If you suffer from chronic pain, you can become desperate to ease it. Finding safe, effective, and natural pain relief is crucial to daily functioning and quality of life.
Don’t give up because there is hope!
Over my almost four decades of helping patients, I’ve seen many causes of chronic pain. Some patients have been dealt an injury to their bodies. Others have emotional trauma that manifests as physical pain, and so much more.
Without question, the most common (and treatable) cause of pain in my experience are food allergies or intolerances that result in systemic inflammation.
I call inflammatory foods “bandits” because they gradually steal away your basic comfort, ability to function, and overall peace of mind.
The link between inflammation and chronic pain has been proven by doctors and scientists around the world through countless studies.
Out of control inflammation leads to pain, disease, and even death.
Lowering inflammation is the most effective form of natural pain relief available. This isn’t a theory – this is proven scientific fact.
Beating back this rampant fire is also the best method to slow the signs of aging, improve gut health, lower your risk of disease, improve your chances of beating disease, preserve brain function, and even lose weight.
Solving the Puzzle of Food, Inflammation, and Chronic Pain
Perhaps you don’t think your issues are related to food. Most of my tens of thousands of patients didn’t think so either. In fact, many of them came to me “certain” they knew what was wrong!
Again and again, their medical issues led back to what they were eating.
The “wrong” food for you might be different than what is harmful to someone else (even in your own family). Every person’s biology is unique and your “triggers” are going to be unique as well. Make no mistake: the wrong foods will hurt you.
Below are just a few of the symptoms my patients have come to me with that ended up being an inflammatory response in the gut to food allergy or food intolerance.
- Asthma or other chronic respiratory issues
- Eczema, psoriasis, or urticaria (hives)
- Rhinitis (seasonal and perennial), catarrh, or sinusitis
- Gas, flatulence, or abdominal bloating
- Arthritis (all types but especially rheumatoid)
- Lack of energy, focus, or ability to think clearly
- Behavioral disorders in children (including ADD or ADHD)
- Panic attacks, depression, anxiety, mood swings, or violent episodes
- Autism or learning disorders
- Colitis, Crohn’s, irritable bowel, or inflammatory bowel disease
- Eating disorders (anorexia and bulimia)
- Diarrhea, constipation, or hemorrhoids
- Headaches or migraines
- Mastitis or breast pains
- Myalgic encephalomyelitis, fibromyalgia, or polymyalgia
- Endometriosis, infertility, or extreme mood swings
- Sexual dysfunction (male and female)
- Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, or other neurodegenerative diseases
- Multiple sclerosis or other autoimmune condition
- Angina, cardiac arrhythmia, or hypertension
- Overweight, underweight, variable weight, or hypothyroidism
- Hyperhidrosis (excessive sweating, not related to exercise)
- Abnormal fatigue (not helped by rest) or dizziness
- Diabetes (especially type II)
Now, don’t mistake what I’m saying! Food may not be the only issue that’s causing you chronic pain. However, it is (well and beyond) the most common cause.
Removing inflammatory “trigger” foods is the easiest change to make and may be your key to natural pain relief. It’s a puzzle for you to solve but I have every confidence that if you follow my suggestions, you’re going to feel (and look) years younger.
This is particularly important if you’ve tried the drugs, physical therapy, and other modalities of traditional medicine without long-term relief. If you’ve tried everything else – and nothing works – then this method of natural pain relief has probably been waiting for you to find it!
The foods you need to avoid are more important than the foods you need to consume.
Foods are a complex mixture of chemicals and many of these chemical substances are quite toxic, as I’ll explain. While many foods are considered “safe” to eat, it doesn’t mean your body can tolerate them.
Some foods we regularly consume are only “safe” because they’re cooked. This gives you a mistaken sense of security. A food may not poison you but may trigger a high inflammatory response – throwing your entire body into chaos.
What you must know is that you could be intolerant to something completely natural or organic that you’ve eaten hundreds of times. Your personal “trigger” could be a food that never makes the lists of common allergen foods (for example: dairy, gluten, soy, or nuts).
White potatoes are not a common allergen food by any means. I had a patient dealing with crippling arthritis (she was wheelchair-bound) who went through my food elimination program and discovered she couldn’t tolerate them.
Simply removing this one food – the root cause of her severe pain – changed her life! She got back on her own two feet! The sweet potato (from a different botanical family) had no effect on her health. Eliminating one problem food from her diet forever (there’s no going back once you discover what your body can’t handle) provided powerful (and natural) pain relief.
The Science of Allergens
There are four distinct levels of what the medical establishment refers to as allergy but is actually a degree of hypersensitivity.
Type I is sudden and severe. This hypersensitivity can land you in the hospital due to anaphylaxis. Fortunately, this extreme reaction is rarer than the media portrays.
Types II, III, and IV are slower, harder to pinpoint, and tend to linger. Over time, the effects “bioaccumulate” in your tissues. Patients explain it as a steady buildup to feeling horrible.
Type III is associated with what we call “immune complexes” circulating in the blood (antigen-antibody clumps). These settle in the tissues and can produce systemic (body-wide) pain and a feeling of poor health. It’s similar to serum sickness (when you get the wrong blood through transfusion and your body goes into shock).
Ignored, these antigens can lead to all sorts of health conditions – including chronic pain. For natural pain relief, you must figure out the food or foods that are causing this reaction.
The Basics of Food Elimination
Nature has seen fit to endow a number of plants with the capacity to synthesize substances that are toxic to humans and other animals. Ingesting them may produce unpleasant consequences which are not allergic but may become confused with an allergy.
Obviously, most often the amounts of poison in foods are tolerable. Toxicity is a matter of degree. The biggest discovery in this field was that people can be highly allergic to, or intolerant of, foods and yet not be aware of it. We call it the “hidden allergy” effect.
How can you figure out if food is causing or contributing to your pain?
Try this basic system that I explain in greater detail in my book “Diet Wise” because you never know until you try. There are plenty of other problems that might respond well and make it more than worth the effort. Many common health conditions (in addition to a proven form of natural pain relief) respond well to eliminating suspect foods.
The secret of successful identification of food allergies is to give up sufficient foods to be able to feel well, then to re-introduce these foods one at a time, so that detecting a reaction is relatively easy. We call this elimination and challenge dieting.
Anyone who is ill is almost certain to have more than one allergy. If it was simply one major allergen, the person would have spotted it eventually.
An elimination diet can be tough but it’s temporary. It’s not about portions – so you won’t feel hungry – but most patients complain of boredom. You must power through it!
The diet below contains my suggestions for a simple (and effective) elimination diet. You can vary it somewhat according to what is available to you locally.
A Suggested 8-Foods Diet (7-10 Days)
- Meat: (protein): rabbit or venison
- Fowl: ostrich or quail
- Fruit: mango or kiwi fruit
- Vegetables: spinach or turnip
- Starch: buckwheat or quinoa
In addition to the stipulated foods, you are allowed salt to taste, but not pepper. You’re allowed to drink spring water, but not herb teas or juices. Even herbs and pepper must be challenged correctly on introduction.
If you do feel improved, when ten days (maximum) have elapsed on the 8 Foods Diet, then you must begin re-introducing foods.
It is not enough to feel well on a very restricted diet. You need to know why. These are the foods you must avoid long-term, not simply all the foods which are banned at the beginning.
Even if you don’t feel well, as already pointed out, this does not prove you have no allergies amongst the foods you gave up. Test the foods again as you re-introduce them!
My recommended procedure is as follows:
- Eat a substantial helping of the food, preferably on its own for the first exposure.
- Choose only whole, single foods, that haven’t been chemically treated in any way.
- Wait several hours to see if there is an immediate reaction, and if not, eat more of it.
- You may eat a third, or fourth, portion if you want, to be sure.
- Take your resting pulse (sit still for two minutes) before, and several times during the first 90 minutes after the first exposure to the food. A rise of ten or more beats in the resting pulse is a reliable sign of an allergy. However, no change in the pulse does not mean the food is safe, unless symptoms are absent also.
Using the above approach, you should be able to reliably test one food a day, minimum. Some patients experience a buildup which causes confusion and sometimes failure. If you felt better on an exclusion diet, but you gradually became ill again when re-introducing foods, and cannot really say why – this might be the issue.
Perhaps there were no noticeable reactions. In that case, eliminate all the foods you have re-introduced until your symptoms clear again, and then re-introduce them more slowly.
This time, eat the foods steadily, several times a day for three to four days before making up your mind. It is unlikely that one will slip the net with this approach.
Once you complete the 8 Foods Diet (and reintroduction), you shift into a maintenance diet. The critical thing is to avoid offending foods permanently.
If you feel better by avoiding one or two foods – you’ll have the willpower to continue!
Natural pain relief could be as simple (for many, many patients) as changing your diet and getting rid of inflammatory foods. Even if these foods are not generally considered to be inflammatory – they could be inflammatory for you!
To get more information about how to manage and defeat chronic pain, read my book “The Ultimate Guide to Natural Pain Relief” right now. You’re going to be so glad you did!
The post Natural Pain Relief for the Most Correctable Cause appeared first on Dr. Keith Scott-Mumby.