Back pain can be one of the most frustrating and deliberating aches you could experience. Oftentimes, it happens so quickly you might not even be sure what exactly you did to cause it.
It's a very common ailment. In fact, low back pain is the second most common reason people visit doctors and is the leading cause of disability in the United States for Americans under the age of 45.
According to research, 60 to 80 percent of adults in the United States suffer from chronic back pain. Low back pain affects your spine's flexibility, stability and strength, leading to pain, discomfort and stiffness.
Your doctor might recommend pain medication or bed rest in order to heal properly, but herbal medicine can be more effective than medications.
What herbal medicine should you be taking?
Jacob Teitelbaum, MD, shares what herbal medicine you should be using to help ease your chronic back pain.
Selected Podcast
Unexplained Back Pain? Herbal Medicine for Long-Term Relief
Featuring:
Jacob Teitelbaum, MD, is Director of the Fatigue & Fibromyalgia Practitioners Network and author of the best-selling book, From Fatigued to Fantastic! He is also the creator of the popular free iPhone & Android application "Cures A-Z."
He is the lead author of four studies on effective treatment for fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome, and a study on effective treatment of autism using NAET.
Dr. Teitelbaum does frequent media appearances including Good Morning America, CNN, Fox News Channel, the Dr. Oz Show and Oprah & Friends. He lives in Kona, Hawaii.
Jacob Teitelbaum, MD
Jacob Teitelbaum, MD, is Director of the Fatigue & Fibromyalgia Practitioners Network and author of the best-selling book, From Fatigued to Fantastic! He is also the creator of the popular free iPhone & Android application "Cures A-Z."He is the lead author of four studies on effective treatment for fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome, and a study on effective treatment of autism using NAET.
Dr. Teitelbaum does frequent media appearances including Good Morning America, CNN, Fox News Channel, the Dr. Oz Show and Oprah & Friends. He lives in Kona, Hawaii.
Transcription:
RadioMD Presents: The Dr. Holly Lucille Show | Original Air Date: April 29, 2015
Host: Holly Lucille, ND, RN
She's articulate, she's passionate and she tells the truth about health. She's Dr. Holly. It's time for the Dr. Holly Lucille Show.
DR HOLLY: Hi, folks. Thank you so much for joining me and coming on back and you're going to be so glad you did because, guess what? I have got the very esteemed Dr. Jacob Teitelbaum with me. We are going to be talking about back pain and how you can throw away those NSAIDS and you really can be safer and also effectively out of pain. But hold on. What I want to tell you real quick is a story. I actually had a friend of mine. She's my besty from high school. She was having excruciating back pain and wasn't getting it checked out. So, we're going to start out erring on the side of safety. If in doubt, check it out.
Now, I used to have a pathology teacher that said, if in doubt, cut it out. If in doubt, check it out. Here's why I'm saying. She was a survivor of breast cancer. She was having this sort of—and it wasn't that she was working out incredibly hard or doing anything that would cause this pain. She was having excruciating back pain for a little bit.
At the urge of her spouse, she went to get it checked out, and it turned out that that back pain was, unfortunately, because her breast cancer had returned and had metastasized to her spine and her ribs. So, it broke a couple of ribs and her lung and lymph. So, I just want to start out this segment, because I think that prevention is the cure, and erring on the side of safety and continuing to wake up during our "oh, so ever easily numbing" world and pay attention to what are the little signs our bodies are telling us.
So, that's just the little story that I'm going to start out with because I think it's important when we have these things cross our radar, especially when they happen to us personally, we share, and we get things from each other. Sorry. With that, Jacob, I'm bring you on.
DR JACOB: Well, hi. And just before we even launch into the back pain, to give an idea of the power of natural medicine, even in the example you gave of your best bud, The [inaudible 1:59], a simple mineral, has been shown to decrease breast cancer and other cancer bone from metastases and the pain. The herb curcumin in the form CuraMed, because brands totally matter here.
DR HOLLY: CuraMed.
DR JACOB: 750mg, two twice a day. Outstanding for multiple, multiple, multiple kinds of cancers.
DR HOLLY: I talked about BCM-95 Curcumin in my last segment.
DR JACOB: Yes, and I add it in for pretty much everybody with cancer. Also, a study just came out this week, that for those with a history of breast cancer, drinking 2 to 5 cups of coffee a day is associated with a 50 percent lower risk of cancer occurrence and coffee has been shown that anticancer benefits for a wide number of cancers.
So, there's a lot of good stuff out there. But let's talk about back pain now, because we have 36 million Americans out there who suffer with back pain. I'm going to give you guys both good news and bad news. The good news is that it's pretty easy to get through to most back pain. It's very treatable. The bad news? Most physicians are absolutely clueless about treating back pain.
DR HOLLY: Right.
DR JACOB: All they know is that there are these NSAID medications, which kill an estimated thirty to fifty thousand Americans each year needlessly. That's a lot of dead people that don't have to be dead and surgery and that's it. But when you treat the root cause of the pain, and we're going to talk about how to do this today, the pain goes away.
So, Holly, I want to start with one important fact with the listeners. People go for the X-rays and it's good to do the X-rays, if the pain is persistent and goes over six weeks. But, you need to realize that in the vast majority of cases, all of those changes—that little war zone on the x-ray? It has nothing to do with the pain you're having. This is shown in this study. The fact that they take a bunch of people with back pain and a bunch of healthy people and put their X-rays or MRIs on the screen and the radiologist can't tell them apart. But if you lie, and you tell the radiologist they have back pain, you're going to get a report that makes it sound like, "Oh, my god I'm amazed this person can walk," even if they have no pain at all.
DR HOLLY: Right.
DR JACOB: So, understand that when you go, "Oh, my god. Look at all of this stuff," that doesn't mean that your pain is cast in stone, or, in bone.
DR HOLLY: Right.
DR JACOB: Because it's not usually the source of the pain. Most often, it's coming from muscles. It takes energy from muscles to release. Muscles are like a string. We think it would take energy to contract a muscle, but, no. I mean, if you work out a long heavy workout day, you don't come home and say, "Honey, I had a horrible, hard day. My muscles are so loose." No. They're tight. If muscles don't have energy, they get locked in a shortened position. If you give the muscles energy, which I'm going to teach you how to do today, the pain goes away. It's a really a fun thing to see. So, a lot of it goes back to the SHINE protocol we've talked about, sleep, hormone, infection, inflammation impingement, nutritional support and exercise as able. So, shall we give, for the listeners if you have a piece of paper and a pen, how about you go ahead and tell people how to make the pain go away.
DR HOLLY: That's right. So, you've talked about the SHINE protocol before and I think it's so applicable and effective for so many different things. But I love it because it's you can really do these things and truly shine.
DR JACOB: Absolutely. So, for the "I's", let's start with inflammation. And here's the big threesome that will get most of you pain free. One is the mixture of curcumin, boswellia, DLPA and nattokinase.
DR HOLLY: Nice.
DR JACOB: The other product that I use is called Curamin. You get the extra strength, take one, three times a day. It takes six weeks to see the full effect of the herbals. These can be taken along with your medication in the beginning. End Pain is another mix. It's a mix of willow bark, boswellia, cherry. In head on studies, it has twice the effect as [06:08] for back pain.
DR HOLLY: And less damaging.
DR JACOB: Oh, and when they look at the stomach, there's no irritation to the stomach. They did pre- and post-endoscopies where they looked down with a fiber optic tube. And then, Comfrey topical cream called Traumaplant. Just rub it over the area. Here's the trick of back pain. Feel around. If you can find the area where, if you push on it—and give it a good push--you're reproducing the pain, the pain is usually coming from that area or being referred, basically. That usually is going to be muscle or ligament pain. So, start with those big three for inflammation.
Give it six weeks to see the full effect. They're going to see effects a lot quicker than that, but six weeks for the full effect. Then, most people are going to find that you can lower the dose of your pain medication or get rid of it. Now, here's another little secret that neither the drug companies nor the herbal companies want you to know. Pain is like fire, once you put the fire out for 3 months, and you've kept yourself pretty pain-free, you can usually stop both the medication and the natural remedies and very often the pain will stay gone. So, step one is treating inflammation. Step two, "N" for nutrition. Big, big, big, big, big.
DR HOLLY: Huge.
DR JACOB: Because they--the muscles-if they don't have the B vitamins, magnesium and the other nutrients, they're ribose insufficient. They get locked in the shortened position and they hurt. So, two simple things, three simple things, actually, that I'll give people as the recipe and that I take each morning myself. I've already taken it this morning here in Hawaii. It's a vitamin powder called the Energy Revitalization System. One scoop a day replaces 35 vitamins and magnesium supplement pills. It's pretty much complete from A to Z. Then, add some ribose. Ribose is the premier energy nutrient.
Two of our studies show that it decreased pain dramatically, while it increased energy, 61% on average, after 3 weeks' use. Just one scoop, three times a day. And then, take PectOmega for your Omega 3 anti-inflammatory effect. That's the Omega 3 support. You just need one or two a day instead of eight to sixteen. I remember, while I was still living in Indianapolis, I was walking down the street by the city dock one day and noticed this guy looking at me from across a circle.
And he's staring at me and I'm looking back at him. He's looking at me and suddenly he comes tearing across the street, weaving through traffic, and he runs up to me, picks me up in the air and says, "Are you Dr. T?" I said, "Yes." He put me down. The vitamin powder made his back pain of twenty years go away. So, it's an easy to treat back pain. Structural things, too.
DR HOLLY: And, Jacob, I took too much of your time, we have about forty seconds left.
DR JACK: Well, we talked about a lot of stuff. So, there's an iPhone and Android app, CURES A-Z. You could find the stuff there. If you can go to my website endfatigue.com, the things are there but these are readily available all over the internet and health food stores. You know, it's easy to find. You don't need to be in pain. It's really optional. Your body's just saying, "I need something." Give your body what it needs.
DR HOLLY: That's right. And you don't need an ulcer from taking all those NSAIDS. That's right. So, endfatigue.com you can find it all there and CURES A-Z.
This is Dr. Holly Lucille and Mindful Medicine. We'll be right back.
RadioMD Presents: The Dr. Holly Lucille Show | Original Air Date: April 29, 2015
Host: Holly Lucille, ND, RN
She's articulate, she's passionate and she tells the truth about health. She's Dr. Holly. It's time for the Dr. Holly Lucille Show.
DR HOLLY: Hi, folks. Thank you so much for joining me and coming on back and you're going to be so glad you did because, guess what? I have got the very esteemed Dr. Jacob Teitelbaum with me. We are going to be talking about back pain and how you can throw away those NSAIDS and you really can be safer and also effectively out of pain. But hold on. What I want to tell you real quick is a story. I actually had a friend of mine. She's my besty from high school. She was having excruciating back pain and wasn't getting it checked out. So, we're going to start out erring on the side of safety. If in doubt, check it out.
Now, I used to have a pathology teacher that said, if in doubt, cut it out. If in doubt, check it out. Here's why I'm saying. She was a survivor of breast cancer. She was having this sort of—and it wasn't that she was working out incredibly hard or doing anything that would cause this pain. She was having excruciating back pain for a little bit.
At the urge of her spouse, she went to get it checked out, and it turned out that that back pain was, unfortunately, because her breast cancer had returned and had metastasized to her spine and her ribs. So, it broke a couple of ribs and her lung and lymph. So, I just want to start out this segment, because I think that prevention is the cure, and erring on the side of safety and continuing to wake up during our "oh, so ever easily numbing" world and pay attention to what are the little signs our bodies are telling us.
So, that's just the little story that I'm going to start out with because I think it's important when we have these things cross our radar, especially when they happen to us personally, we share, and we get things from each other. Sorry. With that, Jacob, I'm bring you on.
DR JACOB: Well, hi. And just before we even launch into the back pain, to give an idea of the power of natural medicine, even in the example you gave of your best bud, The [inaudible 1:59], a simple mineral, has been shown to decrease breast cancer and other cancer bone from metastases and the pain. The herb curcumin in the form CuraMed, because brands totally matter here.
DR HOLLY: CuraMed.
DR JACOB: 750mg, two twice a day. Outstanding for multiple, multiple, multiple kinds of cancers.
DR HOLLY: I talked about BCM-95 Curcumin in my last segment.
DR JACOB: Yes, and I add it in for pretty much everybody with cancer. Also, a study just came out this week, that for those with a history of breast cancer, drinking 2 to 5 cups of coffee a day is associated with a 50 percent lower risk of cancer occurrence and coffee has been shown that anticancer benefits for a wide number of cancers.
So, there's a lot of good stuff out there. But let's talk about back pain now, because we have 36 million Americans out there who suffer with back pain. I'm going to give you guys both good news and bad news. The good news is that it's pretty easy to get through to most back pain. It's very treatable. The bad news? Most physicians are absolutely clueless about treating back pain.
DR HOLLY: Right.
DR JACOB: All they know is that there are these NSAID medications, which kill an estimated thirty to fifty thousand Americans each year needlessly. That's a lot of dead people that don't have to be dead and surgery and that's it. But when you treat the root cause of the pain, and we're going to talk about how to do this today, the pain goes away.
So, Holly, I want to start with one important fact with the listeners. People go for the X-rays and it's good to do the X-rays, if the pain is persistent and goes over six weeks. But, you need to realize that in the vast majority of cases, all of those changes—that little war zone on the x-ray? It has nothing to do with the pain you're having. This is shown in this study. The fact that they take a bunch of people with back pain and a bunch of healthy people and put their X-rays or MRIs on the screen and the radiologist can't tell them apart. But if you lie, and you tell the radiologist they have back pain, you're going to get a report that makes it sound like, "Oh, my god I'm amazed this person can walk," even if they have no pain at all.
DR HOLLY: Right.
DR JACOB: So, understand that when you go, "Oh, my god. Look at all of this stuff," that doesn't mean that your pain is cast in stone, or, in bone.
DR HOLLY: Right.
DR JACOB: Because it's not usually the source of the pain. Most often, it's coming from muscles. It takes energy from muscles to release. Muscles are like a string. We think it would take energy to contract a muscle, but, no. I mean, if you work out a long heavy workout day, you don't come home and say, "Honey, I had a horrible, hard day. My muscles are so loose." No. They're tight. If muscles don't have energy, they get locked in a shortened position. If you give the muscles energy, which I'm going to teach you how to do today, the pain goes away. It's a really a fun thing to see. So, a lot of it goes back to the SHINE protocol we've talked about, sleep, hormone, infection, inflammation impingement, nutritional support and exercise as able. So, shall we give, for the listeners if you have a piece of paper and a pen, how about you go ahead and tell people how to make the pain go away.
DR HOLLY: That's right. So, you've talked about the SHINE protocol before and I think it's so applicable and effective for so many different things. But I love it because it's you can really do these things and truly shine.
DR JACOB: Absolutely. So, for the "I's", let's start with inflammation. And here's the big threesome that will get most of you pain free. One is the mixture of curcumin, boswellia, DLPA and nattokinase.
DR HOLLY: Nice.
DR JACOB: The other product that I use is called Curamin. You get the extra strength, take one, three times a day. It takes six weeks to see the full effect of the herbals. These can be taken along with your medication in the beginning. End Pain is another mix. It's a mix of willow bark, boswellia, cherry. In head on studies, it has twice the effect as [06:08] for back pain.
DR HOLLY: And less damaging.
DR JACOB: Oh, and when they look at the stomach, there's no irritation to the stomach. They did pre- and post-endoscopies where they looked down with a fiber optic tube. And then, Comfrey topical cream called Traumaplant. Just rub it over the area. Here's the trick of back pain. Feel around. If you can find the area where, if you push on it—and give it a good push--you're reproducing the pain, the pain is usually coming from that area or being referred, basically. That usually is going to be muscle or ligament pain. So, start with those big three for inflammation.
Give it six weeks to see the full effect. They're going to see effects a lot quicker than that, but six weeks for the full effect. Then, most people are going to find that you can lower the dose of your pain medication or get rid of it. Now, here's another little secret that neither the drug companies nor the herbal companies want you to know. Pain is like fire, once you put the fire out for 3 months, and you've kept yourself pretty pain-free, you can usually stop both the medication and the natural remedies and very often the pain will stay gone. So, step one is treating inflammation. Step two, "N" for nutrition. Big, big, big, big, big.
DR HOLLY: Huge.
DR JACOB: Because they--the muscles-if they don't have the B vitamins, magnesium and the other nutrients, they're ribose insufficient. They get locked in the shortened position and they hurt. So, two simple things, three simple things, actually, that I'll give people as the recipe and that I take each morning myself. I've already taken it this morning here in Hawaii. It's a vitamin powder called the Energy Revitalization System. One scoop a day replaces 35 vitamins and magnesium supplement pills. It's pretty much complete from A to Z. Then, add some ribose. Ribose is the premier energy nutrient.
Two of our studies show that it decreased pain dramatically, while it increased energy, 61% on average, after 3 weeks' use. Just one scoop, three times a day. And then, take PectOmega for your Omega 3 anti-inflammatory effect. That's the Omega 3 support. You just need one or two a day instead of eight to sixteen. I remember, while I was still living in Indianapolis, I was walking down the street by the city dock one day and noticed this guy looking at me from across a circle.
And he's staring at me and I'm looking back at him. He's looking at me and suddenly he comes tearing across the street, weaving through traffic, and he runs up to me, picks me up in the air and says, "Are you Dr. T?" I said, "Yes." He put me down. The vitamin powder made his back pain of twenty years go away. So, it's an easy to treat back pain. Structural things, too.
DR HOLLY: And, Jacob, I took too much of your time, we have about forty seconds left.
DR JACK: Well, we talked about a lot of stuff. So, there's an iPhone and Android app, CURES A-Z. You could find the stuff there. If you can go to my website endfatigue.com, the things are there but these are readily available all over the internet and health food stores. You know, it's easy to find. You don't need to be in pain. It's really optional. Your body's just saying, "I need something." Give your body what it needs.
DR HOLLY: That's right. And you don't need an ulcer from taking all those NSAIDS. That's right. So, endfatigue.com you can find it all there and CURES A-Z.
This is Dr. Holly Lucille and Mindful Medicine. We'll be right back.