemical involved with inflammation.
  • As an added benefit, these mice who produced more COX2 enzyme activity burned more fat.

So, just like most everything else that has to do with human physiology, we really don’t have any idea how things work.  We THINK we know what enzymes do.  COX2 produces inflammation.  We block that with a drug and we’ll stop pain.

Until you cause a heart attack.

And here we see yet another aspect of what this enzyme does.  This leads to the very reasonable possibility that drugs like the NSAIDs and the selective COX2 inhbitors (Celebrex is still available although Vioxx was pulled off the market) may contribute to fatty liver.

Although it has always been known that these drugs damage the liver, it was thought to occur by a different mechanism; one that had not been previously thought of.  At least until now.

(Just in case you’re a little rusty on your ibuprofen side effects, feel free to check out my eBook on the topic by clicking here)

This is not, however, the direction the researchers were looking.  Rather, the conclusions stated that drugs that INCREASE the expression of COX2 in the liver may be a new route of research into drugs used to treat NAFLD.

Yep.  I’m sure it’ll be a blockbuster.  At least until it starts killing patients left and right.

 

Tylenol for Your Pain; Surprising Finding on How Well it Works

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Tylenol for back pain
Radosław Brzozo / Dollar Photo Club

Society would never consider going without over the counter pain meds. Doesn’t matter what’s it’s for; headaches, knee pain, shoulder pain, back pain.   We don’t seem to care where the pain is; that magical little pill hones in with radar precision to zap the pain and give you relief.

Or at least this is what the advertising messages would have you believe.

For starters, there is no magical honing; all drugs reach all areas of the body.  This is one of the reasons why so many side effects occur in organ systems that have nothing to do with the reason for taking a drug in the first place.

Personally, I haven’t taken any over the counter or prescriptive medications for at least 20 years (it may have been longer—I just can’t actually remember…) despite my share of martial arts injuries over the years.  But I certainly have my share of patients who take them on a regular basis.  We’ve become somewhat immune to the idea that every drug has a risk / benefit ratio.  There is not a drug out there that does not have side effects; since every single drug interferes with the way your body functions to some degree or another this is inevitable.

Paracetamol, the active ingredient found in Tylenol and generic acetaminophen, has a long list of side effects.  Just some of these include:

But, as mentioned, sometimes the side effects are worth the risk (although anyone on the liver or kidney transplant waiting lists may disagree…) so long as there are benefits.

But what if what you’ve been taking your Tylenol for really doesn’t work?  I can tell you that it certainly seems like many of my patients who are in pain and take many of the OTC pain medications aren’t jumping up and down for joy over how well they work (because, after all, they are in a chiropractor’s office looking for additional pain relief.

At the most, they seem to help “take the edge off” or help for a few hours at the most.  This particular study seems to agree with what I’ve experienced in my office.  In it, researchers looked across 13 different clinical trials looking at the use of paracetamol for back pain, knee or hip arthritis pain.  In the review, the researchers looked for the quality of the studies to see what the outcomes were.  Here’s what they found:

  • High quality results from the studies found that paracetamol is ineffective for reducing pain intensity and disability or improving quality of life in the short term in people with low back pain.
  • High quality results from the studies found that paracetamol used for hip or knee osteoarthritis for that any short-term improvement on pain and disability was not clinically important.
  • High quality results showed that those taking paracetamol were nearly four times more likely to have abnormal liver function tests.

When it comes to research, there are no absolutes and no single study can determine whether something works or not. To make it a little more complicated, there are good quality and bad quality studies.  But when you have multiple high quality studies pointing to the same outcome, you can be far more confident that the results from that study may apply to you.

That’s what we have here.  Could you be one of the few for whom Tylenol is going to work for back, knee or hip pain?  Possibly.  But it should not be your first choice given that there is a long list of side effects associated with the use of Tylenol and this review strongly suggests that it is not going to work.

Of course, being somewhat biased towards chiropractic care for these conditions, I would strongly suggest that chiropractic care should be your first choice for treatment of these conditions.