Supplements for Chronic Pain

Supplements and Chronic Pain

For those of you experiencing chronic pain of some sort, it is a good idea to understand OTC (over-the-counter) pain medications and what you can do to help counteract those undesirable effects.

If you are like most people, you understand that you can’t take handfuls of these OTC pain meds without consequences. I don’t want to belabor the point but will just point out a few problems with them.

Kidney Damage

Taking high doses or extended use of things like aspirin, ibuprofen (Advil, Motrin, etc), and naproxen (Aleve, Anaprox, Naprosyn) causes as much as 5% of the current kidney failures. In other words, if you are getting dialysis, the chances are about 2-5% that you are there from OTC pain relievers.

One study found that the odds ratio for developing ESRD (end stage renal disease) was 1.4 for those who took 105 to 365 pills of acetaminophen per year, and 2.1 for those who took 366 or more pills per year. That is taking more than 1 acetaminophen per day for a year had double the rate of kidney problems.

Liver Damage

Acetaminophen is the most commonly used drug. It is sold separately or is included in other meds like Percocet, Vicodin, Midol, Sudafed, and many more. A relatively maximum, safe dose is considered to be 4000 mg a day. A Tylenol Extra Strength is 500 mg so taking two, 4 times a day and you have reached your maximum. You might be taking 3 or 4 of these to calm the pain so that 4000 mg point comes rapidly.

At least 500 people die each year from acetaminophen overdose and it is the most common reason for calls to poison control centers.

One published study showed that people taking acetaminophen (Tylenol or Excedrin etc) at least 4 days a week for at least 4 years were at greater risk for myeloid neoplasms, lymphomas, and plasma cell disorders. Hopefully you don’t know what any of those are. 

Pain is Pain

But you are in pain, and pain has its own serious downsides such as: depression, anxiety, cognitive decline, and substance abuse, so what is a person to do? We all know the problems with opiates.

I generally try not to use my own life as an example but I think it is worthwhile this time. I will then talk about my own journey over the past two-plus years with serious pain and attempts to stop the misery while keeping my liver and kidneys as healthy as possible. Hopefully, some of what I mention will have some value for your case which will be different from mine, no doubt.

Two years ago at the time of this writing, I hurt my shoulder lifting a two-car garage door where one helper spring (of two) had broken. That shoulder had given me problems since about 1984 but I was able to keep it relatively healthy with a targeted workout, first in the gym and then in my own workout room in my house. In my house, I was using primarily free weights and three different exercise tubing stations. I could get in my reverse flies, rows, pull-downs, etc that really help shoulders.

Pain Begins

The day after the garage door incident, the pain began. The pain built day by day and was first in the shoulder (no specific spot), the biceps, elbow, and forearm. I know now that this pain is typical for tears in the supraspinatus tendon-one of the four rotator cuff muscle groups. I ended up in the ER a couple of times. I was beginning to wonder if I had a fracture or some type of bone cancer that caused a fracture and if I was going to lose the arm. The pain was that bad.

I tried to rotate pain medications from Excedrin Migraine (EM), Advil, Tramadol and Percocet. Knowing what I just mentioned above, I absolutely wanted to stay out of the kidney damage zone and avoid liver damage.

When you have an overdose of acetaminophen, the treatment in the hospital is in part, IV NAC or N-Acetyl Cysteine. Fortunately, this is available as a supplement for a very reasonable price.

Watch For OTC Problems

So what I would do with every dose of EM is take 500 mg of NAC. I would also take two 500 mg caps as my routine supplement regimen so some days I was taking 6-500 mg NAC caps. I mostly used EM as it worked better for this pain than Advil. As mentioned I would rotate these just to help minimize the assault on the pathways taking care of the one or the other.

Another problem that I began to notice with repeated use of these OTC pain relievers was a general achiness. This took about 18 months to develop. I would notice that after taking acetaminophen of some sort for the shoulder pain, I would notice a general achiness.

I also battled a cellulitis infection issue that I think was at least, partially based on the continued use of OTC pain relievers. I had a relatively routine procedure but it just wouldn’t heal and then got infected. I do wonder if the OTC meds had anything to do with it.

Surgery #2

3 months after the second surgery, I thought I was still having too much pain so I decided to take the next big step and get a hyperbaric chamber. For those of you who have the means to get one of these, I highly recommend it. After just one or two one-hour sessions with the 1.3 ATA chamber, I noticed that my brain was working better.

Hyperbaric Therapy

You chronic pain sufferers are no doubt aware of the effects of those pain sessions on your cognitive functions. I could tell that I wasn’t quite the same person and was sleeping a lot. I knew the hyperbaric therapy should help but was pleased to see that it didn’t take weeks but only days to make a real difference.

I am using the chamber daily and plan to continue with that for 3-6 months or more. I had read that if you notice good changes after 4 or 5 sessions you should continue for 40 sessions. If you don’t notice any positive changes after 4-5 sessions, you should continue for 40 sessions. That is why I decided to purchase my own as I figured I would use it for decades. In my case, 40 sessions was a good intro but I could see that it would take months to see the full benefit.

I won’t go into any more detail about hyperbaric therapy (AKA HBOT), but I wanted to mention it so you can do more research.

Due to a successful second surgery and care on my part and with the hyperbaric therapy, I have recovered nicely. I know my kidneys and liver did OK because I do a blood test every 9 months or so to watch for problems.

Happy Platelets

I should mention that Excedrin also contains aspirin that interferes with platelet function and can lead to excessive bleeding. Fortunately for me, I only had one bleeding incident and needed a band-aid to cover up a tiny cut on my hand that wouldn’t stop bleeding. I was at a seminar and had to go to the front desk to get that band-aid. One thing that can help is to use more vitamin K that should slow down the negative reactions to aspirin. You just don’t want a stomach or brain bleed that you aren’t aware of until it is causing serious issues. So rotate your meds and up the vitamin K. Here is the one I currently use:

Pure Encapsulations Synergy K 120C

Basic Supplements

I routinely take a couple of handfuls of dietary supplements twice a day. I would encourage you to be sure you are getting vitamin C (2000 mg or more), vitamin D (5000 to 10000 IU for most), a little zinc and melatonin (helps with your immune support). On top of that take your NAC and if you can, take 2 ALA caps per day. The ALA helps the NAC do its job.

Other steps that you can take will mostly likely be very individual.  

BetterGenix NAC 500mg 90vc

NuMedica C-Bioflav 1000 180vc

Protocol for Life Balance Alpha-Lipoic Acid 250 mg 90c

NuMedica Melatonin 3 mg 60 Lozenges

Karuna Zinc Picolinate Plus 60vc

2024

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