The Medical Doctor’s Approach to Inflammation
Most doctors approach muscular inflammation, such as
back pain, by prescribing prescription and over-the-counter
anti-inflammatory drugs. The most popular in this category
(known as NSAIDs—non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs)
is Advil
The doctor’s reasoning is that if the muscles in your body
are “on fire” (i.e., inflamed), he’ll hose them down with
“cooling” anti-inflammatory drugs.
At first glance, this seems perfectly reasonable. Got a fire?
Spray water on it to extinguish the blaze. But there are a few
major drawbacks to this approach.
First, when your body is in a state of permanent
inflammation, you can put out the “fire” with these drugs,
but unless you cut off the source of the fuel, the inflammation
will just come back.
Imagine a 500-gallon propane tank that is leaking
propane—just enough to catch fire, but not enough to
explode the tank. You could approach this situation by trying
to hose down the fire. However, unless you turn stop the leak
completely, the fire could be sparked again by something as
simple as static cling.
The second limitation of anti-inflammatory drugs is that,
since they were intended for short-term use, they can have
serious side effects with prolonged use. Your liver, for
instance— the organ that cleans your blood of things that
don’t normally belong there (like these drugs)—can tolerate
light use of these drugs once in a while, but as the warning
labels tell you, it can’t continue doing so for more than a few
days at most.
Finally, the third limitation of using anti-inflammatories is
that you’re not doing anything to increase your body’s natural
anti-inflammatory agents—namely, certain foods and
enzymes. Unlike the anti-inflammatory drugs, your body can
easily handle long-term consumption of anti-inflammatory
foods and proteolytic enzyme supplements.
In an upcoming section of this book on solutions for living
a pain-free life, I’ll talk more about which foods actually calm
inflammation and how to naturally supplement your antiinflammatory
proteolytic enzyme levels.
Most doctors approach muscular inflammation, such as
back pain, by prescribing prescription and over-the-counter
anti-inflammatory drugs. The most popular in this category
(known as NSAIDs—non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs)
is Advil
The doctor’s reasoning is that if the muscles in your body
are “on fire” (i.e., inflamed), he’ll hose them down with
“cooling” anti-inflammatory drugs.
At first glance, this seems perfectly reasonable. Got a fire?
Spray water on it to extinguish the blaze. But there are a few
major drawbacks to this approach.
First, when your body is in a state of permanent
inflammation, you can put out the “fire” with these drugs,
but unless you cut off the source of the fuel, the inflammation
will just come back.
Imagine a 500-gallon propane tank that is leaking
propane—just enough to catch fire, but not enough to
explode the tank. You could approach this situation by trying
to hose down the fire. However, unless you turn stop the leak
completely, the fire could be sparked again by something as
simple as static cling.
The second limitation of anti-inflammatory drugs is that,
since they were intended for short-term use, they can have
serious side effects with prolonged use. Your liver, for
instance— the organ that cleans your blood of things that
don’t normally belong there (like these drugs)—can tolerate
light use of these drugs once in a while, but as the warning
labels tell you, it can’t continue doing so for more than a few
days at most.
Finally, the third limitation of using anti-inflammatories is
that you’re not doing anything to increase your body’s natural
anti-inflammatory agents—namely, certain foods and
enzymes. Unlike the anti-inflammatory drugs, your body can
easily handle long-term consumption of anti-inflammatory
foods and proteolytic enzyme supplements.
In an upcoming section of this book on solutions for living
a pain-free life, I’ll talk more about which foods actually calm
inflammation and how to naturally supplement your antiinflammatory
proteolytic enzyme levels.
