Southwest Florida's Health and Wellness Magazine Health and Wellness Articles
By Dr Robert Gilliland B.S., D.C., DM(P) –
So you’ve worked hard all your life dreaming of the day you could retire in Florida and spend your days playing golf or tennis. However, crippling knee pain is keeping you on the sideline. If you are taking Celebrex or considering knee surgery please understand that there is a natural alternative.
Maybe you have already tried cortisone shots, acupuncture, physical therapy or laser treatments and nothing has helped so you’ve decided that it’s time to go under the knife while you’re still healthy enough to recover. Before you go under the knife and spend weeks doing physical therapy with no guarantee of success, you might want to consider a noninvasive, drug-free alternative.
You may have given up hope because you’ve seen your x-rays and it’s bone on bone and you believe that knee replacement is inevitable. However, it might come as a surprise to you to learn that there are many people who have little to no cartilage in their knees who don’t suffer with knee pain.
My brother Nick is one of those people. He is 56 years old and still plays recreational basketball. He has no visible cartilage in his knees and had relied on Celebrex for the last five years. A few months ago he came to me because he read the ‘Black Box’ warning inside his Celebrex package.
Celebrex basically thickens the blood, making it clump together, putting you at risk for a heart attack or stroke. The other two Cox-2 inhibitors (Celebrex is a Cox-2 inhibitor) have been taken off the market for this reason.
My brother Nick is a smart man (he is an actual real-life rocket scientist) who was a little more than skeptical about natural medicine. After all, we were raised in a family where traditional Western medicine was viewed as science and alternative medicine was viewed as quackery. However, Nick knew two things for sure – one, that Celebrex was dangerous and two, he didn’t want his knees replaced – so he put his skepticism aside and gave natural medicine a chance.
Nick is still in the gym playing with guys half his age with no pain – and he did it using a non-invasive, all-natural approach.
Understanding Knee Pain
Pain is not something that you can see on an x-ray or MRI. It’s not even physical. Pain is your brain’s interpretation of the signals it receives from your body, in this case your knee. When the brain receives a strong enough signal it ‘panics’ and sends out the pain signal. Pain is not pain until it reaches your brain.
A Natural Alternative To Celebrex
(A Dangerous Drug)
Cox-1 (like aspirin and ibuprofen) and Cox-2 inhibitors (Celebrex) selectively block an enzyme that is responsible for inflammation. They are a type of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) because these medications essentially fight inflammation. Drugs such as aspirin and ibuprofen and to some extent diclofenac, block both the Cox-2 and Cox-1 enzymes while other such as Vioxx (taken off the market) and Celebrex block just the Cox-2.
The reason so many doctors like the heavy duty Cox-2 meds is because they do not block the Cox-1 enzyme, which helps the stomach make a beneficial prostaglandin (a hormone-like chemical messenger), to protect the stomach lining. This is why NSAIDs often times cause stomach and gastrointestinal ulcerations.
The key here is that Celebrex works because it reduces inflammation. So the $64,000 questions is – is this possible using an all natural approach? The answer is yes!
There are natural herbs that will reduce the inflammation. However, if you have tried other natural therapies and they didn’t work you, you may need to give you body a little extra help by reducing the inflammation that you bring into your body. This may require some dietary changes but that’s better than having a heart attack or having your knees replaced, right?
My approach to difficult chronic knee pain includes finding the underlying cause of the inflammation/pain. This may be metabolic (finding the cause of the inflammation), it may be neurological (the PRMF in the brainstem may not be properly suppressing the pain signal) or a combination of the two. I also use an FDA cleared cold laser to help relieve the pain while correcting the real cause of the problem.
The bottom line is this – you should always consider the least dangerous, least invasive option first. You can’t undo a heart attack or stroke and you can’t undo knee surgery.
You are welcome to attend my free seminar on knee pain on Saturday June 15th at 1 pm at 27499 Riverview Center Blvd, Bonita Springs. Call 239-444-3106 to reserve your seat.
